European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, in my 40-odd years in political life, I have voted six times in referenda. I was on the winning side three times and I was on the losing side, including this one, three times. On all those occasions, I had to accept that, whatever my personal views, I would accept the views of the people in that referendum, and I willingly and happily—perhaps not happily but willingly—accept the views of the British people in this one. But that does not mean that there is no role for Parliament or for the House of Lords to consider the issues affected so dramatically by the single decision of coming out of the European Union.

The political landscape of the United Kingdom in the past 20 years has changed dramatically. Despite the decision of the Supreme Court not to allow the devolved Administrations their wish in this matter, politically Parliament and this House of Lords cannot ignore the issue of the devolved Administrations and what might happen in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I was never a Scottish Minister, but I was Secretary of State for Wales and for Northern Ireland, and I want to address a couple of issues with regard to those countries and how the Bill and subsequent legislation will affect them. In his winding-up speech, I hope that the Minister will be able to address these points. Next week, amendments will be tabled and debated with regard to the devolved Administrations.

Wales voted to leave. That does not mean that there are not issues in Wales that need to be addressed. Seventy per cent of Welsh exports are to member states of the European Union. The great Airbus factory in north Wales is heavily dependent on European business. Tens of thousands of Welsh farmers rely on European money and are wondering what will happen when it runs out. Hundreds, indeed thousands, of organisations and communities in Wales depend on European Union funding too, and they are concerned about what will happen. Our Welsh universities and colleges depend on European students, but also on a great deal of resource for research. I hope that the Government will take these matters seriously and discuss them with Carwyn Jones, the Welsh Government and the Welsh Assembly.

I turn to Northern Ireland. There, the situation is different. The people of Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union. The people of the Republic of Ireland are strongly in favour of their membership of the European Union. Yet that country, Ireland, will be affected more than any other European country as a result of our decision to leave the European Union. Billions of pounds every year are spent in trade between Ireland and the United Kingdom. The European Union Committee issued a great report on the issue which I hope we will be able to debate in the months to come. What about Northern Ireland? There, the issue of the border looms. There has been no border, other than at the time of the Troubles, separating North and South in Ireland. The fact that the Troubles disappeared and that the border went with them was a huge issue in bringing about peace in Northern Ireland. I hope that the Government are, with the Irish Government, looking extremely carefully at how to deal with the situation in practical terms.

There is more. I chaired many of the talks that led to the Good Friday agreement 20 years ago. It was based on the common membership of the two Governments —the two countries, Ireland and the United Kingdom—of the European Union. That common membership permeated every strand—1, 2 and 3—of those negotiations. Strand 2 concerned relations between the North and the South. Most of the bodies that have been set up between Ireland and Northern Ireland are based on Europe. Therefore, if we leave the European Union, that essential element of the Good Friday agreement is jeopardised.

Money came too, of course—not just Objective 1 money, important though it was to Northern Ireland, but peace money too. The distribution of that peace money from Europe to Northern Ireland meant that nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, worked together in distributing those funds in Northern Ireland in itself helping to bring about peace. The people of Northern Ireland in a referendum in 1998 voted for the Good Friday agreement. At the same time the public of the Republic of Ireland overwhelmingly voted for that agreement. The people of Northern Ireland voted to stay in the European Union and yet the people of the United Kingdom decided to come out. If that is not a huge dilemma for the Government, I do not know what is.

I will finish by simply quoting the preamble to the Good Friday or Belfast agreement of 1998. It says that the two Governments wish,

“to develop still further the unique relationship between their peoples and the close co-operation between their countries as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union”.

The European Union has been vital to the Northern Ireland peace process. It must not be jeopardised by the Brexit process.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kilclooney (CB)]

My Lords, I want to comment briefly on one or two points. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, in his historical analysis of Ireland forgot the Battle of the Boyne. I am amazed. Secondly, he forgot the fact that there used to be no Irish living in Ireland. They invaded the island. The Scotti lived on the island originally. The Irish invaded our island and drove the Scotti out, and they went 20 miles away to a country now called Scotland. That is where it gets its name from—the Scotti who were driven out of the island of Scotia. When the Irish invaded, they changed it to Hibernia. Read Magnus Magnusson’s book on the history of Ireland.

I am the one Member here who lives near the border and I do not want to see a hard border. I want to see the common travel area preserved. I speak as one who was a very active European. I was chairman of the European Youth Campaign in Northern Ireland. I campaigned strongly in the EEC referendum. I then became an MEP for 10 years and, after that, I spent seven years in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. Likewise, living near the border, I was very keen on north-south relations at a time when the Dublin Government refused to even recognise that Northern Ireland existed.

When I became chairman of the Young Unionist Council—in the middle of the last century—I said we would meet people in Dublin to see if we could start improving relations. We arranged to have a meeting in Dublin with the central branch of Fine Gael. The Ulster Unionist Party went crackers. They said I would get expelled. We should not do it. How can you talk to somebody who does not even recognise that you exist? We went to Dublin and had our meeting. I looked at the Irish Times three weeks later and what did I see? “Party branch expelled”. I thought, “My goodness”, but it was the central branch of Fine Gael that had been expelled for meeting the unionists. That is life in Ireland.

I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, who was quite right to say that the southern Irish are petrified about the impact of Brexit. I see it every day where I live. Thousands of people now come every day from the Republic to Northern Ireland for the obvious reason. The depreciation of the pound sterling means that the ladies all come up to our border towns to do their weekly shop. Our border towns are now—“exploding” is the wrong word to use—absolutely thriving, and people along the border who think about the economics say what a great thing Brexit is. However, it is worse for the Republic of Ireland. The largest number of its tourists come from England and, because of the 15% depreciation, tourism is now going into decline.

A second point is that meat cannot be exported from the Republic to Britain because, again, meat prices are down by 15%. Farmers are now demonstrating outside supermarkets in the Republic because of the collapse in the prices. Furthermore, mushroom plants are closing down. Hundreds of people have already lost their jobs for the same reason: they cannot export mushrooms.

Of course, a special status is required for someone but not for Northern Ireland. It is offensive to suggest that it should have a special status. It is the Republic that needs it. We must keep the common travel area there, and we must get Brussels to recognise, as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland has stated, that the Republic will be more seriously damaged than any other nation in the European Union. It will suffer badly. It is suffering already, but what will it be like in two and a half years’ time when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union? The Republic of Ireland needs special status and we should support it in its attempts to get that in Brussels. As one who lives on the border, I say: keep the common travel area.

I was involved in the negotiations on the Belfast agreement and I have an original copy of it here. There is not one mention of the European Union in any of the four articles at the end of the agreement. Of course, human rights are mentioned but that is in relation to the Council of Europe; it has nothing to do with the European Union. I will oppose the amendment.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate lasting almost two hours. I am making a guest appearance at this Dispatch Box as the Minister for Political Development who partly chaired the peace process 20 years ago. When I look around this Chamber—I cannot look behind me but they are there—I see a large number of noble Lords who took part in the talks on that agreement.

I do not accept that the amendments in my name are intended to frustrate in any way the passage of the Bill. Because I am sure that the Minister will give us proper undertakings, it is unlikely that I will move them. However, I think that noble Lords would agree that the quality of the debate and the number of people who have spoken indicate the importance of the subject. I do not think that there has been anything more important in my political lifetime than the Northern Ireland peace process, and the second most significant process is what we are debating today: Brexit—and I say that as a remainer. The interrelationship between the two is extremely important. I see today’s debate as a starter—a reminder to the Government that they have to address huge issues with regard to Northern Ireland and Ireland, and in the few minutes available to me I would like to touch on them.

In the debate in the other place some weeks ago, there was a speech by Owen Paterson, whom I regarded as a very committed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but I disagreed with him on the following. He said that he wanted to correct the narrative that the European Union played a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process. When I was appointed as the talks Minister, I was also appointed Minister for Europe. That is no coincidence, because Europe played a huge and significant role in the peace process. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, that strands 1, 2 and 3 of the Northern Ireland talks referred to aspects of our membership of the European Union.

I will now comment on the remarks of my noble friend Lord Empey. He said, quite rightly, that it is not the legalities of this issue that matter but what produced the agreement, and it was the politics and the international treaty between the two countries that did that. There was a will on the part of the two countries and, above all, a commitment by all the political parties in Northern Ireland to come to the Good Friday agreement. It was our joint membership of the European Union, as opposed to any legalities or technicalities, that meant that Ministers from both countries were able to meet: the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister, Ministers at Council of Europe meetings, and Members of Parliament through the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly or its equivalent in those days. I remember taking the entire Northern Ireland Assembly to Brussels at the invitation of the European Union so that Members could see how important Europe was to the future of Northern Ireland. The excellent report produced by the House’s European Union Committee on British-Irish relations post Brexit says that joint membership has been a “vital ingredient” in those relations. Of course it has.

Money was important, too. Northern Ireland had Objective 1 status, and that was significant to the people of Northern Ireland. As noble Lords have said, there was also the peace money, which was unique in the whole of Europe. Money was designated by the European Union to help the process of making peace in Northern Ireland. However, it was not simply the money itself; it was how the money was distributed. I remember, as Secretary of State, going around Northern Ireland and talking to the groups which received the money from Europe and had to spend it between them. Unionists, nationalists, Catholics and Protestants met to distribute the money—and that in itself broke down barriers in Northern Ireland.

My noble friend Lord Hain made a very powerful speech. There is no question that over the last 20 years the border has diminished visibly and psychologically. I believe that the lack of a hard border allowed nationalists in Northern Ireland to develop a sense of common identity with their fellow European Union citizens across the border. In the same way, I vividly remember the meetings at Stormont House when there was a reluctance on the part of the unionist parties to accept devolution in Northern Ireland—that is, strand 1. However, as soon as we had in Great Britain as a whole a Parliament in Scotland, an Assembly in Wales and an Assembly in Northern Ireland, it meant that it was easier for the unionist community in Northern Ireland to accept it. We had to make these compromises.

I am reminded, too, by my noble friend Lord Rooker of the milk travelling from Northern Ireland to the Baileys plant. I remember it vividly because I opened the plant many years ago—although I never appreciated the international nature of the milk. Of course, if you think about it, that applies not just to the milk but to the sheep, the cows and the whole of the agricultural industry, which straddles the border and has no match anywhere in the rest of the European Union.

So the issue of the border is hugely significant, and I know that the Government take it seriously. It is an issue that cannot be allowed to drift—it has to be top of the agenda. The brightest minds in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Dublin and in the Northern Ireland Office in Whitehall, not to mention the officials in Brussels, should be engaged in dealing with this very tricky issue.