European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Patten of Barnes Excerpts

Report: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

88: Before Clause 10, insert the following new Clause—
“Continuation of North-South co-operation and the prevention of new border arrangements
(1) In exercising any of the powers under this Act, a Minister of the Crown or devolved authority must—(a) act in a way that is compatible with the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, and(b) have due regard to the joint report from the negotiators of the EU and the United Kingdom Government on progress during phase 1 of negotiations under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union.(2) Nothing in section 7, 8, 9 or 17 of this Act authorises regulations which—(a) diminish any form of North-South cooperation across the full range of political, economic, security, societal and agricultural contexts and frameworks of co-operation, including the continued operation of the North-South implementation bodies, or(b) create or facilitate border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after exit day which feature—(i) physical infrastructure, including border posts,(ii) a requirement for customs or regulatory compliance checks,(iii) a requirement for security checks,(iv) random checks on goods vehicles, or(v) any other checks and controls,that did not exist before exit day and are not subject to an agreement between Her Majesty’s Government and the Government of Ireland.”

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

My Lords, a number of other noble Lords have added their names to my new clause. It is perhaps appropriate to say—as the number of Members in the Chamber is declining—that I have to begin with a confession. Some noble Lords might be rather surprised that what I say will sound remarkably like a statement of government policy. That is because it largely is. I have read very carefully the Government’s position paper on Northern Ireland and Brexit; I have read the other seminal documents—the Mansion House speech and so on—and my speech, I hope, will reflect what I understand to be the Government’s policy both on a frictionless border and on the relationship between the border and the Good Friday agreement.

If at the end of this debate the Minister, with his customary civility, says “What’s the problem? We’re going to do all this anyway. Why bother to put this new clause into the Bill?”, my response will be that while I totally expect him to honour his word and do what the Government have said, I think the Prime Minister and others, such as the Minister, need some support at this moment when a number of their colleagues and Conservative Party Members in the other place, who are very keen on the over-the-cliff, on-to-the-rocks Brexit, are making it rather more difficult for the Prime Minister to square circles than should be the case.

We have debated these issues. We have debated the relationship between the Good Friday agreement and the border on a number of occasions: at Second Reading, in Committee and on Report. On Report we passed an amendment on a customs union, which has significant relevance to this. I am not going to go over all that ground again. The vote on a customs union led to the present-day custodians of constitutional propriety calling for fire and brimstone. They were fresh, of course, from their views on the independence of the judiciary, and I do not think any of us take any of that too seriously.

I will not go through all the arguments that were used in those debates. In the debate on the customs union, I will be telegrammatic. I think a number of noble Lords found it difficult to discern the cornucopia of trade possibilities that await us once we have left the customs union. I think it is also true that a number of noble Lords thought that we would have our work cut out to try to replicate some of the existing trade agreements that the European Union, with us as a member, has made elsewhere, for example, with South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam and others. I think it is fair to say that a number of noble Lords pointed out that there are 44 non-EU members of the Commonwealth which have trade agreements with the European Union and that 49 of the poorest countries in the world have access to European markets without any tariff or control over quotas.

During that debate we enjoyed this spring’s parliamentary game: hunt the virtual border. We travelled around the House, we looked under Benches, we looked under the Woolsack, but nobody could find the virtual border. We went from continent to continent looking for it. Since then, I have heard one or two people suggest that it has been discovered and is the border between Switzerland and France, two countries which, I am happy to say, have not been at war for 200 years. That has been referred to as a model of a virtual border for us. Well, if you look up the facts, you discover that the average minimum waiting time for a lorry going from France into Switzerland or the other way is between 30 and 45 minutes, that they have to go through customs checks and, in addition, they have to fill in two lots of VAT forms. Just to make the position absolutely clear, I am indebted—I think this is probably the first time he has been mentioned in this House—to Mr Cyril Kinsky of Wiltshire. He wrote to the Times last week about the frictionless border and noted that he had recently been in Switzerland and had travelled into France to shop at the local French supermarket. He had bought four chickens—poulet fermier, I am sure. He had brought them back into Switzerland, where he had been stopped and hit with a heavy fine. I hope the chickens were tasty. They were certainly not frictionless.

Why is there such a problem that we address in this new clause? There is a problem because, as the excellent Northern Ireland position paper makes clear, the current substantive position in Northern Ireland and the Republic—that is, the existence of a frictionless border—is not to be changed by Brexit. The Prime Minister, perhaps as well as or more than anyone, understands the problem. Two days before the referendum, she said, in effect, that you can be in a customs union and not have a border but outside a customs union you have to have a border. That situation is made much more complicated when you look at the provisions and rules of the World Trade Organization.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Patten of Barnes]

Charitably, I can assure the House that I shall be very brief. I shall make only three points. First—I hope this will not finish his career—I congratulate the Minister once again. It makes a pleasant change to have a Minister at the Dispatch Box who quotes poetry; as ever, he responded with considerable civility. It is also a great pleasure that he does not make speeches that begin, “It says here”. He responded to the debate, and the whole House recognises that.

Before making two more substantive points—although being flattering to the Minister is substantive, as is inviting him to join me later in voting for the Government’s policy, which might make life a little awkward for him—I assure the House that I shall not go back through all the old arguments about a customs union. If I hear any more references to the wretched Karlsson report, I will go red in the face. It is like Das Kapital: it is more referred to than read. Most of the people who refer to it have never read more than two or three lines in the summary, and will not recognise the bits that talk about the necessity of an infrastructure or the necessity of those customs offices.

Of course, I respect everybody, but I particularly respect the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and my noble friend Lord King. The points that they made about security on the border were extremely well answered by the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Campbell. They should look carefully at what this proposed new clause actually says. They are probably also aware that co-operation across the border and security are probably better than they have ever been, with the joint agency task force between the Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland working together very effectively. The former Northern Ireland Justice Minister—when there still was one in the Northern Ireland Executive—said that she thought that these days, co-operation was saving lives in the island of Ireland. I therefore hope that the noble Lord will consider that.

The point that my noble friend made about a joint approach and joint authority was well responded to by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. He pointed out that what we are talking about is part of an international agreement. There are two sides to an international agreement; more than that, this is about the border, and most borders have two sides to them. It is therefore not surprising that the people on one side of the border need to talk to the people on the other side.

I would like to insert myself—an exciting prospect—somewhere between my noble friend Lord Bridges, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, the former Prelate of All Ireland, and the Minister. Bishops are not by nature suspicious, even though they have so much experience of the human condition. However, I hope that the noble and right reverend Lord and my noble friend Lord Bridges will not mind my saying that if I thought that this whole endeavour—this whole negotiation—was in their hands, I would be happy to withdraw my amendment. However, I listened to some of the things that were said, or murmured, about the Taoiseach in the Republic. I hear some of the blame that some people are trying to put on the Republic of Ireland. I notice that, in spite of all these months of intellectual effort, we still have not managed to define what the frictionless border will be.

Touching on the point made by my noble friend Lord Bridges about not having a border down the middle of the Irish Sea, I do not think I would have signed an agreement in Brussels that accepted that. I know enough about “one country, two systems” to keep me going until I drop dead. I hope that will not be for a bit and so does the University of Oxford. I have no doubt about what my noble friend says and where I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench stands. I suspect that the tone of the discussions this afternoon in No. 10 has not been entirely in line with their sentiments. In that slightly suspicious spirit, recognising that we are simply stating, in this proposed new clause, what the Government’s policy purports to be, I would like to test the opinion of the House.