Trade Bill

Report (2nd Day)

Amendment 22

22: After Clause 5, insert the following new Clause— “Continuation of North-South trade and prevention of customs arrangements at borders An international trade agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union may not be ratified under sections 20 to 25 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 unless the agreement—(a) is compatible with the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, and(b) does not—(i) negatively affect any form of North-South trade in goods or services or the operation of the relevant North-South implementation bodies, or(ii) create or facilitate customs arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after exit day which feature—(a) physical infrastructure related to customs checks,(b) a requirement for customs or regulatory compliance checks,(c) random checks on goods vehicles, or(d) any other checks and controls related to trade, that did not exist before exit day and which are not subject to an agreement between Her Majesty’s Government and the Government of Ireland.”

My Lords, the amendment stands also in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Bruce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. This amendment, which has cross-party support, is consistent with the previous amendment carried by your Lordship’s House, and which the Government accepted when the European Union (Withdrawal) Act was adopted last summer. However, it is vital that those provisions in Section 10 of the withdrawal Act are reflected in this Bill, which concerns not our divorce deal, as that Act did, but our long-term trading relationships.

In principle, the UK has joined Ireland and the EU in a shared objective of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland in order to help protect the hard-won peace process delivered by the Good Friday agreement—a peace process that is still just that: a process that, in my view, has dangerously reversed these past couple of years. The border is often described as the Irish border, a description which seems to absolve the UK of any ownership of it, but it is a UK land border with Ireland. If we leave, it will be a border between the UK and the EU, so it is our responsibility as much as it is Ireland’s and the EU’s responsibility under any circumstances.

Only last week, the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, David Sterling, warned of potentially grave and profound consequences of a no-deal Brexit—including a sharp rise in unemployment, the collapse or flight of businesses and potential unrest—for Northern Ireland, which, lest we forget, voted by 56% to 44% to remain in the European Union in 2016. Senior civil servants do not usually speak so candidly and compellingly. Advocates of a kamikaze Brexit might take notice and might also take notice of the strong words of the 50 or more Northern Ireland businesses which wrote to MPs in similar terms over the weekend.

The extent of trade and traffic over the Irish border is huge: 110 million person crossings take place every year; Northern Ireland, with its population of 1.8 million people, exports £3.4 billion over the border, by far its biggest export destination outside the UK and the first export destination for new and growing enterprises; at least 5,000 Northern Ireland companies trade with their neighbours over the border with Ireland; tens of thousands of people live on one side and work on the other; supply chains operate across the border without impediment; more than 400,000 lambs and 750 million litres of milk are exported across the border to Ireland for processing; and 177,000 heavy goods vehicles and 208,000 light vans cross the border every single month, which is 4.6 million crossings a year, and there are 22 million car crossings, and they take place all along a 300-mile border with nearly 300 crossing points.

One such study still bandied about is known as Smart Border 2.0, sometimes wrongly described as an EU report. It was presented to the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs in November 2017, together with opposing views from other experts. However, the report, based on the arrangements at the Norway-Sweden border that I mentioned, does not carry the imprimatur of any of the EU institutions. Furthermore, proposals in Smart Border 2.0 rely on both physical infrastructure and staffed border posts, which would be incompatible with the common travel area that the EU and the UK have agreed should continue. The technology proposed is untested and does not address concerns surrounding the management of animal and plant health—sanitary, phytosanitary and other regulatory issues that would require checks. Given the all-island nature of the agri-food industry and the constant livestock crossings, any need for such checks at the border would be an utter disaster.

In short, ideas like this are already in breach of the law under the EU withdrawal Act, which this House and the other place passed, in that it rules out measures that,

“create or facilitate border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland after exit day which feature physical infrastructure, including border posts, or checks and controls, that did not exist before exit day and are not in accordance with an agreement between the United Kingdom and the EU”—

the same wording as in Amendment 22.

Your Lordships’ own EU Select Committee concluded rightly that technological solutions were a long-term aspiration and could only mitigate, not eliminate, the need for border controls or infrastructure in the event of Brexit. This very important point underlines the vital need for this amendment. No amount of technology can be a substitute for the regulatory alignment or equivalence that today makes customs checks and security controls across the Irish border unnecessary. The border is completely open and invisible today because there are common rules for trading, services and people movement on both sides. Various wheezes by Brexiteers to monitor barcodes on lorries and so on will work only if there is a common compliance regime on both sides of the border, yet the Brexiteers’ very mission is to end those common rules and that common compliance; that is what Brexit is all about.

The same applies to checks 20 miles from the border, as some Brexiteers have suggested. For example, the reason that Jaguar cars—or their components—can be sent for sale without checks or inspections through the Channel Tunnel or across the Irish border is because Jaguar has signed up to thousands of common EU standards and other regulations. If Jaguar were to be found in breach by a competitor or by the European Commission, it could be taken to the European Court of Justice; yet it is this very compliance regime that the Brexiteers reject. No amount of fancy technology or max-fac wheezes can overcome this reality.

By the way, if the UK fell out of the EU with no deal, as many Brexiteers want, to set us gloriously free, the World Trade Organization rules that they crave would also impose on the UK a hard-border requirement, outlawing special treatment of an EU member state—Ireland—by the UK, which, as a third country, would be outside the highly developed free trade agreement which is the European Union.

Even the highly politicised and heavily spun Northern Ireland Affairs Committee report of 9 March, just a few days ago, confirms that there are currently no technology border solutions anywhere in the world that can deliver a frictionless Irish border—therefore slaying a few hard-Brexit unicorns. The committee took evidence and reported that technology proposals for a frictionless border,

“have been tested somewhere in the world just not in one single border”,

and, as, such the border in Northern Ireland would be,

“the first and a leading example in the world of this kind”.

The committee concluded:

“This is not a simple, quick-fix solution and implementing it in Northern Ireland would represent a world-first”.