EU Withdrawal

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, I listened with some interest and considerable agreement to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton. I cannot, however, go along with his final enthusiastic flourish: that we must continue to argue for what we believe in. I say that not because I do not argue for what I believe in, but because both sides of this argument have been arguing for what they believe in for the past few years and we have not got to any agreement—or even increased understanding of each other. This is a phenomenon not just of this country, but a global one: countries and communities are split down the middle because people are arguing for what they believe in, come what may.

I am quite used to that. I am used to people taking to weapons because of what they believe in. I have spent a good deal of my life trying to persuade people to look beyond what they believe in to a better future for their shared community. I agree largely with the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. However, it means two quite different things among the people supporting it. Some say that they will not leave the European Union without an agreement—and they want an agreement. Others say that they will not leave the European Union without an agreement, while rather hoping that there will not be one, so that they will not have to leave. We need to be a little more straightforward if we are to find any resolution in the interests of our country.

There has been a good deal of talk about the backstop, and I will focus on that, because there is a considerable lack of understanding about what is involved. As the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, pointed out, the key issues are not those that many people speak about. I hear many people speaking about the Good Friday agreement, but quite a number of them have not read it, or if they have read it they have not understood it, or if they have understood it they are disingenuous about it and are using it to promote one side or other of a Brexit argument that has nothing to do with it.

What happened with the agreement? First, the British and Irish Governments realised that they had been poles apart for a long time, and that that was not in the best interests of either country. They agreed to come together to build a new relationship, and reach a political agreement that will provide a basis for that. The basis was not the Good Friday agreement but the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, which was a very flawed process. I will not revisit that—I see the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, nodding his head—but it brought the British and Irish Governments together at the level of Prime Ministers, Ministers and civil servants, over a period, to build and develop a relationship with each other. That enabled, in the context of the European Union, and with the support of our friends in the United States, a new agreement to be produced—the Belfast agreement of 1998. That addressed the disturbed relationships within Northern Ireland, between north and south, and between Britain and Ireland.

Let us be clear, however: the key relationship was between London and Dublin—between the British and Irish Governments. That was the driver that kept it going, and when they forgot about that it was a disaster. The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, is not in his place but he, the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, and others will remember those occasions when Bertie Ahern, as Taoiseach, allowed Mr Gerry Adams and his colleagues to go to Dublin and start external negotiations, and then the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, went to London to talk to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The whole process began to fall into disarray. Some of us had to publicly call for them to come back to Belfast, to the chairmanship of George Mitchell, to try to reach an understanding. The key thing was to keep the British and Irish Governments together.

When, therefore, I hear people saying that the British and Irish Governments cannot negotiate on questions like the backstop without doing it through Brussels, I do not find it easy to believe. Brussels never complained when the British and Irish Governments were negotiating on Irish border issues; on the contrary, they took pride in the fact that it was being done, that the model of the European Union was being adopted, and that funds could be made available to promote it. The reason that we are having this problem is that the British Government, having dealt with the Irish problem, did what the British Government usually do with the Irish problem; that is, ignore it and hope that it will now go away, and not pay proper attention to the Irish Government and their relationship with them. What then happens? Surprise, surprise, a decade on, they run into difficulties.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

The noble Lord said that Brussels did not intervene in the negotiations at an earlier phase. The reason was perfectly simple. It was that both the United Kingdom and Ireland were in the single market; they were in the European Union together, and there was nothing for Brussels to intervene about. That is not now the situation.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, as far as I am aware, they are both still in those places. They may be negotiating to go out of them, but they are still currently in them. If Brussels does not want any help, it may find itself creating problems rather than finding solutions. That is not in anybody’s interest.

In terms of the Good Friday agreement—I was part of the negotiation—neither the British Government nor the Irish Government bothered to fulfil the requirement of the British-Irish side for meetings of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, which did not meet for a decade. Is that not evidence that London was not paying proper attention to the relationship with Dublin?

What about Dublin? It is absolutely clear that the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, decided that, rather than act as a bridge between the United Kingdom and the European Union, he would line up with Europe and act as a bulwark for the European Union against the United Kingdom. It was not for the first time, and not for the first time has it been a disaster. Historically, every time Ireland has lined up with the rest of Europe against England, rather than Britain or the United Kingdom, it has always ended up being let down, from Roger Casement to Wolfe Tone. Every time they depended on people from outside to help in the relationship, it was historically disastrous. England’s difficulty was rarely Ireland’s opportunity; it was more often Ireland’s difficulty as well, and that is the danger that we are in at the moment.

The British and Irish Governments need to work much more closely together and engage with Brussels. Is there some practical way in which it could be done? I hear lots of people say that all these things are impossible; I came to the conclusion quite some time ago that had the people negotiating in Belfast, Dublin and Brussels been in Belfast 20 years ago, we would never have had a Good Friday agreement, because they would have said, “It’s all impossible. The IRA will never do this. The unionists will never do that”. But we got there, right at the end of the time. How did we do that? First, we built relationships. We did not stand shouting abuse at one another. We started to talk. Then we set to the side high principle and started talking about the practicalities. When we asked unionists whether we could have cross-border bodies or, as republicans would have said, all-Ireland bodies, the unionists said, “No, you can’t have that”. We said, “Hang on a second. We’ve actually been co-operating for 40 or 50 years on the question of fisheries in the Foyle because the fish pay no attention to the border and just go backwards and forwards. Could we do something now on other issues?” “Ah”, the answer was, “if they’re practical issues, we can”.

When Arlene Foster and Martin McGuinness wrote a joint letter in 2016 to the Prime Minister, they pointed out some of those practicalities. They said, “What are the issues?” In terms of the economy, which has been mentioned, there are basically two. One is agriculture and agri-food business; the other is energy, particularly electricity. What if the British and Irish Governments came together and said, “We’ve reached an agreement. Because it’s an island, it’s a natural quarantine. We’ve got to look after animal health and plant health. We’ll deal with agriculture and agri-food business on an island-wide basis. We’ve got good traceability and we’ll work together on those things. We’ve got an electricity grid which is for the island as a whole and, by the way, we’ll reach agreement that we are not going put any nuclear reactors on the island of Ireland. Could you let us deal with those things on an all-Ireland basis, because that’s the vast majority of the problem?” I think that quite a lot of unionists, as long as it was seen not as a constitutional but a practical issue, would say, “Okay, let’s talk about that; we can maybe do that”. As Ian Paisley famously pointed out, the people are British but the cows are Irish. So we can do a little bit on the agricultural side.

People on both sides of the border already know where they should be paying their taxes to—they do not always do it but they know where they should be paying them to. If you are taking a load of petrol from Belfast to Dublin or, much more interestingly, a load of Guinness from Dublin to Belfast, you know perfectly well that taxation is different on the two sides of the border, whether or not you are in the EU. You still have to pay your taxes, and it is traceable.

If we deal with the practical realities, we can find ways of resolving these problems, perhaps quite quickly. But they need to take place in a context where people want to reach an agreement, not frustrate an agreement, for whatever reason and whatever background they come from.

It has been said clearly that time is short. The reassuring thing is this: two months before we reached the Belfast agreement, Sinn Féin had not even put forward a proposal for a Northern Ireland Assembly; less than two months later, we had a Good Friday agreement. It is doable if we are determined to reach an agreement and not frustrate the reaching of an agreement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Viscount. He does not do frictionless, in either debate or trade. In any case, I suggest that if he was surprised about the form which the withdrawal negotiations have taken, it can only be because he did not read Article 50 before we got going down this road. It is only about six lines; it is quite clear; and it was drafted by a Member of this House. It is a pity he did not read it first. If he had, he would have found out what the format of the negotiation would be.

[Viscount Ridley]

May I just point out that I was talking about 2015, long before the referendum? I did read Article 50 in the run-up to the referendum.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Well, that is very good, but I am sorry that the noble Viscount came to the conclusion that he did. It was available and there is no surprise in it. It was precisely what was laid down by a treaty, which this House, along with the other place, ratified not all that long ago. We seem to have a rather cursory attitude to the treaties that we enter into, but we should not have, because they matter.

Anyway, here we are, another week, another debate, which brings us no closer to an agreed and parliamentarily- approved outcome to this whole sorry saga. Two more weeks have gone by of not very useful activity by a Government who have not so much lost their way but never found it in the first place. If the Prime Minister is not deliberately aiming to run down the clock, she is giving an extraordinarily plausible imitation of someone who is doing so.

In the last two weeks, the Prime Minister has visited Brussels in an attempt to dismantle an international treaty provision to which she had agreed in good faith a mere two months ago. We agreed to it not once, but twice, because we agreed first in December 2017 and now again in November 2018. She told us in November 2018 that this was the best deal that was available, but I suspect her visit to dismantle that has been to no avail. She visited Belfast to tell a population that voted by a substantial majority to remain that leaving was going to be just fine—to no avail. She visited Dublin to persuade a Government to put their survival at risk—to no avail.

Meanwhile, on all sides we are seeing evidence, which is accumulating, of the serious damage that this policy of stubborn procrastination is inflicting on the economy. We have seen inward investment cut—that is Nissan. We have seen growth forecasts cut pretty sharply. We have seen ferry contracts for non-existent ferries axed. We have seen billions of public expenditure being squandered to give some pretence of credibility to a policy which should have been discarded months ago.

What is to be done, as Lenin once said in a rather different context? First, the option of leaving without a deal should be shelved now once and for all. The Government say that that cannot be done. That is simply untrue. It can be done by scrapping some of the Government’s red lines. It can be done by seeking a prolongation of the Article 50 cut-off period. It can be done by giving the electorate another say. Eschewing those options, as the Government do, which is totally legitimate on their part, does not mean that they cannot be carried out.

Secondly, not a single option available to us at this stage, not even approval of the Prime Minister’s plan, can actually be completed and implemented before 29 March. Talks should be initiated with the EU on a prolongation of that period, to which all 27 member states have to agree.

Thirdly, the option of another referendum should be recognised as providing the clearest route that is now available to us to achieving closure on this matter. The outcome of such a referendum could be made mandatory so as to avoid the risk of an endless process. Preparations for holding such a referendum could be put in hand quite quickly if the will was there to do it.

I agree that these are not easy choices but they are ineluctable ones and we are going to face them in the next few weeks. They should be made by the end of this month at the latest, and it is for that reason that I will support the Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith.