Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Impact on Trade

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend identifies an important point, which is that trade in both goods and services is subject to a lot of noise at the moment—the ongoing Covid pandemic, the effects of leaving the customs union and the single market, stock building and so on—and it is difficult to isolate trends. Nevertheless, our goods exports are nearly back to the levels of 2019. Services exports and imports are down somewhat, but of course the huge impact on the movement of persons, tourism and so on has very significantly affected those figures. So it will be a long time before we reach a steady state, but I have huge confidence in the ability of our exporters and traders to manage that situation.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister clarify whether he understood when negotiating the protocol that it was incompatible with British sovereignty, or whether he has discovered that since? He will recall that AV Dicey’s definition of UK sovereignty as indivisible, which I know he now follows, was shaped by his active and bitter opposition to Irish home rule. In those terms, the Good Friday agreement is also an infringement of indivisible UK sovereignty. Does the Minister think that should also be renegotiated?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the difficulty we have with the protocol is not so much the sovereignty issue, because the territorial integrity of the UK and the integrity of the internal market of the UK are very clearly protected in the protocol, but the difficulty it has generated in movements of goods and trade within the United Kingdom. If the protocol was to work, it would have required very sensitive handling. Unfortunately, it has not had that sensitive handling, and therefore we have a political problem.