Nationality and Borders Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I will keep my remarks brief as the case for this amendment has been made so very powerfully this evening by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie.

When we debated this amendment in Committee, I raised several areas of concern regarding these proposals for the ETA requirements. In his response, the Minister confirmed that these proposals would not result in any kind of checks on the Irish land border, which is very much to be welcomed. But as the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, said, it remains far from clear how these ETAs will be enforced in practice. In the many thousands of border crossings that take place every day for work, leisure, family or educational purposes, there is currently no expectation or need to carry a passport. Given the very special circumstances of the land border on the island of Ireland, and further to his responses in Committee, I ask the Minister to expand this evening on how this scheme will work in practice.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, I remain concerned about the potential impact of these proposals on the Northern Ireland tourist industry. Does the Minister accept that these proposals may deter international visitors who have flown into the Republic of Ireland from visiting Northern Ireland during their stay because of the additional financial and bureaucratic requirements that they will entail? Have the Government carried out an impact assessment of the effect of these measures on the Northern Ireland tourist industry? I hope the Minister can respond to this this evening, as he did not when I asked the same question in Committee.

Given the special circumstances and potential negative impact of these proposals on Northern Ireland and Ireland, I believe they have not been properly thought through. I therefore urge the Government to think again and accept this amendment.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. At this late hour I will not go into everything I said in Committee, but I live on the border and see it every day. I deal with and know people who cross the border every day. I know of many people who do not have Irish or British passports. They are not citizens of either country. Many of them are eastern Europeans who have remained and who work on both sides of the border, sometimes at the same time.

We heard about healthcare from the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. The whole healthcare drive has been an all-Ireland drive to provide services of the best quality in Ireland. Your Lordships will be well aware in GB that, because of the land mass, it is sometimes better to have centres of excellence. There are therefore health staff and, just as in Great Britain, many of them are not British—and we are now trying to inhibit their crossing the border.

Before I go any further and talk about other areas, I must declare my interests in that, first, I am involved in tourism and, secondly, my brother is chairman of the organisation mentioned, Tourism Ireland. Nobody has lobbied me on this at all, not even him. When I rang him about it, he was not quite able to give me the figures I wanted, so this is not an “I’m telling you what I’ve been told” scenario at all.

I want to look at what the Minister said in reply, because we have heard that a lot of it was perhaps slightly muddled. I think it is worse than that. It was contradictory. First, in talking about the costs in tourism the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, ventured to say:

“I looked that up this morning in anticipation of this, and it is currently $14”,


so to him it was “not overwhelming”. People will be well aware that air passenger duty has been a bone of contention in this country and in Ireland, especially because in the Republic it was always lower than in the United Kingdom. I am aware that the Chancellor announced that because of the stress on tourism, he was going to lower it for internal travel throughout the United Kingdom but also, I believe, that it would be devolved to Northern Ireland for international travel.

If the Government attach so much importance to that and consider it significant—I think it was being lowered from something like £10 or £12 to £6 or £7—why did the Minister tell us that this is not significant? Is it or is it not? If it is not, why did they change it? I will tell the House why. In effect, the Government have just resurrected it by doubling it in order to bring this measure in. So, it does matter, which is not what the Minister said.

I then looked at the next paragraph. The Minister said:

“There will be no controls whatever on the Northern Ireland land border. Individuals will be able to continue to pass through border control at first point of entry to the common travel area.”


In many cases, the first point of entry is in the Republic of Ireland, so is the Republic going to administer this visa? I suggest that it will not, so this does not tie up.

Next, the Minister said the following:

“As is currently the case, individuals arriving in the UK, including those crossing the land border into Northern Ireland”.


I hesitate to say this, and correct me if I am wrong, as the Minister may have walked up and down our border many times without my noticing it, but I suggest that he would not have a clue where the border was. That is not me laughing at this. He would not have a clue, as there are no markings on the road. He might stop at a shop on either side, which takes euros or pounds. There is nothing else, but I will give him a lead: the telephone boxes in the Republic are yellow. If you see one of those, you know you have “crossed the border”. However, there is no border, so who are these visas for? It is absolutely clear that there is nobody to inspect them, so what are the Government going to do?

The Minister also said that the Government are going to use

“a variety of communication channels”.—[Official Report, 10/2/22; col. 1935.]

Excuse me, but it is almost laughable to say there would be communication in the Republic of Ireland to tell people that they cannot come north and vice versa if they do not have Irish passports.

I am sorry, but the reason for having legislation is to enforce it. This provision is not unenforceable because people refuse to have it enforced, but because it is totally unenforceable under those circumstances. This amendment is therefore not that logical—I think it is getting them out of a hole, but the Government are not prepared to look at the hole they are in. This may not be the most vital thing in the world, even if it is to us; it is a tiny thing.

The noble Baroness also mentioned the protocol. I am not talking about the protocol, because clearly, the Government have not used it as the excuse for not doing this. This is therefore basically outside the protocol, which has no bearing.

However, on the protocol, we all know, and we agree with them, that the Government put in place an incredibly bad arrangement, depending on which way you look at it. They are trying to alleviate it on the one hand, and they have brought out something to dump on top of it on the other. We have a saying in Lough Erne in Fermanagh: “I didn’t come up Lough Erne in a bubble.” It looks as if the Government did, because it seriously is unworkable.

That is all I am going to say, except perhaps ask the Minister to define the hard border. He says in his script: “There is no hard border; there is no hard border; there will never be a hard border.” What is a hard border? I do not know what the definition is, but it is where documents are checked or people have to stop. He is absolutely right that there is no hard border. Therefore, there is no border to make these checks. I suggest that the Government agree to this amendment.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I appeal to the Minister, especially as I hope he has received some expert advice from his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Caine, who, as a Northern Ireland Minister, is respected on all sides of the House. He knows his stuff, and that is a big plus. The noble Viscount has explained in practical detail why it is essential either to accept this amendment or to withdraw the provision and come back at Third Reading without it. My noble friend Lady Ritchie has underlined that with an eloquent speech, which I really hope the Minister has listened to carefully.

This is not a party issue or an Opposition versus Government issue; this is a Northern Ireland issue. I worry that in the construction of this Bill and this particular provision, Ministers have been thinking about everybody except Northern Ireland. That, I am afraid, is far too often the case. Their whole approach to Brexit has neglected Northern Ireland and deeply offended unionists for reasons I completely understand, including the former Government supporters who kept the Conservatives in power for a couple of years—the DUP. In Whitehall, there seems to be a default position in which Northern Ireland does not register when Bills are framed. I am afraid this is a very good example.

May I underline the points of my noble friend Lady Ritchie and the noble Viscount, made with a great deal of practical advice, about the operation across the border? The border, in everyday life for those who live either side, does not exist. People cross the border all the time and work, receive healthcare, get blood transfusions and receive educational opportunities and provision from either jurisdiction. I could go on, but time is short. It is terribly important to keep momentum going following the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, knowing that is the case. These unhappy residents, who are entitled to all these provisions by their residency rather than their nationality—they may be Polish, Lithuanian or all sorts of nationalities—and who provide essential services to people on both sides of the island of Ireland could be caught by this. This is a practical issue.

As surveys have shown, most Northern Ireland tourists who leave Northern Ireland to go to Europe, America or the rest of the world go via Dublin. Equally, most incoming tourists to Northern Ireland come via Dublin. If, in addition to the other issues involved, they will have to pay a fee—nominal, you may argue, but it is an additional hurdle—to benefit from Northern Ireland’s beauty and opportunities and bring much-needed income to Northern Ireland, especially to businesses suffering from an absence of tourists because of Covid, this is really damaging.

Can I also bring to the Minister’s attention the proposal, with cross-party support, to have Rally Ireland, which crosses the border, in the international FIA calendar for the world rally championships? The proposal put this year did not succeed but it is being strongly and widely backed for next year. This will affect Rally Ireland and the practical implications have not been thought through.

I refer to the detailed 1,000-word letter of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, who is chair of the Lords protocol committee, on which I sit, along with my noble friend Lady Ritchie. I have it in front of me, but I will not read it out this evening because the hour is late. It asks all sorts of questions about the reply from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, to the series of questions that our committee asked. I am afraid that, given her normal standards, it was a very unsatisfactory reply, which reinforces my concern that Northern Ireland has not really been thought of.