Good Friday Agreement: Impact of Brexit

Lord Trimble Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trimble (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Browne. I was looking forward to his speech but unfortunately ended up slightly disappointed. I had expected a detailed, blow-by-blow account of the DUP’s encounter with European officials yesterday. I am afraid that I shall have to fall back on my imagination in that respect.

I wish to draw the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, to one point. I will not take up any other points with regard to him because I have only seven minutes. It is that what he calls the Good Friday agreement—the Belfast agreement—does make reference to partition. It recognises the existence of partition and its legitimacy—it uses that word. The partition exists not just generally; there is a border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland for tax, VAT, currency, excise duty and security matters. All these matters are managed using technologies, without infrastructure at the physical border. With regard to that physical border, we have been assured by the CEO of HMRC and the head of the Irish Revenue that there will be no need for new customs facilities on the border. So I suggest that this issue has been somewhat overstated.

There is a matter of significance. We are now getting down to the European Union’s primary concern, which is that there might be an impact on the single market if there are insufficient checks on the borders in Ireland, because goods could come into the single market without complying with EU standards or tariffs. That is a genuine concern that can be met.

Cross-border trade on the island of Ireland mostly comprises regular shipments of the same goods. This repetitive trade is well suited to the established technical solutions and simplified customs procedures already available. Larger companies might take advantage of what are called trusted trader-type schemes. I recall a Member of this House saying to us in this context that he regularly brings ships into port in Southampton with 20,000 to 30,000 containers on them and there are no problems. The goods are all cleared as they are put into the containers. That is on a scale much greater than that of the transfers in Ireland, but it works smoothly.

Large companies might take advantage of these arrangements, but for all companies the requirements for additional declarations can be incorporated into existing systems used for VAT returns. For agricultural products, which is the key problem, the Government should agree equivalence between EU and UK regulations since EU and UK standards are virtually identical and will remain identical. This goes back to agricultural arrangements on what are called biosecurity matters. That all goes back to Stormont and the old Parliament, where we agreed to have the same standards of animal hygiene on both sides of the border. So all these things can be done without there being any significant problem.

However, a problem has arisen. Way back last December, in dealing with this, the Government indicated a willingness for continuing alignment on various matters with the EU, but the original draft of that paper was quite limited to those cross-border bodies that came into existence as a result of the Good Friday agreement.

There is a good reason for having it. Of those cross-border bodies, the one with the largest employment is Waterways Ireland, which employs more than 400 people, some in Northern Ireland and some in the Republic. They have to have the same contracts; there has to be uniformity in the arrangements under which they are dealing. That exists and it would not be a problem—but there was included in that agreement in December a reference to a backstop if in fact the alignment was not altogether satisfactory. I am inclined here to borrow a phrase from my noble friend Lord Lawson, who says that instead of saying “backstop” we should actually say “back-stab”, because that is what it has turned into. It has been exaggerated beyond the legitimate use that was there in the original draft last December and it has now been extended in such a way that it is going to cause enormous difficulties, which were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Browne. We hope that those matters will be resolved.

It is a pity that there has not been a big enough recognition of the real problem that the Irish Republic is going to face. It is not affected by any of the matters on the border that have been mentioned so far. With regard to goods, only 1.6% of the output of the economy of the Irish Republic goes into Northern Ireland—so that is not a significant problem. The problem for Ireland is of a different character and it concerns tariffs. If tariffs are retained by the European Union, the Irish economy is going to find that between it and its principal market, which is across the water in Great Britain, there are now tariffs. There are no tariffs presently existing on goods moving from Ireland into and through the United Kingdom, but if the EU retains its existing tariff arrangements, this is going to have a huge impact on the Irish Republic. It will not affect us in Northern Ireland, but we know it is going to have an effect on the Republic. I have been disappointed to see that there has been no serious discussion of this that I am aware of, and I think that there needs to be one fairly soon. Otherwise, folk in the Republic of Ireland are going to have a rude awakening when they see the impact that this will have on their economy.

I have one further point. After the agreement we saw a considerable change in relationships between Dublin and Belfast and between the UK and the Republic. A good new relationship came into existence. That is now being threatened, not by us in Northern Ireland but by Brussels and Dublin—and they need to think again, particularly the folk in Dublin, about who their friends really are. I know that the EU is hinting to them, or saying to them, that it will look after them, but the EU does not have a good record in looking after small countries, and I think that Dublin should take that on board.