Brexit: Legislating for the Withdrawal Agreement

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

There is always wisdom in my noble friend’s suggestions but I think whether there should be a Joint Committee of both Houses is a matter for Parliament rather than the Government. We are working through the details with the EU at the moment on exactly what the composition of the joint committee will encompass. However, we expect it to be multilayered, possibly with one level of officials similar to UKRep and one ministerial level as well, but that agreement has still to be made.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, returning to paragraph 7, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, paragraph 7.b. refers to Northern Ireland but the only commitment it makes is that,

“the Government has been clear about its steadfast commitment to the Belfast Agreement”.

Is there any reason why, in this document, the Government’s commitment to no hard border has not been put down in black and white or why the amendment that this House passed on Northern Ireland and the avoidance of a hard border, which was accepted by the other place, has not been repeated? Do the Government continue to accept what they accepted in December: that there needs in this withdrawal agreement to be a backstop agreement on the avoidance of a Northern Ireland hard border?

[Lord Callanan]

There was no need to repeat that in the text because it is of course now part of the withdrawal Act, which is the law of the land. We remain committed to there being no hard border and to the backstop, as agreed in December. Negotiations are ongoing with that at the moment and, as I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, the reason that it is not in this White Paper is because it is not agreed yet.