President of Iran: Death

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Viscount will have noted, I made reference to Iran’s destabilising activity. We have all, not least within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, been fully seized of the challenges we are facing in the wider region. That said, I know we were at one when we saw the tragedy of Mahsa Amini and the suppression of human rights in Iran. I speak as the UK Human Rights Minister in saying that it is important that, while this was clearly a horrific accident, our thoughts remain with the Iranian people as they continue their struggle for human rights and dignity within Iran.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister just used the phrase “adhere to international norms and standards”, talking about internal elections. Can he think of any regime that has less adhered to those standards in its foreign policy and in its disrespect for territorial jurisdiction and national sovereignty, from the siege of the US embassy through to sponsoring attacks as far afield as London and Buenos Aires, through to this most recent horrific attack on Israel? Does my noble friend the Minister see any prospect for regional peace as long as we have that regime there, in Leninist terms, exporting its internal contradictions—in other words, trying to replicate its revolution far afield?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend articulates the extreme and intense challenges that many in the region face, not least from the destabilising activity of Iran. We have seen this in the context of the current conflict in Gaza, in support for Hamas, and through support for Hezbollah and for the Houthis in Yemen. We are determined to ensure that peace, security and stability must come when we see progressive Governments across the piece, but equally people committed to ensuring that peace, security and stability can be achieved only when it is for the whole region.

UK-African Investment Summit

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have a range of tools in that respect, but it is mostly done through our ODA money. There is a lot of support particularly for women and girls. I refer the noble Baroness to the White Paper that was published towards the end of last year, which addresses precisely the point of trying to increase female empowerment and supporting women and girls; if you are doing the right thing for them, you are usually doing the right thing for everyone. The most important aspect of raising Africa out of poverty is to see more stability in the region. There are some horrendous conflicts going on, and we are active in trying to resolve them.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, some of your Lordships will remember the great tomato shortage of last year when our supermarket shelves were bereft of those crimson globes. What noble Lords may not know is that we were still imposing tariffs and quotas from our largest source of tomatoes, which is the Kingdom of Morocco—quotas and tariffs that we inherited from the EU that were designed to protect Spanish growers but that serve no function even from a protectionist point of view because Moroccan tomatoes are counterseasonal to our own. Will my noble friend the Minister give us some hope that we are going to end these ridiculous restrictions, not as a favour to our allies in Morocco, although they are old allies, but as a favour to ourselves that may incidentally benefit our good friends in the Kingdom of Morocco?

Zimbabwe: Sanctions

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord knows I agree with his last point, not just in Zimbabwe but everywhere. Countries—indeed, Governments—can learn and progress much faster and more inclusively with the engagement of civil society. In that sense, the British Government and others are sometimes accused of interference in domestic politics. That is not our intention. Our politics is to ensure that the rights of people and communities are protected. That is the approach we take.

The noble Lord is right to raise the elections. He will be aware that several election observers were there, including from the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth’s report is still awaited, but some of the other points that were made—the EU report, for example, concluded that the elections were

“marked by a curtailment of rights and freedoms”—

really lay out the current challenges. Of course we will work with partners on how we can strengthen things. SADC has been raised, but Zimbabwe also has aspirations for the Commonwealth. That provides an opportunity to raise human rights as a key component.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I was impressed by my noble friend the Minister’s response to the noble Lord, Lord Oates. Sanctions must be a scalpel, not than a sledgehammer, but I wonder whether he has made any assessment of the attitude of the Government of South Africa. Any sanctions regime in Zimbabwe depends on the collaboration of that Commonwealth state, and so far the ANC Government have been conspicuous in their opposition to any sanctions, even against the worst kleptocrats in ZANU-PF. Is this just regional solidarity, or is there a danger that they would like to do something similar at home if they thought they could get away with it?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I often say about sanctions that I will not speculate about what we are going to do; I will not speculate on the intention of another Government. We have a strong relationship. We do not agree with South Africa on everything we do or it does, but I recently met with the Foreign Minister of South Africa and we had a very productive and candid exchange.

Climate Change: Impact on Developing Nations

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, reminded us that 2024 is an election year, and not only for us. More human beings will have the opportunity to cast a ballot in this year than ever before in history. That must be good news, not only intrinsically in itself but from the perspective of climate change.

One of the odd things, although it is rarely noted, is that the democracies are the countries taking the lead in global collaboration. You might think, from first principles, that this would be one of those areas where you could have a benign dictator doing things that would be unpalatable to the electorate, but that is not how it has worked out. Our country has become the first to halve its carbon emissions from the peak—the only developed country so far to do so. We do not see any equivalent action from Russia, China and so on. The spread of democracy, as well as being a good thing for the people of those countries, is good from our perspectives.

However, when we drill down and look at some of those elections, we see that the picture looks rather different. We had the first big election last weekend, in a country with a big population: Bangladesh—I think it has something like 170 million inhabitants. The UK, the US and the European Union have all said, with reason, that it was not a free and fair election. That is unsurprising: the opposition party there, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which used to alternate with the Awami League in office, has been broken and exiled and its leaders chained. We have the next big election coming up on 8 February in Pakistan, where it is a similar story: Imran Khan has been imprisoned and the PTI party has been broken, with its leaders arrested or exiled. We are moving towards a situation where more and more countries are voting but it is in a performative and perfunctory way. The chief benefit of democracy—namely, the ability peacefully to change your leaders—is being lost.

This ties into our aid policy. Bangladesh and Pakistan were immense recipients of our aid, particularly under the coalition starting with David Cameron’s premiership. There have obviously been cuts since Covid but, just before Covid, Pakistan was getting £330 million-plus a year and Bangladesh more than £200 million. Yet that massive increase in aid coincided with a decline in democracy—they were imperfect democracies, but they are plainly in a worse place now than when that aid money began. I am not saying, by the way, that that aid was useless—it may have had all sorts of good effects in promoting girls’ education or whatever—but it did not correlate with any democratisation.

If we are not using aid as a way of spreading democracy, and therefore getting all these other public goods that we get from it, what can we do? Democracy has been in retreat, globally, probably since the financial crisis. We can measure it in all sorts of ways. The Economist Intelligence Unit has a thing called the Democracy Index. It was expecting a bounce-back in 2022 as the Covid restrictions were lifted, but did not find one: there has been a continued loss of freedom. The International IDEA found the same thing: it saw six consecutive years of decline in democracy. Freedom House says there have been 17 continuous years in which more countries have ceased to be free than have become free. This correlates to the increase in autarchy and self-reliance, as its defenders would call it, since the banking crisis. Just like between the two wars, protectionism and authoritarianism go hand in hand. Indeed, autocrats are as much products as sponsors of economic protectionism.

What can we do if not use our aid budget? I put it to noble Lords that one thing we can do is recall our historic mission as a nation and try to spread globalisation as an instrument of poverty alleviation. It was the single most effective way of doing that. After the Second World War, we saw billions of people lifted out of poverty as their countries ceased to be autarchic and joined global market systems.

This is a much harder argument to make now than it was pre-Covid. We have mercantilist and protectionist policies in Washington, Brussels and Beijing—indeed, sometimes it is being done in the name supposedly of fighting climate change, as with the absurdly misnamed Inflation Reduction Act in the US. If our country has one historic dream and task, it is to raise our eyes above that and to be the place that drags the rest of the world to greater prosperity. It was the elimination of obstacles to trade that lifted this nation to a pinnacle of unprecedented wealth and happiness in the 19th century. It is our task once again, now that we have the opportunity, to do the same, and to lift the rest of humanity with us.

Abraham Accords

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, the prophet Abraham, after whom these accords are named, is remembered five times a day in the prayers of devout Muslims. He is a towering figure in Islam. He has the title Khalilullah—friend of God—and is seen as the ancestor of Moses, who watches over our proceedings stony-faced, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad. However, he himself is not seen as Christian, Jewish or Muslim. He is rather a sort of primordial monotheist who lives instinctively within divine law and recognising divine justice.

In the Jewish and, by extension, Christian traditions, the salient fact is that he is a wanderer who settles down. The Bible says that Abraham

“spake unto the sons of Heth … I am a stranger and a sojourner with you … give me … a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight”.

The return of Jews to Israel was with an overriding wish to be welcomed home—to have nothing more than peace with their neighbours. Finally, that prospect is on the horizon. It is a great cosmic irony that, just as Israel is improving its relations with its Arab neighbours, it is worsening its situation with many western and European countries, but that is a topic for a different debate.

I think these accords came about because other Arab states realised that it was no longer feasible to give an effective veto to the most hard-line elements in the Palestinian leadership. They saw that, even when offers were made, as under Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert, that would have given 95% or an equivalent of 100% of the territory with land swaps and control of east Jerusalem, that was not enough and they decided to go further, over the heads of some of the Palestinian leaders but in the interests of the Palestinian people. That creates a new situation and a new opportunity, if Israel will now have the imagination and generosity to grasp it and if Palestinians will come on board with the process.

I am not saying for a moment that this is easy, but imagine a situation where there are no physical barriers around the Palestinian territories; where that country can be integrated into the world economy and can trade its way to prosperity—an embourgeoisement of Palestine, if you will; where you will have a propertied class that will not tolerate lawlessness or freelance rocket launchers but will want to remain on good terms with its customers, most of whom will find themselves in Israel. As Milton Friedman said, there is nothing like trade to make people who do not get on get on.

I appreciate that taking down the barriers to get there is not an easy thing, but is it not worth the effort? Is it not worth at least considering the Palestinians as an entity capable of making their own decisions—whether they want confederation with Israel or with Jordan or whatever—and recognising them as a unit? Surely Abraham has buried enough of his dead out of his sight.

Council of Europe: Death Penalty

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, if the noble Baroness was present last week, she will know that I recounted I think at least eight or nine occasions on which I have been in touch and had direct discussions with His Excellency the ambassador for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Indeed, on the evening before the sad execution of Mr al-Kheir, I was in touch with the Human Rights Commission of, the Foreign Minister of, and, indeed, the ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, given that the rights adumbrated in the ECHR are anticipated—predated, sometimes, by centuries—by the laws of this country, what does my noble friend the Minister fear would be the right we would lose if we were to abrogate the convention?

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

The death penalty?

Turkey: Earthquake Relief

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, specifically on Iran, I will have to update the noble Lord. I am aware that the impacts have been felt further afield, particularly in parts of the Middle East. Thankfully, even in places such as Lebanon, which is a very fragile country at the moment, the impact has been limited, but we are continuing to monitor the situation. Tragically, the earthquake hit at 4 am, which was probably the worst time. I have been updated on the net effect on buildings and how they folded—what I believe is called the pancake effect, where they just collapse on each other. If that impact were felt further afield in places such as Lebanon, which is extremely fragile, it would be devastating. I will update noble Lords as details emerge on what is an evolving situation.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, some years ago, I worked in a refugee camp along the Euphrates, very close to the epicentre. It is impossible not to be moved by the brisk, unfussy and uncomplaining way in which Turkey has handled the arrival of millions of Syrian refugees into its territory. The United Kingdom is perhaps the most engaged supporter of Syrian refugees on the borders of Syria. Can we leverage that status and transfer our aid to the Syrians who are now fleeing this second devastation?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is correct that the UK has been and is the third-largest bilateral donor to the Syrian crisis, having committed over £3.8 billion to date, our largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis. We are supporting Turkey, Lebanon and indeed Jordan when it comes to the issue of Syrian refugees. The impact of those seeking to leave Syria from this devastation is not yet clear, but we stand ready to help those within Syria and Turkey with the support that they need. As I said, and I am sure noble Lords appreciate this, it is a situation that occurred this morning. We have responded immediately—as required—and in a co-ordinated fashion to the information that we have received, and we will continue to do so.

Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (European Affairs Committee Sub-Committee Report)

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Friday 20th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Weir, whom I first encountered some 30 years ago when he was running the Young Unionists. His was a strong and true voice for County Down at the Stormont Assembly, and it will be again in our councils. I add my praise to everyone else’s in favour of the chairman of our Select Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Jay, whose temperate, measured and judicious approach has brought, out of a very disparate Select Committee and with the assistance of our staff, a very useful report. Everything that people said about the House of Lords before I became a Member—how disinterested it could be and how people could raise their eyes above the partisan scrum to try to discern some kind of consensus—has turned out to be true, at least in my Select Committee. For that, I thank all my fellow members.

I associate myself very strongly with the balance of the report. There is a sense, which is very widespread across the channel and in chunks of our media here, that it has always been the UK which is unreasonable, that we created the whole problem, and that any compromise will largely involve movement from our side. However, such a view does not survive first contact with the reality on the ground. The UK could have been extremely unreasonable; we could have stood on the letter of the law and said, “Look, we are a sovereign country, we are doing our own thing, and we are not going to raise so much as a matchstick of infrastructure on our side of the border; what you do on your side of the border is up to you”. That would have been legal under international law.

The Republic of Ireland opted out of our customs union in 1921, to the horror of Lloyd George, who thought that that was the final thing that could have symbolised some kind of continuing relationship between the two states. There would have been no comeback from that, if you like, but we did not do that. We did not do that because, first, we wanted to be good neighbours to the European Union, and, secondly, we recognised an obligation to both traditions in Northern Ireland—so we went out of our way to help the EU deliver on that aim. Let us remember that it is the EU that says it needs the border; there has never been any suggestion of that on our side.

All the provisions in the protocol Bill, which stalled but will come back in your Lordships’ House, are to that end: the red and green channel; Northern Ireland having the same right of taxation with representation that the rest of the world has; the freedom for companies in Northern Ireland that do not export to be able to follow UK regulation; and arbitration in accordance with every other international treaty. Those have been put together precisely so that they do not cause any inconvenience or damage to the EU, yet I do not think that that is acknowledged at all.

I sit on the Joint Parliamentary Assembly between this Parliament and the EU, and there is a very widespread sense there that the UK, as it were, is not moving an inch to try to accommodate its neighbours. In fact, at the last meeting, I made an intervention, saying that I am very pleased that we, on this side, do not require tests or checks on EU imports, and that I hope we will carry on doing that, because these are our friends, neighbours and allies and we should trust their standards. A large number of members were so preconditioned to expect me to have said something else that they all raged at me—“How dare you say that we should not have tests or checks on UK imports”—because people hear what they are expecting. There is an imbalance in the readiness to resolve the issue.

I very much hope that we will use Northern Ireland as a bridge between the UK and the EU, and that it will become a symbol of our friendship, but that requires both sides to recognise that the other side has legitimate concerns. It is a legitimate concern for any sovereign country not to have an internal border or a chunk of its territory governed from overseas without democratic representation. I am sure that all noble Lords in this House wishes the EU prosperity and success—I certainly do; I want it to be rich so that it is a better customer. As David Hume observed in 1777, the increase in the commerce of any one nation, far from hurting its neighbours, must serve to augment the commerce and riches of its neighbours. I just hope that that sense is reciprocated.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I am truly grateful for the opportunity to participate, and would have done so earlier had I stood up more quickly. I will address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge.

First, the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, touched on the reasons behind Clause 12 and why it is necessary, and I think it is worth reminding noble Lords of the current position following the approval of the Subsidy Control Act. Under the provisions of that Act, Northern Ireland is specifically excluded from the UK subsidy scheme. Therefore, we are subject, as per Article 10 of the Northern Ireland protocol, to EU state aid laws, and all the laws listed in Annexe 5 to the protocol shall apply to the UK

“in respect of measures which affect that trade between Northern Ireland and the Union which is subject to this Protocol.”

I have spoken to Invest Northern Ireland—the body that looks after foreign direct investment into Northern Ireland—about these matters. In effect, while the UK is setting up a new, more flexible state aid regime, under Article 10 of the protocol the UK subsidy control regime would apply only to about 50% of the financial support that will be provided to Northern Ireland, with the remainder continuing to fall within the scope of EU state aid rules, applying mainly to the manufacturing of goods.

So, Northern Ireland will be forced to adhere to the strict rules and conditions of EU law on things such as no expansions, maximum grant rates, only new establishments and so on, and when the projects are large or outside the scope of the exemption regulations, Northern Ireland will have to seek European Commission approval. Effectively, we have two regimes which are very different in policy terms and practical effect. Under the UK scheme, things effectively will be automatically approved unless specifically prohibited, and in Northern Ireland, under EU rules, everything will be prohibited unless approved—very different policies, and two very different systems operating in one country.

The reasons behind Clause 12 are sound; otherwise, there will be no level playing field across the United Kingdom for state aid. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, talked about uncertainty, but Invest NI has expressed concerns about the application of this dual regime. We will be at a disadvantage compared to other parts of the UK competing for inward investment. Other parts could be much more attractive as a location for investment as a result of not having to wait for European Commission approvals, for instance. Northern Ireland approvals will take significantly longer than the new timescales envisaged in the Subsidy Control Act for the rest of the United Kingdom. Other areas could have far fewer conditions or restrictions and might well receive greater levels of funding and subsidy than will be possible under the EU regime in Northern Ireland, which prohibits subsidies greater than 50%, whereas under the Act subsidies should be “proportionate”, but no maximum is specified.

Indeed, your Lordships’ Select Committee on the protocol in Northern Ireland, on which I am honoured to sit, wrote to the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, on this matter. He responded by letter on 22 March 2022, saying that he recognised that

“in some cases a more flexible approach will be available in Great Britain than in Northern Ireland and that this could affect all subsidies relating to trade in goods.”

There are real concerns about the application of EU state aid to Northern Ireland when it is not applicable to the rest of the United Kingdom.

On the issue of what replaces the EU regime for Northern Ireland, I have heard what has been said. That is why I am on record in this House as agreeing with the Opposition Front Bench that we need to see the regulations, and they should be published in good time for your Lordships to consider in detail. It is not enough simply to have broad outlines of policy or indications of where it might go; we need to see the regulations at the same time as the legislation. I fully accept that this should be done, and I said so in a previous debate.

I understand also the very strong opinions, many of which I share, on the idea of giving the Executive more and more power at the expense of the legislature. However, I ask noble Lords to bear in mind the situation we are faced with in Northern Ireland as a result of the protocol. Powers have been taken away in 300 areas of law affecting the economy in Northern Ireland. Powers have been taken away from this House, this Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly in Stormont, and handed over to the European Commission in Brussels, which initiates law in all those areas.

Noble Lords have expressed great dissatisfaction with the idea, which is regrettable in many cases, that one of His Majesty’s Ministers may be able to sit down with a pen and paper or an iPad and write what comes to mind; but we have a situation where somebody in the European Commission building in Brussels—I do not know who or where they will be, or their name; they are certainly not accountable to anyone here or in Northern Ireland—will write laws for Northern Ireland. It will not be a question of putting them down in statutory instruments, which this House may reject—although we have heard that it hardly ever rejects them. There will be no system of approval or disapproval at all. There will be dynamic alignment of the laws of the European Union with Northern Ireland. Legislators and the people of Northern Ireland will be handed those laws by the European Commission and told: “That’s the law you’re now operating.” Those laws are not necessarily going to be made in the interests of Northern Ireland. They are made by people who have their own interests.

I understand why noble Lords may rail against the delegated powers in this Bill, but why is not the much greater problem of the powers that have been given to Brussels to impose laws directly on part of the United Kingdom in the 21st century a subject for even more outrage? People may say that the Government signed up to this. I agree—they did, against our advice. We voted against it, as did other noble Lords in this House and Members of the other place. But we have this problem and we need to fix it. If it cannot be fixed, we are in serious trouble. I hope that negotiations and the negotiating mandate of the European Union will change to allow these things to be negotiated, but there is no sign of that thus far. If they do not change, this sovereign Parliament must take action to protect the people of Northern Ireland against laws imposed on them. Surely that should have the support of all true democrats in this mother of Parliaments.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, listening to the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, just then, my mind drifted back a decade or so to a debate in the domed hemicycle in Strasbourg on the issue of state aid in a neighbouring jurisdiction, one that was partially under single market regulation; namely, Switzerland. One after another the MEPs from different groups got up and fulminated against the unfair competition and unfair subsidies that were being carried out in particular Swiss cantons. It became clear as they spoke that what they regarded as unfair subsidies were lower taxes—lower corporation and business taxes, and a lower VAT rate. My point is that what we regard as an objective measure will not necessarily be seen that way in Brussels when it has full control of these things.

I did not make the wise life choices that my noble friend Lord Leigh of Hurley did, so I have no idea how efficacious these vehicles are, but surely that is an issue that ought to be determined through our own national democratic mechanisms and procedures, rather than handed to us by people over whom we have no control. It is this point of trade-offs that I think is being missed.

Of course, how could one not be persuaded by the customary wry, terse brilliance of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, in the way he phrases the problem of executive overreach? I think that all of us on all sides recognise the problem. But we are dealing with a world of imperfections, and the alternative is an also unconstrained, and to some degree arbitrary, power where decisions are made, often by middle-ranking European Commissioners who are not accountable to anyone. Inadequate as the statutory instrument is, there is some mechanism of control here. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, just explained, we will have a situation where the state aid regime in Northern Ireland is being imposed by people who are completely outside the democratic process.

Now, I very much hope that this Bill goes through without these amendments. I realise that I am a very lonely supporter of it in these debates, but I hope that once it has gone through, Northern Ireland can become a bridge between the United Kingdom and the European Union, and a forum for co-operation. But that will be possible only if we live up not only to the Belfast Agreement but to the wider principles on which it rests: above all, representative government and a proper link between taxation, representation and expenditure.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, there has been much discussion today, and it goes back to the issue of democratic deficit and how we deal with what Northern Ireland’s public representatives cannot deal with. There is a very simple solution. Under the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland Act 1998, amended by the Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006, provision was made for the institutions according to a three-stranded approach: the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly, the North/South Ministerial Council, and the British-Irish Council, with east-west, north-south, and internal to Northern Ireland being addressed.

At the moment, we have no Northern Ireland Assembly, no Northern Ireland Executive and no North/South Ministerial Council that would hold these matters to account and address that democratic deficit. I would say to the DUP: there is a duty and an obligation to ensure, working with all the parties in Northern Ireland and both Governments, that those institutions are up and running. That will allow all of these issues to be adequately addressed by the MLAs who were duly elected in May.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

I did not plan on speaking in this debate, but I think it is only right that somebody should thank the noble Lord, Lord Frost, for explaining to us how bad things have become in Northern Ireland as a result of the treaty he negotiated. I am very happy to do that. I will, however, keep my speech brief and not make a Second Reading speech.

Of course, I support these two amendments but hope very much that we will not get to vote on them. To echo the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, we have been asked to put lipstick on a pig again. We have been asked to do that many times in the last couple of years, but to my knowledge, this is first time that the pig is not only ugly but illegal. On that basis, we should not get to vote on it. What we should do now, as others have said, is invoke Article 16. If negotiations are not working, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, there is a route open to us but passing an illegal Bill is certainly not it.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I had been planning to speak on the detail of the amendments. It seems to me to be quite unreasonable, as the noble Lords, Lord Dodds and Lord Bew, have already said, that the whole essence of the Belfast agreement, which was that important decisions would be made on a cross-community basis—a difficult principle for unionists to accept at the time—is now being abandoned the moment it becomes inconvenient. I say that as someone who was rather opposed, at the time, to the Belfast agreement—not on orange or green grounds but because I thought it was unhealthy to have all the parties in power all the time. I thought it would be healthier for democracy to have a more genuine competition. I lost that argument and we went down this road. It seems a little inconsistent that we should move to majoritarianism only when it suits people pushing one agenda.