That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the European Affairs Committee Report from the Sub-Committee on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Follow-up Report (2nd Report, HL Paper 57).
My Lords, I rise to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, one of two Motions which invite the Grand Committee to take note of recent work by the Sub-Committee on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, which I have the privilege to chair. The first of the reports was published more than a year ago, at the time when the UK’s relationship with the European Union was not good. The second, and most recent, report was published in an altogether more positive climate, following the agreement in February this year on the Windsor Framework between the UK and the EU. Given the changed political landscape since the beginning of this year, it is this most recent report that will be the focus of my remarks this afternoon.
The Government replied to the report earlier this afternoon. I am very grateful for such a speedy response, but I am afraid that I have not yet been able to study it in all the detail that I am sure it deserves. I look forward to doing so after this debate, and it will no doubt inform the Minister’s reply to the debate later this afternoon.
The sub-committee’s membership includes a wide range of views both on the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and on the protocol and the Windsor Framework. None the less, we once again succeeded in agreeing our report unanimously and by consensus. I believe this gives added weight to our conclusions and recommendations.
The Windsor Framework inquiry received many oral and written submissions, including from the British Government, business representatives, trade bodies, academic, legal and trade experts and representatives of community organisations. The sub-committee also visited Brussels in May and had a number of useful and productive discussions, including with Vice-President Šefčovič and his team. I congratulate Maroš Šefčovič on his new and expanded responsibilities, but I hope that he will not lose sight of his continuing responsibilities for relations with Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
On the basis of the wide-ranging evidence we received, we concluded that the Windsor Framework was an improvement on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland as originally negotiated. Indeed, I would say it is a marked improvement. Nevertheless, it is evident that problems remain. Business representatives and other stakeholders have welcomed the agreement on the Windsor Framework by the UK and the EU and the potential it provides to resolve problems sensibly in future. They particularly highlighted the benefits of the provisions of the Windsor Framework on movement from Great Britain to Northern Ireland via the green lane of retail goods, agri-food produce, including chilled meats, parcels, pets and human medicines. However, for some businesses we heard that the processes under the Windsor Framework would be more burdensome than under the protocol as it has operated with its grace periods and easements. While the green lane will benefit large retailers in particular, some retailers and some other sectors may have to use the red lane.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and his sub-committee for this excellent and important report. It rightly highlights many of the uncertainties around the Windsor Framework and the lack of clarity about its operation. I too look forward to digesting the Government’s response when I have time.
I understand why the Prime Minister wanted to put an end to the tensions of recent years over Northern Ireland, but I am sorry to say that I regret the way in which it has been done. The Windsor Framework is said to be proof that good faith and a softer approach can pay dividends with the EU; I am afraid that I disagree. For me, it is proof that you never get a good result in a negotiation if the other side can tell that you just want a deal. As a result, I fear that its benefits have been oversold and the temporary reduction in friction over Northern Ireland has been bought only by conceding many of the points at issue. I will briefly explain why and highlight four problems.
First, I do not honestly think the Government have been totally clear about the nature of this agreement. The name may have changed, but we are still dealing with, essentially, the old protocol. The EU is still the goods and customs regulatory authority in Northern Ireland; its provisions are implemented by EU laws, not ours. In my view, the Stormont brake is a trivial and probably unusable add-on to something that was already in the protocol. The committee said and the noble Lord, Lord Jay, noted:
“There has been no substantive change to the role of the CJEU”.
It is not a new solution. Fundamentally, it is the old one and can be expected to generate the same problems.
Secondly, the workability of the framework’s limited new elements looks increasingly questionable. I wrote in February that the red and green lanes and the more relaxed rules on food standards and so on would probably improve the situation. I am no longer quite so sure. We are seeing operators setting out the practical difficulties with the green lane; on food standards, we seem to have agreed that people in Northern Ireland can consume GB-standard foods only if they are imported—they are not allowed to make them themselves. The Government claimed six months ago that there would be “no sense” of an Irish Sea border. We cannot really say that that is the case at the moment.
My Lords, I record my thanks and grateful appreciation to our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Jay, who has steered a committee of individuals from varying political perspectives to achieve consensus and agreement around two reports: last year’s follow-up report on the protocol and this year’s report on the Windsor Framework. That was no mean achievement, because we all came from different persuasions, some of us supporting the protocol and the Windsor Framework and others opposed to it. However, I want to move on from the reports; they are both very detailed, but we are now in the space where we have to move forward.
For me, the Windsor Framework is the only show in town, and over the next two days we will have business leaders from across the world descending on Belfast. In that context, and the need to, shall we say, underpin our political institutions—I hope they can be restored shortly—I would say that we need political and economic stability. Therefore, why would businesses in Northern Ireland not want to avail themselves of the economic, business and trade opportunities provided by the Windsor Framework when we can trade in the UK internal market and in the EU single market? Other areas would eat our hand to get that opportunity.
We need to top up those opportunities as well as to address the issues that were presented to us by businesspeople, who found the framework burdensome. In that respect, at that stage the Government had not provided the guidance, and only tomorrow will we deal with the four statutory instruments that will implement those guidance issues and information dealing with labelling. I say gently to the Minister that that is all in very short order when much of this stuff has to be implemented by October this year, some three weeks away.
However, in moving forward, we need to look at the Good Friday agreement. It deals with three sets of relationships, and the purpose of the Windsor Framework is to look at those three sets of relationships, obviously, and the accompanying document of the protocol in its entirety. There is, therefore, now an opportunity to look at those north-south opportunities. Can the Minister say what evidence and what work is being done for the EU-UK joint committee to keep under constant review the extent to which the implementation and application of Windsor and the protocol maintain the necessary conditions for north-south co-operation on the island of Ireland? Perhaps the Minister could provide me with an update on this particular area of any work the joint committee may be doing, and, if that has not been activated, provide an undertaking to do so when that happens.
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jay, admirably fulfilled his challenging role as chairman of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland Sub-Committee in achieving a considerable level of agreement across the wide range of views in the committee about the impact of the Northern Ireland protocol and, in the second report, the Windsor Framework.
The first report found, wholly unsurprisingly, that businesses reliant on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland had been negatively affected. Contrarywise, businesses trading with Ireland and the rest of the EU found that the protocol had had a beneficial impact. The committee caveated its observations by noting that the overall impact of the protocol on the Northern Ireland economy was perhaps uncertain because of all the other things that have been happening: the Covid pandemic, labour shortages, rising costs from the war in Ukraine and so on.
Interestingly, the committee noted that those from whom it took evidence could reach opposite conclusions from the same information. That is characteristic of our problems. It is not surprising: those who are unionists but supported Brexit, which they did not all, will naturally look for something other than Brexit to be the main reason for their undoubted problems. Those who are nationalists, who were mostly opposed to Brexit, will see any development towards an all-Ireland economy as in their long-term political interest. Businesspeople, of course, will simply try to do the best that they can, whatever circumstances they work in.
The committee tried to avoid judgments on these issues of deep difference, but we need to address them if we are to take our thinking forward. Those who supported Brexit did not pay much attention to what were quite predictable consequences for Northern Ireland. They thought that it would be relatively straightforward and easy, but it has not been.
My Lords, I am privileged to serve on the sub-committee that produced today’s report, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Jay. The committee has been well served by its staff. In particular, I pay tribute to Stuart Stoner, who as clerk of the committee played such a pivotal role in the production of this report and in supporting us as Members.
Some 89% of the 80,000 or so registered businesses in Northern Ireland have fewer than 10 employees; just over 2% have more than 50 employees and 42% of businesses have a turnover of less than £100,000. These factors impact on the ability of many businesses to respond quickly and strategically to changes required to IT systems, product modification and haulage and transportation change. Business across the UK faces significant challenge at this time of inflation and uncertainty, and business in Northern Ireland, including those seeking to do business with the rest of the UK, has additional challenges. Regulatory divergence is occurring and will continue to occur as the EU and the UK legislate. Business wants to respond to legislative change and to function effectively but, in the absence of any identifiable strategy within government departments to track and publicise occasions of regulatory divergence, that divergence, whether between Great Britain and Northern Ireland or between Northern Ireland and Ireland, remains the number one concern, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said.
Can the Minister inform the Committee today whether His Majesty’s Government have made an assessment of the practical impact of regulatory divergence on Northern Ireland and of the issues that the sub-committee has raised? Can the Minister tell us whether, following the establishment of the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement, processes have been established that will meet the current information deficit and ensure that information is provided in a way that is coherent, industry-specific and the product of consultation, so that businesses are not hunting through the mass of guidance, policy papers, detail papers and so on to identify divergence? Much of the Government’s response seems to refer to framework structures that require to be underpinned by working groups and other modalities. Will the Minister assure us that such infrastructure exists and is functioning?
My Lords, I am grateful for this debate taking place so quickly after the production of our latest report on the Windsor Framework. Like others, I thank our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for the presentation today, and the way in which he chairs the committee on which I have the honour to serve. I thank Stuart Stoner and all the staff for their excellent work and the way in which they service the committee.
The committee has done extraordinarily useful work in shining a light on the complex details of the protocol/Windsor Framework because the two are really the same; there are a few tweaks here and there, but they are fundamentally the same mechanism. It has not been easy to shine that light, given the Government’s failure in many cases to be open or transparent on the issues, or to provide full—in some cases any—answers to straight questions. The detailed examination of legislation, from both the EU and His Majesty’s Government, is proving invaluable in holding the Government to account. It is proving very important to those who have a genuine interest in and concern for the facts—not spin or hype. The most recent report of the committee on the Windsor Framework is another example of this.
I would like to take a slightly broader view of where we are at with the framework and political process in Northern Ireland. There has been a lamentable failure, in practice and outcomes, to acknowledge that the Belfast agreement, as amended by the St Andrews agreement, only works when the interests of unionists and nationalists are both respected, and when it is recognised that each of the three strands of the agreement must complement each other. It is now clear that the failure to respect that balance of interests and to uphold the various strands in a balanced and fair way has led us to the place we sadly, but inevitably, find ourselves in.
The protocol/Windsor Framework could only have come about through the adoption of a nationalist interpretation of the Belfast agreement. Things that would never be tolerated by republicans, nor would be imposed upon them, have been recklessly imposed upon unionists with little regard to the need to maintain balance in all the strands and to maintain the confidence of both communities. These are essential for the political process in Northern Ireland to work.
My Lords, as always, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, and his staff for these reports. I could give my whole five minutes over entirely to paeans and panegyrics, to odes and oratorios, to acclamations and encomiums, but I have done it before, as have the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, so shall we just take it all as read? It is a great achievement to have balanced the orange/green, remain/leave and left/right tensions three-dimensionally.
I agree with the thrust of the report’s conclusion: the Windsor Framework makes a few things a bit better and in a smaller number of areas it makes things slightly worse than the status quo plus the grace periods. The report is really an example of the importance of compromise, cool-headed temperance and the ability to talk things through in detail. I hope the Grand Committee will forgive me if I extend that logic, especially given the timing of the reconciliation Bill that we have just debated, and look at what is happening in the Province in terms of compromise.
One of the rather beautiful and underreported facts during the Troubles was the extent to which both communities consistently rejected violence. There was a Northern Ireland Life and Times survey in 1998, at the time of the Belfast agreement, and 70% of people who supported a united Ireland had no sympathy with physical force terrorism; only 8% supported it. Come forward one generation and 69% of people in that community now agree with Michelle O’Neill when she says that there was no alternative to IRA violence. Of course, this is partly just the passage of time, the sanitising effect of not being there with the funerals and the body parts and the physical destruction, but it also says something alarming about the readiness to compromise, to let the other side feel that they can live with something, on which all our deliberations, the amended Windsor Framework and the Belfast agreement itself rest.
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for his exceptional chairing of a group of us that is, to say the least, politically diverse, if not a right handful. My thanks also to our brilliant clerk, Stuart Stoner, who has done a superhuman job since our inception, together with his colleagues.
The Windsor Framework is welcome as an effort by both the Government and the EU Commission to address very serious concerns around the protocol. However, as the report makes clear, a lot is still unresolved. Indeed, the sense of uncertainty risks being compounded by the fact that the Government remain open to doing the bidding of only one party when it comes to further adjustments and legislation with respect to Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit position.
How can the Secretary of State consider it appropriate to tell the leader of one party that he, the Minister,
“can bring forward legislation … that does exactly what he needs it to do for his party”,—[Official Report, Commons, 21/6/23; col. 780]
namely the DUP? Yet after all that, the DUP does not trust the Government, and I do not blame it, because the Conservatives have betrayed the unionist cause that they purport to extol in a deal that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, negotiated but now condemns. When will the Government understand that finding stability in Northern Ireland is not, and never will be, about appeasing one party over others, but is rather about holding firm to the legal obligations and commitments that they have made—and, above all, that it is about being an honest broker? I say that as a former Secretary of State who brought the DUP and Sinn Féin to share power together from May 2007. That could have been achieved only by mutual respect between myself and the DUP—not necessarily agreeing with each other but building mutual trust.
That leads me back to our sub-committee’s report. There are three things worth underlining as a means of shoring up the stability and democratic governance of post-Brexit Northern Ireland, which all are agreed must be a priority. First, the Windsor deal is not merely a diplomatic “win” but a very significant framework for Northern Ireland’s future economic and trading relationships. The Government recognise that Northern Ireland enjoys potential advantages as a result of these arrangements, but those can be secured only by adequate resourcing from London, which is palpably not the case currently. It will be necessary to work in a new way with Northern Ireland officials, stakeholders, experts and—before long, let us hope—the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive to make sure that the extensive capacity needed is there to make the Windsor Framework a success. It is a very complex animal.
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A number of realities need addressing and, given my professional background, noble Lords will not be surprised that the first reality I suggest is the psychological one. When a relationship breaks up because one side wishes to walk away from it and the other does not, there are inevitable emotional consequences. The one who is leaving minimises the consequences and says, “We can still be friends”, and the one who is being abandoned feels anxious and angry. The EU was never going to respond with equanimity to Brexit for these reasons, so even where there were some problems that could be mitigated in the early days, it was not going to happen immediately until people had begun to settle down to the reality of what had happened.
There were some problems that I would characterise as real-world problems. It is ironic that those who most fervently upheld the importance of taking back control of national borders were the very ones who dismissed the importance of the national border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That was never a coherent position. If national borders are not important, there was no reason to leave the EU; if they were important enough to leave the EU, they were going to be important and problematic in respect of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, particularly given the historic, and even current, matter of dispute about that border.
Let me be clear: Brexit was an entirely legitimate ambition and, when it was voted on by the people and the people supported it, it had to be implemented. However, it has consequences. If I jump off a windowsill I will fall and there is no point in me saying how unfair it is that gravity will result in me being crippled. There are certain consequences to our actions, especially in relationships.
One of the other consequences was for our relationships with the EU and the United States. When Prime Minister Sunak took over the reins of government, he realised that the key challenges for his Government were resetting the relationships with the EU and the US. They had been damaged by Brexit and the UK cannot afford to be at odds with its most important trading and security partners. That is why the Windsor Framework was a dramatically successful initiative in resetting relationships with the EU and the United States. I think it extremely unlikely that the current UK Government or any successor Government will embark on an unstitching of those relationships and these arrangements.
There can be some window-dressing about the constitutional position of Northern Ireland, but that position and the devolved settlement of Northern Ireland are of less consequence for Britain as a whole now than relationships with the EU and the United States. The emotional attachment, which was very strong when I came to this House more than a quarter of a century ago, does not feel the same now. For example, I was struck when John Simpson, a very distinguished journalist, on seeing what had happened with the Scottish nationalists, said that the “union is now safe”. I could not help but think to myself that he was not thinking very much about the union with Northern Ireland and that he is not the only one on this side of the water who has that perspective.
There is an underlying fear that Northern Ireland will find itself in a no man’s land between Great Britain and the EU. The processes for changing law in the myriad areas affected by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU are enormously complex. A considerable volume of legislation is produced each year in the UK, while the EU continues to legislate by means of directives, regulations and so on, on matters affecting the internal market as it operates in Northern Ireland. Business needs to know which laws are being introduced and which laws are being repealed, meaning that they are no longer obliged to operate in compliance with those laws.
The bigger question is how regulatory divergence impacts on businesses that wish to operate in both the EU single market and the UK. To what extent are separate manufacturing, labelling, tax, regulatory and enforcement regimes applicable to particular businesses and how can they best respond to maintain and expand their businesses so as to take advantage of the opportunities offered by Northern Ireland’s unique access to both the EU single market and the rest of the UK?
In the context of the EU and excise duties, stakeholders have welcomed the new enhanced co-ordination mechanism to review future legislation. Businesses have welcomed the potential for further flexibilities. The committee has urged the UK and the EU to ensure that the new body is sufficiently resourced. Can the Minister assure the Committee that this has been happening?
The sub-committee has repeatedly called on the Government to maintain a register of regulatory divergence, and we have done so again in this report. Businesses cannot be expected to derive essential commercial information on regulatory issues by way of Explanatory Notes or Memoranda on the potential impacts of proposed legislation. The expertise for tracking and identifying regulatory divergence surely exists within our government departments, which have extensive responsibilities in the areas of legislative drafting, regulation and enforcement. Can the Minister assure the Committee that that expertise will be directed to ensure that there is coherent, timely and accessible information for businesses across the UK?
It took a long time to move people away from the original position of rigorous implementation of the deeply flawed protocol. The Alliance Party, the SDLP, Sinn Féin, the Irish Government and, indeed, some here in Westminster were all rigorous implementers, despite the damage it would entail to both the economy and political stability in Northern Ireland. The so-called grace periods and derogations by the British Government, which were so necessary, were condemned to high heaven by many, while they turned a blind eye to similar actions—or indeed threats, such as to stop vaccines—on the part of the EU.
The reality is that the protocol/Windsor Framework and the intended imposition of EU law on Northern Ireland without consent and the creation of an Irish Sea border, which deeply impacts upon Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market, are things that were bound to undermine the institutions of the Belfast agreement, as amended by St Andrews. For many months, the Democratic Unionist Party worked with the Government of the day and the various Prime Ministers to bring about substantial change. It maintained its First Minister in Northern Ireland to allow that to happen for well over a year, until patience finally ran out with the continued delay and failure to deliver on commitments made by Prime Ministers.
The fact is that you cannot trash strand one—the internal affairs of Northern Ireland —and strand three—the east-west relationship—and expect no instability as a result. Work remains to be done to fulfil the pledges which have been made to the people of Northern Ireland. The DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson in setting out his seven tests was merely consolidating and reiterating promises made by British Prime Ministers to the people of Northern Ireland. They were not invented or made up by him. Incidentally, the seven tests were part of our manifesto in the most recent elections.
The basis on which the protocol was brought about was nationalist distaste for any checks on the border on the island of Ireland. Unionists never wanted or sought such but cannot accept that such should be imposed between us and the rest of the United Kingdom. I think that is a fair and balanced position, and it is achievable. It is something that the Government must address. They have not done so so far, and the Windsor Framework has not addressed that problem. Legislation which is currently being considered by the Government must address the entirety of Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom and remove impediments from Great Britain to Northern Ireland as well as reaffirming what we have for Northern Ireland to Great Britain. I trust the Government will addresses these fundamental issues and in doing so achieve political stability in Northern Ireland.
Do not get me wrong: there has been immense progress in those 25 years—I do not think anyone will disagree with that—such as the Belfast dockyards and the Titanic quarter. The Corn Market, which I remember as a dingy and dangerous place, is now as beautiful a piece of street architecture as you will find anywhere in these islands. The sectarian murals have become tourist attractions. I hope it goes without saying that all of that is desirable and to be praised, but it all rests ultimately on a willingness to, if you like, elevate process over outcome, to accept that sometimes you are going to lose and that sometimes the other side is going to win and that that is not a threat to your whole identity. This point has been historically aimed at unionists, and not always without reason. I was amused by Senator Mitchell’s recollection at the 25th anniversary of David Trimble having said to him “You need to understand about my lot that they will travel hours out of their way to take an insult”, and we have all met politicians like that, but it applies equally to both sides.
Let me put it like this: if I were chiefly motivated by wanting a 32-county state in Ireland—whether I were on either side of the border—I would do things very differently. I would engage with British people in Northern Ireland as Brits rather than as misguided Irish protestants. I would have done a lot of things differently: I would not have left the Commonwealth; I would not have had a different foreign policy in the wars; I would not have made the Irish language a requirement. Those are water under the bridge, but going forward now is about finding a compromise that both sides can live with. We are in a world where we have a general retreat from liberal democracy, a general rise of populism and a “winner takes all” attitude even in countries that are old and established democracies—these are alarming tendencies. If there is one thing that we in this Chamber can do, perhaps it is to spread our irenic influence and to encourage people that, in the Windsor Framework and in everything else, we are never going to get 100% of what we want. That is the essence of any functioning open society.
Secondly, the report clearly sets out the need for information and clarity about the details of the Windsor Framework in practice. It is welcome that the Government are issuing more guidance on the details of the implementation of the schemes underpinning the green lanes, for example, but there is need for clarity and detail on a wider range of issues, from the so-called Stormont brake—which does not seem much of a brake at all—to the movement of parcels. The evidence gathered by the sub-committee is a helpful indication of not only what is needed now but what will be needed in the near future.
Finally, as our report concludes, it is vital that the UK and the EU ensure that they remain in close and productive dialogue, rebuilding the trust that is so vital but was squandered so recklessly by bellicose posturing under the Johnson and Truss regimes—trust both with each other and with Northern Ireland stakeholders and its citizens, and with the Irish Government, who are a guarantor for and signatory to the 1998 Good Friday agreement and the 2007 power-sharing self-government. Unless that trust is built with Dublin, nothing will work. It must also be built with Brussels. That is a huge challenge for this Government, which, sadly, they have so far failed to meet, except in respect of the Windsor Framework, which I welcome. I hope they rebuild that trust in future.
The report analyses evidence from witnesses on the overall impact of the Windsor Framework. Witnesses describe the technical and legal complexity of the Windsor Framework and the confusion that may arise from the difference in emphasis between the UK and the EU in their description of some of its provisions. We concluded that the UK and EU together really must publish a comprehensive summary of the Windsor Framework provisions, including the consolidated text of the original protocol as amended by the Windsor Framework. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that the Government will indeed do so.
Chapter 3 of our report focuses on the movement of goods, including the red and green lanes and the movement of agri-food, with the attendant requirements for new labelling. We endorse the calls for more clarity about the new arrangements for movements of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Our report was in its final stages of preparation when the Government published additional guidance on 9 June. That guidance and the subsequent guidance of 28 July will be the subject of a follow-up committee evidence session next week.
Chapter 4 looks at human and veterinary medicines and the movement of pets. We noted the widespread welcome from the pharmaceutical industry for the Windsor Framework’s provisions on human medicines, which are seen as a sustainable solution to the problems with medicine supply to Northern Ireland, albeit with calls for the Government to intensify their engagement with stakeholders as the pharmaceutical industry prepares for the start of new measures on 1 January 2025.
While welcoming the extension of the grace periods for veterinary medicines until the end of 2025, the veterinary, farming and agri-food sectors all expressed serious concerns that a mutually agreed solution has yet to be reached. The report urges the Government to intensify their engagement with the EU and industry to identify a sustainable solution as a matter of urgency, to avoid a cliff edge in 2025. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us what progress has been made since the report was published.
I do not want to go into detail on VAT, excise duties or state aid, important though they are. I do want to say, as chapter 6 of our report notes, that business representatives stressed to us that regulatory divergence, whether between Great Britain and Northern Ireland or between Northern Ireland and Ireland, remains their number one concern. The report urges the Government and the EU to undertake substantive assessments, for all planned legislation, of the impact of regulatory divergence on Northern Ireland.
The committee also renewed its call, made repeatedly since March 2022 with the support of Northern Ireland stakeholders, for the Government to create and maintain an up-to-date record of regulatory divergence and its impact on Northern Ireland. The committee simply fails to understand why this is apparently either too difficult or unnecessary, or both. Perhaps the Minister can set us straight there, too.
Chapter 7 examines the democratic deficit occurring under the protocol and the extent to which it was addressed by the Windsor Framework, not least by the new Stormont brake. The Stormont brake divides opinion: some regard it as a genuine and innovative attempt to give Northern Ireland politicians a voice on the application of EU law to Northern Ireland, while others argue that the stringent conditions for its use and the limited scope of its application mean that it will have negligible impact. Time will tell us how significant it will prove to be in practice.
Chapter 8 of our report examines the role of the Court of Justice of the European Union, concluding that there has been no substantive change.
Chapter 9 analyses the proposals in the Windsor Framework on enhanced dialogue and engagement, both between the UK and the EU and with Northern Ireland stakeholders. The proposals for enhanced dialogue between the UK and the EU and engagement with Northern Ireland stakeholders are of course welcome. However, the structure for bilateral dialogue between the UK and the EU is more developed than the engagement with Northern Ireland, where detail remains lacking. If such engagement is to give Northern Ireland stakeholders a really meaningful voice, as it must, the UK and the EU need to ensure that it is properly structured and resourced and has real substance.
Finally, as the continued suspension of the power-sharing institutions demonstrates, political tensions in Northern Ireland over the protocol and the Windsor Framework remain acute. In welcoming the Windsor Framework but focusing on the work still to be done, we acknowledge the importance and the difficulty of resolving these issues to the satisfaction of all communities in Northern Ireland. I beg to move.
The third difficulty, which is crucial, is that the Government’s stance has changed. They have now committed to defending and supporting the framework. This is fundamental. The Johnson Government, of which I was part, always took the view—many criticised us for taking it—that the protocol was unsatisfactory and temporary. We always hoped that, ultimately, divergence by GB would produce the collapse of the protocol arrangements, whether consensually through a vote, a further negotiation or otherwise. We always wanted something better. Now, though, the Government are committed to the view that the Windsor Framework is better and should be defended. The consequence is that, as problems emerge—as they will—the Government must ally themselves with the EU, defend these new arrangements and impose them on a deeply divided Northern Ireland. They must actively support rules that destroy long-standing trade arrangements in this country and impose laws without consent in Northern Ireland. When problems emerge, as they do, for example over horticultural trade in Northern Ireland, they deny that they exist. I am afraid the Government will not find that comfortable. I fear the long-term consequences.
The final difficulty is that the Government’s commitment to the framework will shape their broader policy. That is why I cannot entirely share the view of those on my side of the argument who say, “Yes it’s imperfect, but it’s time to move on”. The framework creates a huge incentive to avoid diverging from the EU in relevant areas, because doing so will make its arrangements less and less workable, more vulnerable to EU interdiction and harder to defend as a success. Perhaps we have already seen the first consequences in the watered-down retained EU law Act.
The Windsor Framework exists. It seems that we will have to live with it for some years yet, but it is a sticking plaster and not a real solution to the underlying problems. If the Government had said something such as, “This deal softens the protocol but it does not remove it; it is the best we can get for now because we did not want to use the NI Protocol Bill and the EU knew it, but that cannot be the end of the story”, that would have been a fair statement of their position and much easier for people on my side of the argument to get behind. As it is, we are supposed to believe that the problems have been solved, but they have not. It leaves us where we started, with the British Government only partly sovereign over their territory. That is still a bitter pill to swallow, and in the long run I do not see how it can stand.
With regard to the specialised committee, will it engage with the north-south implementation bodies? One of them is InterTradeIreland, which deals specifically with trade; another is Tourism Ireland, and there are several others. Will the Minister, working with colleagues, ensure that the specialised committee engages with north-south implementation bodies and the north-south joint secretariat on their experiences of the operation of the Windsor Framework for north-south co-operation? And will the joint committee signal how it intends to review the effect of the implementation and the application of the Windsor Framework on maintaining the necessary conditions for north-south co-operation?
Another area that needs to be examined is apportionment with HMRC. Before the Windsor Framework, there was no problem about apportioning the amount of trade for the EU and the Republic of Ireland and the amount that would stay in Northern Ireland. That information is not available in the guidance. I look forward to the Minister’s response.