UK and EU Relations

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, in five minutes, it is impossible to give attention to all 12 documents published by the Government this summer, which are lumped together for this rather disparate debate. It was unacceptable for many of those, containing important information, to be published when Parliament was not sitting. If the diktats of the Brexit timeframe made this inevitable, Parliament should have forgone part of the Summer Recess to hold the Government answerable before negotiations were reopened in Brussels. Given the backlog we now face, it is ludicrous that Parliament should adjourn on Thursday for politicians to swan around at party conferences, when vital discussions are being held regarding Brexit.

I shall address the position paper concerning Ireland, if I may. This dimension is vital to Wales in terms of trade, the free movement of people and the future of mutual programmes such as Interreg. I accept that there is considerable agreement between the Governments of Ireland and the UK—on the Good Friday agreement itself, on the peace process, on the common travel area and on east-west support, although there is no mention of continued Interreg funding. There is also substantial agreement on the movement of people. It even seems that the Government have guaranteed that Britain would not expect the Irish Government to monitor the entry into Ireland of EU citizens trying to enter Britain via Ireland.

The tricky area revolves around the issue of no return to the hard borders of the past. There is some dispute over whether there ever were real hard borders, and the wording of,

“aiming to avoid any physical border infrastructure in the United Kingdom or Ireland, for any purpose”,

seems at odds with the apparent intention of the UK to have cameras monitoring everyone who crosses the border. Equally, inventing some tracker arrangements on EU foods seems undesirable and unworkable. If the principle is no physical border, that has to mean what it says.

It is clear that getting an acceptable solution for both the north and the Republic is fundamental for negotiations with the EU, as it is one of its three sticking points. It is not just a question of getting a frictionless border between the two parts of Ireland, but of getting equally frictionless movement of goods, services and people in the two parts of Ireland with all parts of Britain. I am concerned about maintaining the unfettered movement of goods and people between the Irish Republic and Wales, where the ports of Holyhead, Fishguard and Swansea could be severely affected, as could Stranraer and Liverpool. Forty per cent of the exports that Ireland sends by truck are sent via the UK. If the Brexit outcome is to significantly hamper these channels of communication, it would have a serious effect on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Michel Barnier has made it clear that the EU would not tolerate the UK using its links with Ireland as a back door to circumvent the trade consequences of a hard Brexit. The UK Government are between a rock and a hard place: they either accept that we remain in a single market, or negotiate single market access, as proposed in the Welsh White Paper. That means accepting a lesser control over EU citizens coming to work in Britain. The alternative is to face some fracturing of the links between Ireland and Britain and inevitably, the disruption of the current free movement between the north and south of Ireland. The Government cannot have it both ways.

This issue was highlighted by the Irish Foreign Secretary, Simon Coveney, on Saturday. He called for the closest possible relationship between the UK and the EU, for an orderly exit and for a substantial transition period, stating that the transition period must,

“maintain the status quo in terms of membership of the Customs Union and Single Market”.

He stressed the need to protect the “the all-island economy”, reminding his audience that a third of Northern Ireland’s exports travel south. He warned that,

“maintaining the integrity of the EU’s single market on the one hand, and implementing the ideas on a customs relationship that the UK put forward last month, seem to be mutually exclusive”.

He believes that streamlined customs arrangements are unlikely to be streamlined enough for businesses whose margins are tight, and that a customs partnership—again, I quote,

“will simply not be feasible if it is undercut by the UK making trade deals with countries that don’t share our standards or systems”.

However, he added:

“There is an obvious solution … that is for the UK to remain in an extended Customs Union and Single Market, or some version of that concept, taking advantage of the new and comprehensive trade deals the EU is reaching with countries like Canada and Japan”.


He concluded with the words:

“I find it difficult to accept that while the options available to the UK are now being discussed, debated and negotiated, that the potential option of staying in a customs union would be taken off the table, before negotiations on trade have even commenced with the EU”.


He warned that,

“shutting off avenues such as remaining in a customs union, without agreed deliverable and credible alternative pathways, narrows future options in a dangerous way”.

The Irish Foreign Secretary’s words must be taken to heart by the UK Government, who I fear are now in hock to the Democratic Unionists in the north, with all their anti-EU and anti-Dublin baggage. The August position paper is holed beneath the waterline in this most critical area of trade relations. The Government have to get real, and get real quickly. Otherwise, in undermining Ireland to keep the Tory party intact, they will pay a price that most assuredly will come back to haunt them.