United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Mackay of Clashfern Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Couttie (Con) [V]]

I, along with several colleagues, sat on the EU Select Committee, so ably chaired by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. We looked closely at Part 5 of the internal market Bill. The report that we produced was the subject of some strong debate among us. The point that we all agreed on was that none of us wanted to see the UK break international law or in any way tarnish the UK’s international reputation for fair play and justice. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, supported by many colleagues, seeks to have the clauses that make up Part 5 removed from this Bill. I am speaking today to support their continued inclusion.

Much has been made of Brandon Lewis’s remark stating that Part 5 of the internal market Bill breaches international law in a “limited and specific way”. However, his is not the only view on this controversial point. Having listened to the arguments put by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, and the Prime Minister and the evidence given by Michael Gove to the committee, it is clear to me that Part 5 may not break international law and is an essential safety net to protect the UK, most specifically in regard to both the economy and peace in Northern Ireland.

My noble friend Lord Lilley has already quoted the ECJ, pointing out that it does not expect EU countries to apply international law unconditionally. Various articles under the Vienna convention allow all countries the freedom to protect their interests and Article 184 is clear that parties must negotiate in good faith.

The withdrawal agreement was signed with contradictory clauses in it that each side thought protected their interests. Clauses that give the UK sovereignty over all its territory, including Northern Ireland, and unfettered access for goods flowing to and from the mainland and Northern Ireland are clearly difficult to reconcile with Northern Ireland remaining inside the EU customs union. The Joint Committee was established to enable resolution of these conflicts in the clauses. One of the key enablers of the proper functioning of the Northern Ireland protocol was the fair and sensible identification of the very small number of goods that were at risk of moving from the mainland to Northern Ireland and then into the EU.

We know that, as part of its negotiation, the EU threatened to withhold third-party status from the UK. The Prime Minister has told us that the EU also threatened to use the Joint Committee to designate all goods moving from the UK to Northern Ireland as being at risk of moving into the EU. The consequence of this is that tariffs will need to be paid on all goods moving from the UK to Northern Ireland; those tariffs will then need to be reclaimed on goods with a need to prove that they were not exported into the Republic of Ireland. This will create extra costs and make some supply chains unviable. It will also divide Northern Ireland from the mainland, which is unacceptable to the unionists—a point made tonight by the noble Lord, Lord Dodds. Clearly this demonstrates that the EU has not been negotiating in good faith and gives the right, under international law, to the UK to take action to protect itself. Part 5 provides this protection.

Some, including my noble friend Lord Howard, have argued that we should use the dispute mechanism in the withdrawal agreement to resolve these issues. This will take time, during which the Northern Ireland economy will be severely impaired and the much-valued and sacrosanct peace undermined. In addition, the final determination under the dispute resolution procedure is made by the ECJ, which not everyone in the UK has full confidence in.

I am pleased to hear that the negotiations have taken a more constructive tone, both concerning third-party status for the UK and the designation of goods at risk, by the Joint Committee. If this continues to be the case, Part 5 will not be needed. I sincerely hope that this proves to be the outcome, but until the negotiations are completed, I cannot support the removal of these clauses.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con) [V]]

My Lords, first, I want to say how sad I am at the passing of the noble Lord, Lord Sacks, who was a great member of our community in this country and a very excellent Member of our House. It is a very sad day for us. He stood up for faith and he explained faith in a way that very few were able to do.

In my view, the rule of law is a fundamental part of our constitutional arrangements; that extends to international law as well as our domestic law. During my time as Lord Chancellor, I was privileged to visit a number of countries where it was obvious that our national reputation was built on that fact to no small degree. I confess to my reaction of shock when I heard the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland intimate the proposal that is the subject of these amendments. Parliament is, of course, sovereign in domestic law. Since the House of Lords decided in Anisminic that the then common form of clause-protecting decisions from intervention by the courts protected only good decisions, such protective clauses have become rarer.

It is also of fundamental importance in the international effort to preserve peace in the world. Your Lordships will remember the heavy burden borne by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, in having to give advice on the relevant international law relating to Iraq. I find it poignant that we are debating this immediately after our national recognition of the tremendous cost of war inflicted on our nation. I should of course make it clear that there are lawful ways of getting out of a treaty, as provided by the Treaty of Vienna.

I do not wish to take any part in the discussions taking place tonight, including by my predecessor—whom I am glad to follow—into the situation that arises on the present discussion of the protocol. In my opinion, however, the withdrawal agreement, and the Northern Ireland protocol in particular, make it as plain as language can that its provisions are without prejudice to the provisions of the 1998 agreement in respect of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. That principle can be used in the proper interpretation of the somewhat conflicting provisions that exist in the protocol itself, but the point is that it makes it absolutely plain that the 1998 agreement is to be respected as part of, and as a prerequisite to, the implementation of the agreement. I therefore consider it unnecessary to say, as this part does, that the Government authorise the possible breach of international law.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is daunting to speak after the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and to find myself disagreeing somewhat with a former Lord Chancellor. I am not a lawyer; I feel as though I have stumbled into a convention of highly distinguished lawyers. Had I stumbled into a convention of highly distinguished grocers discussing this subject, they may of course have taken a rather different tone and approach to the practicalities of the matter.

At the heart of this claim about the rule of law is a statement made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, in his speech at Second Reading, that the rule of law is indivisible. This is not a legal point but a point in the philosophy of law, and it is highly contestable. The implication is that a breach of international law, however small, will lead to, for example, a rising murder rate in Scotland or the reckless parking on double yellow lines of vehicles in Birmingham—or, indeed, that the Government of China might observe their obligations better if we did not pass this Bill.

However, people outside this House understand that that is not how law works. They understand that international law is a distinct realm in which practical relations between states are codified but do not endure if they place intolerable burdens on one party. That brings us to the substance of this part of the Bill: the intolerable demands being placed on the coherence of the United Kingdom by the manner in which the European Union is seeking to interpret and implement the Northern Ireland protocol.

Some noble Lords, in talking about this in relation to another treaty—the Good Friday/Belfast agreement—presented the alternatives as straightforward: either punctilious observation of the Northern Ireland protocol or the return of the bomber and the gunman. In fact, that was very much the gravamen of the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, at Second Reading. This is a simplistic view of the state of affairs in Ireland; it rests on the fallacy that the Good Friday agreement requires the absence of a goods border on the island of Ireland. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, said, that simply is not true; the Good Friday agreement says nothing at all about goods borders on the island of Ireland. It says a great deal about the principle of consent of both communities—a principle that seems to have gone seriously astray—but about goods borders it says nothing at all.

In those circumstances, when challenged, people who take that view refer not to the text of the Good Friday agreement, where they do not find such a mention, but to its context. You cannot insist on the detailed written text of the Northern Ireland protocol while ignoring the detailed text of the Good Friday agreement and instead appealing to its context. The truth is that we have entered into a mesh of largely conflicting treaties. They do not mesh well, and the question is not whether some of those principles are going to go but which will. I noticed that, when the noble Lord, Lord Newby, spoke, he quite happily cast away the principle of unfettered access of trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. He does not believe that it can exist in practice, but that is because he prefers one interpretation of that complex and contradictory agreement to another.

It is an understatement to say the situation in Northern Ireland requires details and nuanced handling. An illustration of that emerged even after that debate, with the breaking news that the First Minister and Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, representing the DUP and Sinn Féin, had written jointly to the European Commission to object most strongly to the idea that supermarket vehicles travelling from Britain to Northern Ireland might have to be subject to border checks—but it is entirely within the Northern Ireland protocol that they should be. It is a subtle situation in Northern Ireland; if you can unite the DUP and Sinn Féin on that point, it shows that simplistic views need to be avoided.

What we face is a determination, dating back to 2016, that the EU take economic control of Northern Ireland, despite the fact that even that is contrary both to the Good Friday agreement and the EU treaties themselves, all of which recognise that Northern Ireland is fully part of the sovereign territory of the United Kingdom. I am afraid that too many Members of your Lordships’ House have adopted that view. My own view is that I do not agree with them and that it would be nice if a few more Members of the peerage of the United Kingdom actually spoke up for the United Kingdom.