Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements

John Bercow Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and while I am always pleased to hear from the Minister of State, I have to say that it is an absolute disgrace, and a huge discourtesy to the House, that the Foreign Secretary is not here himself to answer questions on the contents of his memo, especially given that we saw him in London a few hours ago jogging in the snow and stopping to answer questions from the media: if he can answer their questions, he really should be prepared to answer ours. What is he afraid of?

Perhaps the Foreign Secretary is afraid that these questions go to the very heart of his credibility and the credibility of previous statements that he has made in this House. On 21 November, from the Dispatch Box, I asked the Foreign Secretary whether he stood by the statement he made in February 2016—that a vote for Brexit would leave the border arrangements in Northern Ireland “absolutely unchanged”. He told the House in response—just three months ago—that he

“repeated exactly the pledge…there can be no return to a hard border…That would be unthinkable, and it would be economic and political madness. I think everybody…understands the ramifications of allowing any such thing to happen.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2017; Vol. 631, c. 848.]

But last night, despite that clear public statement from the Foreign Secretary, we discovered his private memo to the Prime Minister on the same subject. In it he wrote:

“It is wrong to see the task as maintaining ‘no border’”.

The Government’s task is, he said, to

“stop the border becoming significantly harder. ”

But, he wrote:

“Even if a hard border is reintroduced, we would expect to see 95 per cent plus of goods pass the border”

without checks.

Let us be clear what this memo reveals. Contrary to the Foreign Secretary’s previous statements, he accepts that there will have to be changes to the current border arrangements, and he accepts there will need to be border controls that do not exist at present; the only debate is their degree of hardness. Surely the Foreign Secretary has learned by now that you cannot just be a little bit pregnant: either there is a border or there is not.

My first question for the Minister is that the Foreign Secretary told the House that there would be no new border arrangements and no changes to the status quo, but this memo says the exact opposite, so which is the truth: what the Foreign Secretary said three months ago in public or what he said three weeks ago in private?

The Foreign Secretary has already said what we have heard so many times on this issue: that there is some magical technical solution which will allow goods to be checked, smuggling to be prevented, and points of origin proved as easily as paying the congestion charge and without—here is the truly magical part—even the installation of cameras. As I have pressed the Foreign Secretary repeatedly to tell us, how on earth is that possible, or is it just another addition to his ever-growing list of fantasies from ‘Boris island’ to the ‘channel bridge’?

I welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary has already promised the media today to publish his leaked memo in full, and I hope that will provide some answers, but may I ask the Minister now—for the benefit of the House, and so that my colleagues can question him on his answer—to spell out in detail how this proposed invisible border will actually work in practice? If he cannot provide that detail, we are left with the conclusion that all of us on this side, and increasing numbers on his side, accept—that the only way to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland is by staying in a customs union. The fact is that the Government know that—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are extremely grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary, but she has now exceeded her time and we must leave it there.

[Emily Thornberry]

I have one further sentence, and then I am done.

[Mr Speaker]

Very well, but—[Interruption.] Order. I will be the judge of these matters; I require no assistance. The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) is always willing to help and I am grateful to her for that gratis voluntary offer of services, but I feel able to cope without them. The Minister will have a suitable period of time to respond, and the shadow Foreign Secretary can now add one brief sentence.

[Emily Thornberry]

The truth of this memo is that the Government are saying one thing in public while preparing for the reality in private, and it is about time the deception was ended.

[Mr Lidington]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Forgive me: I do not wish to be discourteous to the shadow Foreign Secretary, and certainly not to the Minister either, but, by the way, the Minister for the Cabinet Office is not a Minister of State; he is a member of the Cabinet.

[Emily Thornberry]

It was confusing as to who was going to be responding to this urgent question, and I apologise for having drafted one script only to find that a different Minister was in the Chamber to respond.

[Mr Speaker]

That was a nice try, and it was very generous of me to allow the right hon. Lady to make it. I call the Minister for the Cabinet Office.

[Mr Lidington]

Anybody would have thought that the right hon. Lady was nervous about facing me across the Dispatch Box again.

The right hon. Lady started by questioning my credentials to be here. Since I have Cabinet responsibility for constitutional affairs, including the implementation of devolution throughout the United Kingdom, and since I also chair the Cabinet Committee on the domestic implementation of our Brexit arrangements, it seems to me to be perfectly reasonable that I should respond to the right hon. Lady’s urgent question.

The right hon. Lady asked about the position of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. Like every other member of the Cabinet, he stands four-square behind our support for the Belfast agreement and the December agreements reached between the United Kingdom and the European Union. We are now at the very start of a negotiating period during which we will discuss with our partners in the EU how to give practical effect to the commitments that were entered into then, both to ensure there is no hard north-south border between the Northern Ireland and Ireland and to ensure there is no kind of border, customs or otherwise, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and the Taoiseach have both said publicly that they believe the priority is to settle these issues in the context of the ambitious, deep and special partnership that we are seeking between the UK and the EU in the future, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will set out more detail about her proposed approach to this in her speech on Friday.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. This exchange is eliding into a debate, which it should not be. It is supposed to be a question and answer session, and I am getting enthusiastic nods of assent from the Minister for the Cabinet Office. I exhort colleagues to resist the temptation to orate. What is required is not oration, but inquiry, which will now be brilliantly and pithily exemplified by Lady Hermon.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

What a task—I will keep to it. Will the Minister take a few moments just to confirm to the House that the Irish Government have accepted that there will be no hard border on the island of Ireland and, just as importantly, that they have accepted that there will no border down the Irish sea?

[Mr Lidington]

The Irish Government, like the rest of the EU, signed up to and support the joint report of last December in its entirety, and paragraph 42 of the report commits both parties—the UK and the EU—to uphold the “totality” of the relationships embodied in and expressed by the Belfast agreement. That totality embraces east-west every bit as much as north-south.

[Mr Speaker]

Pithiness personified—Sir Desmond Swayne.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

What lies behind the European Commission’s partial decision to develop the options?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

If the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster really wants a united United Kingdom, as we move forward with some of the most complicated decisions the nation has had to make for the best part of 100 years, is he not going to have to try to build a bigger consensus than just that around the Cabinet table? He is a fine parliamentarian, so does that not mean that he will have to turn round to his colleagues and say, “Yes you will come to Parliament. You will explain to Parliament what your views are,” and that he will have to say, “Yes, Prime Minister, just sometimes you will not make a speech somewhere else; you will make a speech about the European Union—the most important issue facing this country—in this Chamber”?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before the Minister for the Cabinet Office replies, I advise the House of what I have been advised: namely, that the Prime Minister will make a statement on Brexit policy in this Chamber on Monday. That is extremely welcome.

I should just say, in the name of the intelligibility of our proceedings to people who are not Members of the House, that the decision as to whether to grant an urgent question is a matter for me as Speaker—two have been granted today because I judged that they warranted the attention of the House—but, as colleagues also know and others might not, the matter of whom the Government field to respond to a question is a matter for the Government. That is the situation.

[Mr Lidington]

I always welcome parliamentary consensus where it can be built, but if the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) looks at the Prime Minister’s record of being here, giving statements after her main European meetings and answering questions at length, he should agree that it is a pretty good one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Points of order normally come after urgent questions, but I think this one relates to the recent exchanges, so I shall take it now.

[Anna Soubry]

I am very grateful, Mr Speaker. Would it be in order for it to be recorded that, although in the exchanges on the urgent question, you quite rightly admonished a number of us for speaking for too long and not asking the short questions that some Members, but not all of us, are very good at, the reason why Members spoke for too long was that—I am sure you will correct me if I am wrong—we have never had a proper, meaningful debate or, indeed, vote on this or any other Brexit matter that would help the Government in their negotiations and reunite our country? This is just one of many examples of where Parliament’s voice is profoundly lacking in the whole Brexit process.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her point of order. There have of course been debates in the Committee of the whole House and Report stage on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, but outside of legislation, if memory serves me correctly, what the right hon. Lady says is factually correct. She will know that I have an unbridled enthusiasm for debate, for votes and for sitting in the Chair for extended periods listening to the intellects of Einstein and the eloquences of Demosthenes, which are so regularly on display from my colleagues in all parts of the House. I cannot get enough of it. It may seem eccentric on my part, but I love to listen to my colleagues. The more debates and the more votes, the better. I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady, of whose point of order I had only a moment’s notice, but which I enjoyed.