United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Stephen Farry Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)]

The Minister talks about giving a safety net to the people of Northern Ireland. Does he recognise that the majority of people in Northern Ireland regard the Bill as taking away their safety net by undermining the Good Friday agreement? That is the view in Northern Ireland, and it is important that the Government listen to it, not act contrary to it.

[Paul Scully]

I have spoken to businesses in Northern Ireland, and a number of them are very supportive of this. I suggest that anybody in Northern Ireland or elsewhere in the UK who believes that the Bill actually takes away from the Belfast agreement is listening to the wilful misrepresentation of the Bill by certain people politicking. Actually, the Belfast agreement has a three-strand approach, and the Bill will be a safety net only in the event that we cannot reach agreement with the EU through the Joint Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We have not done too badly, all things considered. However, after the next speaker, I will introduce a four-minute time limit, so that we can get in as many people as possible. I call Stephen Farry.

[Stephen Farry]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Regardless of that, I will try to honour what you just said about the length of speeches. I primarily want to speak to amendment 16, in my name and those of others, regarding the removal of the most offensive and dangerous clause in the Bill—clause 45—and I will touch on some other amendments.

At the outset, I want to be extremely clear: the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland and most businesses in Northern Ireland do not want to see this Government breaking or threatening to break international law, period, and they certainly do not want to see it happening on their behalf. Let us get that straight. The Government are not doing this for the good of the people of Northern Ireland.

The breaking of international law undermines the Good Friday agreement, which is lodged with the UN and is part of international law. In particular, breaking the withdrawal agreement and undermining the protocol does not help our businesses one bit. Instead, it places them in a much more uncertain legal situation for doing business. That is not in their interests, because businesses need to operate in a long-term, sustainable legal framework, especially if they are trading internationally. It risks Northern Ireland being turned into some sort of rogue state.

Whatever happens today, it is important that this House ensures that nothing goes forward in the Bill that either threatens or breaches international law, because it is a very dangerous route to go down. The opportunity exists this evening in new clause 1 and my amendment 16. Any efforts to soften that or put hurdles in place to make the prospect of breaking the law more difficult or push it further down the line defeats the purpose, because the threat is still on the table. That is no way for this country to do business internationally, and it sends a worrying message around the world.

Some of the spin in relation to the Bill is extremely disingenuous. In another debate, we heard references to George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and doublethink, but the Government are taking that to a new level with some of the arguments used today and previously. In particular, we are told that this is about a safety net for Northern Ireland. I have already made the point that this is anything but that. This is about removing the safety net for Northern Ireland by undermining the Good Friday agreement.

The Minister talked about the businesses of Northern Ireland being supportive of the Bill. That is news to me, and I would certainly be keen to hear who those businesses are. He talked about people who are opposing the Bill wilfully misrepresenting the Good Friday agreement. I was there as part of the negotiations on the Good Friday agreement. I saw John Major, Bertie Ahern and others negotiating the agreement. I saw the role of the United States and the European Union. They understand what is at stake here and what the Government are potentially doing. It is extremely arrogant to suggest that people are wilfully misrepresenting the agreement when we are trying to defend it.

The principle of consent is embedded within the withdrawal agreement. The European Union is very clear and keen that that is the case. We can talk about other consent issues all we want, and if we are doing so, we go back to the very first principle: that Brexit itself was imposed upon the people of Northern Ireland against their will. That is when the issue of consent and pulling away from a carefully balanced set of arrangements began.

Some of the amendments tabled today seek to disapply the Human Rights Act in relation to clause 45. I remind the Government that the Good Friday agreement contains reference to the importance of the European convention on human rights, and the Human Rights Act puts that into domestic effect. The Government are talking about protecting the Good Friday agreement, in their terms, while at the self-same time putting in a clause that undermines it clearly and unambiguously. Indeed, the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commission, two institutions named in the Good Friday agreement, have expressed deep concern at the amendments that have been tabled by the Government.

Breaching international law will be a dead end for the Government, and I am not sure what they are seeking to achieve by it. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) talked about those on the Opposition Benches undermining the negotiations. The Government are doing that all by themselves at present. This is not a tenable or sustainable direction of travel. Until the Government withdraw the threat of breaking international law, they are not going to get a proper future relationship agreement, or a free trade deal with the United States. It is no longer just an issue of the Democrats and such people as Speaker Pelosi or Vice-President Biden. We now have Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s special envoy, echoing those self-same comments. This is now a bipartisan issue in the United States. Whenever the Government have been out-Trumped, that is a very clear message of the danger of the route that they are going down.

In relation to us in Northern Ireland, we have to get the best route possible in terms of the protocol. The protocol is the direct outworking of the UK Government’s decisions around Brexit, so the protocol arises from what the UK has decided to do. It is imposing, essentially, binary choices on a society in Northern Ireland that works only through sharing and interdependence. We do not want any borders, but we have to try to work to mitigate the impact of the protocol. The way we do that is through building the trust and confidence of the European Union, so that we can ask for waivers and other forms of mitigations, not through unilaterally seeking to breach the terms of the protocol.

A very clear example is around the issue of export declarations and other export procedures. As part of the withdrawal agreement, the Government have already recognised that that is the prerogative of the European Union under its customs code; however, waiving that would not really threaten the integrity of the EU’s single market or customs union, unlike some other potential aspects. That may well be a fairly easy thing for the EU to give, but we are not going to achieve that if the Government cannot establish that confidence to work in good faith with the European Union and their partners going forward.

I will make two more points. The first is on new clause 7 from my DUP colleagues in Northern Ireland. As Members may have noticed, the Alliance party does not always follow the DUP on Brexit—indeed, we take radically different positions, including on this Bill—but there is common ground in a number of areas, in terms of trying to ensure that we have unfettered access from Northern Ireland into Great Britain. I recommend that the House approve that amendment if it goes to a vote. I do not think that it does any damage to the protocol or the withdrawal agreement, but it tests on a periodic basis the commitments that the Government are making and that are reflected in the withdrawal agreement itself. I have probably gone on for slightly too long, so I will end on that point.

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

I approach the Report stage of the Bill as a Welsh MP for a border constituency where protecting and enhancing the relationship between England and Wales, and the whole Union of the United Kingdom, is not a conceptual political argument but a vital matter of day-to-day practicality. Thousands of my constituents in Clwyd South go across the border each day to work, attend school or college, visit family and friends, or go shopping, so I am strong supporter of the Bill, which will ensure that businesses in all parts of the UK can continue to trade seamlessly across the UK as they do now—protecting jobs and supporting the economy by avoiding unnecessary burdens and costs being placed on businesses or consumers.

The rest of the UK is Wales’s biggest trading partner by some way, accounting for 61% of Wales’s exports, worth £30.1 billion, and 64% of Wales’s imports, worth £34.3 billion.

Much of those are found in small businesses close to the border with England, such as those in Clwyd South. This Bill will protect the UK’s centuries-old internal market, by ensuring that goods and services in one part of the UK are recognised in the others, and ensure a fair playing field for all companies. As has been mentioned, the Bill will enshrine the principle of mutual recognition, so that goods and services in one part of the UK will be recognised across the country, and the principle of non-discrimination, so that there is equal opportunity for companies trading within the UK, regardless of where they are based. The Bill will also ensure that high standards are protected across the whole UK by promoting co-operation between the UK Parliament and the devolved legislatures. There will be no reduction in our food hygiene or animal welfare standards.