That this House regrets that, while the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Public Health, Marketing and Organic Product Standards and Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2023 give practical effect to provisions in EU Regulation 2023/1231 which lessen the disturbance caused by the Irish Sea border, (1) they do not remove the border or the need for expensive and disruptive customs and sanitary and phytosanitary paperwork, and border control posts, (2) Article 14 of EU Regulation 2023/1231 reserves the right for the European Union to reverse provisions afforded by these Regulations that make the border less burdensome, and (3) on both counts, these Regulations are associated with an initiative that violates the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom.
Relevant document: 51st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, Session 2022-23.
My Lords, I bet that when the people in the Whips’ Office saw this regret Motion, they probably said, “Oh not again!”, as this comes just a few weeks after we had a similar but slightly different regret Motion from the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn. However, I make no apologies for moving it. It is nice to see a different Front Bench; I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, who will respond. The noble Lord, Lord Benyon, has probably had enough of the Windsor Framework; he has gone to COP 28, which is perhaps a slightly better place for him to be tonight.
As I said, I make no apologies for this. It is an opportunity for those of us who live in Northern Ireland and who live day-to-day with the increasingly ridiculous Windsor Framework to try to ensure that noble Lords, and particularly those who genuinely care about Northern Ireland and the union, understand more about how it is being implemented and how the continued Irish Sea border affects the everyday lives of many people in Northern Ireland. Noble Lords should realise how profound are the political and constitutional ramifications for the union of statutory instruments such as this.
If you look at the statutory instrument, it is almost like gobbledegook, but of course most statutory instruments are. I am not a lawyer, but I thought it was pretty difficult to understand and seemingly very bureaucratic. Then, when I went to visit a local butcher and heard from him just how difficult it was—he showed me all the paperwork and the forms he had to comply with to bring in what he had always been bringing in: some special cheese from Scotland—it made this statutory instrument seem quite simple.
It is important that we first look at what this SI does. It is important to remember that the provisions listed in column 2 of Schedule 1 are treated as applying to the extent that the corresponding EU instrument in column 1 does not apply by virtue of article 1(2) and chapter 2 of EU regulation 2023/1231—I said this was quite complicated. This results in the disapplication of EU standards in favour of GB standards, where column 1 lists EU legislation and column 2 lists different GB legislation.
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So many points were not answered fully by the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, despite his obvious sympathy with what we were saying, so I hope the Minister tonight does a little better. Can he confirm that an ordinary consumer in Northern Ireland still cannot get bulbs and seeds sent directly to him unless they are a registered operator—that is, a garden centre? That still has not been altered in any way, so individual gardeners cannot get what they want from Great Britain anymore because of the Windsor Framework. Will he give me a straight answer to the question I have been going on about for a very long time: why, when someone from Belfast goes to any EU country, is duty free not available but it is when you go to a European country from any airport in GB? We know the real reason; it is because we are still in the EU. The Government need to admit that. You can get duty free from Dublin to London but not from Belfast to London. We have been left, as usual, in a limbo and to drift, which is what this Government seem to want to do at the moment with Northern Ireland.
Can the Minister tell us why, since the beginning of October, many parcels coming from one family in Great Britain to relatives in Northern Ireland—from Scotland to Belfast—are being opened before being stuck with yellow ribbons? Does he understand how difficult it is for farmers and the farming community to get farm machinery into Northern Ireland because of the unnecessary bureaucracy of the Windsor Framework, which is really affecting many farmers?
I know many noble Lords who will speak tonight will probably want to raise other issues around divergence, which is crucial. Trade is being diverged. From what the Government have said and what is in the Windsor Framework, Article 16 is supposed to be able to be used if there is divergence of trade. Has that been considered again, given that there now is absolute evidence that there is divergence, with trade going more to the Republic of Ireland?
As I said at the beginning, I make no apology for having this debate. I genuinely wish noble Lords would think a bit more about what this Government have done to the union, the strength of the union and the people of Northern Ireland, most of whom are incredibly loyal to the United Kingdom. It really is time we look at what the Windsor Framework has done and accept that, while perhaps it was done with all of the right reasons, it is not working and will not work. While it is there, there will be no devolution in Northern Ireland. It is time that the Government start to accept that. If they will not be honest about the Windsor Framework, perhaps they might begin to be honest about the kind of governance there is now in Northern Ireland and start to realise that they must take much more responsibility for what is happening there—although that may well be above the Minister’s pay grade.
I move this Motion, and I hope it will arouse some Members of the House of Lords to feel they must take a bigger and greater interest in what is happening in part of the United Kingdom.
My Lords, in responding to the regulations before us, it is easy to allow our attention to be drawn to the Irish Sea border and its implications for trade and lose an important aspect of the bigger picture. We must always keep in mind that the reality of the border is a function of a more basic and underlying problem—the fact that, in some 300 areas, Northern Ireland is subject to laws made for us by the European Union. These laws create a different legal regime in Northern Ireland from that which obtains in GB.
The purpose of the border, regulated in part by these new Windsor regulations, is to protect the integrity of that different regime. This was arguably not particularly important to begin with because our laws were the same, but over time they have diverged, and will continue to diverge more and more. Since 1 January 2021, we have been subject to the gross indignity of having more than 700 laws made for and imposed on us by a foreign legislator. This is a problem not just for Northern Ireland but for the rest of the United Kingdom and the international community, for reasons I highlighted during the King’s Speech debate.
At the heart of international relations we find the doctrine of recognition and the principle that international relations depend on two states recognising each other. This amounts to each acknowledging and respecting the right of the other to govern itself across the extent of its territory. This is foundational, because it is only when two sovereign states afford each other this mutual respect that international relations can really happen.
To be sure, there are other important doctrines, such as the principle that agreements must be kept, but we cannot collapse international society into that principle, abstracted from the other conventions that make international agreements a possibility, otherwise a treaty to promote slavery or disfranchisement would be sacrosanct because it would rest upon an agreement between states. In reality, the impact and importance of pacta sunt servanda, first mentioned in the House by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, in treaty-making assumes the basic integrity of the actors—sovereign states—between which those agreements are reached.
I shall ask the noble Lord a question that I would have liked to have asked the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey: would he prefer a customs frontier across the island of Ireland, with all of the implications that would have for the Good Friday agreement?
I think that Northern Ireland, which we are constantly told is an integral part of the United Kingdom, should be treated as such. If you own a farm, it is your responsibility to fence your livestock in; it is not my responsibility as a neighbour to fence your livestock out.
The land border with the EU could have been very easily resolved, because there were moves and proposals at the time. It could have been a simple, straightforward piece of work, with cameras being put up, but the EU said absolutely not. What did it do? It then split Northern Ireland and insisted on border customs, which are not yet completed but will be by 2025. Now we have Northern Ireland sitting in isolation from the rest of the United Kingdom, and that will never be acceptable.
I will follow on from my noble friend Lord Morrow, and I am interested in the questions that have been asked. A lot of those questions surely should have been asked at the time of the negotiations between the United Kingdom Government and the European Union. That was the time to ask those questions and answer them, rather than leaving Northern Ireland in the present precarious position that it is, without Stormont being able to function.
The real impact of the regulations before us today, in providing what is actually an alternative border experience rather than a border-free experience of the kind suggested by talk of putting Northern Ireland back in the same internal market for goods as the rest of the United Kingdom so that goods can move unfettered across the United Kingdom, is very far-reaching. Indeed, it is so far-reaching that it requires me to ask the Government to reflect further on their stated position, as set out during the debate on the previous set of Windsor regulations, on 18 October. In responding to that debate, the message from the Government Front Bench was that
“the Windsor Framework restores the smooth flow of trade within the UK internal market by removing the unnecessary burdens that have disrupted east-west trade. We are now able to achieve the long-standing UK government objective of restoring the smooth flow of trade within the UK internal market by pursuing a green lane for the movement of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, supporting Northern Ireland’s place in the UK”.—[Official Report, 18/10/23; col. 269.]
That was the statement that was made.
One of the reasons why the United Kingdom is believed to have been the first country to industrialise is that it was the first country to identify the economic opportunities arising from removing internal barriers to trade, so as to create a coherent internal market for goods, coextensive with the boundaries of the kingdom. The definition of “internal market” was thus the removal of all internal border fettering, so that goods could move completely freely within the United Kingdom. It was the economic opportunities secured by this freedom that other countries identified and sought to exploit over many years.
Does the noble Lord concur with me, having been involved intimately in the Brexit negotiations in 2017 and 2018, that proposals had been worked up by Lars Karlsson, a customs expert who worked on the Norway/Sweden border, for technical solutions for a frictionless border that were first presented to the European Parliament in November 2017 and subsequently to this House and the other place, but they were ignored, particularly by the EU and the then May Government? That answers the specific issues raised by the noble Lord and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.
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On this basis, the most striking thing is that consideration of Schedule 1 conveys that, while there may be some scope for disapplying EU legislation, it remains overwhelmingly in place and binding. In short, this way of presenting the potential suspension of some 60 EU laws is in fact a really good way for the Government to have highlighted the extent to which, even under the so-called green lane, we in Northern Ireland remain subject to EU laws.
The point needs to be seen in the context of the fact that, since January 2021, Northern Ireland has so far been subject to around 700 new regulations and laws that have simply been imposed in a way that would never have been contemplated in any other part of the world, never mind any other part of the United Kingdom. That begs the question: how can our Government have allowed part of our country to be treated so differently and separately, under the separate legislation of the EU?
How did we get here? Of course, we all remember 27 February. When the Prime Minister announced the Windsor Framework, he expressly told the country that he had removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea. Since then, we have been told again and again that the purpose of the Windsor Framework is to reconnect Northern Ireland into the same internal market as Great Britain, giving effect to a UK single market for goods: unfettered access—those are words that the Government love—for goods across the UK’s internal market for goods. Being in a single market for goods mean that goods can move freely within that internal market without encountering any internal border obstacles, but the legislation crafted to give effect to this supposedly great breakthrough of the Windsor Framework, including these regulations, demonstrates that, far from removing any sense of border in the Irish Sea, the Windsor Framework confirms the reality of the border in the Irish Sea.
The legislation means that, rather than laying the foundation for the movement of goods from one part of the UK to another, unfettered by a customs or SPS border, we have the movement of goods, subject to the huge cost of a customs border, SPS border, paperwork and checks. Pretty soon after 27 February, we realised that, notwithstanding the Prime Minister’s claim to have removed any sense of border, the border had remained completely in place through the red lane. Anyone moving goods on the red lane has to trade with one part of the United Kingdom as if it was a foreign country. This is crucial, because it means that, even if the green lane created a lane through which some goods could move as freely from Scotland to Northern Ireland as from Scotland to England—that is, within a single internal market for goods—that would still constitute a hugely controversial change to the extent that other goods destined for Northern Ireland would have to go on a red lane, as if travelling to a foreign country.
This statutory instrument demonstrates that the actual deal is far, far worse, because the green lane facilitated in part by these regulations is not green. We live in an age of growing cynicism about politics in which there is voter apathy and disaffection, and that is increasingly a problem. Central to that is a perception that politicians can be less than straight with the public and seek to pull the wool over people’s eyes by using language to obscure, rather than shine light, on the presenting situation.
The Windsor Framework, effected by these and other regulations, provides one of the most stark and worrying manifestations of this tendency. The notions of red and green are not empty images; they convey meaning, even when considered apart from borders. Red conveys the fact that you will be stopped; green, the sense that you can move through freely. When we turn our attentions to questions of the border, when there are goods entering the UK single market from beyond the United Kingdom, we are confronted with two lanes, red and green. If you are bringing goods into the European single market, you have to go through the red lane and present customs and SPS paperwork and encounter a border control post and potential checks. By contrast, the green lane is for someone coming into the EU single market without any goods, and they can move freely. In this context, it is completely cynical, first, to claim to have removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea when it remains very much in place, and then to suggest you are providing a green lane, implying unfettered access, when these regulations make it absolutely clear that that is not the case.
In reality, the regulations in this statutory instrument communicate the fact that if you travel on the so-called green lane, you remain subject to the customs and SPS border and certainly do not enjoy unfettered access within the territory of the United Kingdom. In order to access the green lane, you must obtain authorisation, and to do so you have to provide information for “customs purposes”. This is set out very plainly in Articles 7 and 9(2) of the joint committee decision 1/2023, which gives effect to the Windsor Framework. This embeds, even in the operation of the mythical green lane, an internal UK customs border between GB and Northern Ireland.
It follows, obviously, that there is no route to removing the Irish Sea border by any tinkering. That is of course the Democratic Unionist Party’s third test. There is no route which does not involve at least fundamentally altering and thus reopening the Windsor Framework debate and, to restore Article VI of the Acts of Union, disapplying Section 7A of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, in so far as it creates inconsistency with the Acts of Union, as said by the Supreme Court.
Of course, you might be subject to a few fewer SPS demands if you go in the green lane, but you will still be subject to customs and SPS requirements as if trading with a foreign country—or, per the terminology used by the Government in one of their SIs to describe Northern Ireland, a third country. How insulting that is to the people of the United Kingdom living in Northern Ireland. You will still have to have an export number, as if you are trading with a foreign country. You will still have to encounter the significant costs of needing to have customs and SPS paperwork, because you will be leaving one internal market for goods and entering another. You will still have to be subject to 100% documentary checks, and you will still have to go through a border control post and be subject to between 5% and 10% identity checks, along with some physical checks, because you are leaving one internal market for goods and entering another.
As if that is not enough, you will still have to embrace additional frictions in return for accessing the so-called green lane. You will have to apply successfully to join the trusted traders scheme and maintain your membership of it, and you will have to embrace the cost of producing “not for EU” labels. Is it any wonder that hundreds of businesses in Great Britain are now putting on their website a line that simply says, “We no longer send goods to Northern Ireland”?
In this context, the attempt to describe this arrangement as giving effect to a green lane is deeply, deeply misleading and, I believe, shows modern politics at its absolute worst. The Government should know better than to try cynically to pull the wool over the eyes of the people of the United Kingdom. I call on the Government to level with people, be honest, acknowledge the truth and not try to hide it in words. The truth is that the border remains in the Irish Sea, and that what the Government have managed to secure is two different red lane border experiences. The movement of goods continues to be subject to a border experience, with both bureaucratic requirements and checks as goods leave one internal market for goods and enter another. It just happens in different ways, which can perhaps be described as “the standard red lane experience” and “an alternative red lane experience”.
Moreover, the alternative red lane experience which is affected by these regulations is provided only at the pleasure and agreement of the European Union. Article 14 of EU Regulation 2023/1231, to which these regulations relate and without which they would be completely meaningless, reserves to the European Union the right to withdraw the alternative red lane experience. Thus, the effect of these regulations, to which this Parliament has agreed, is entirely dependent on the European Union. Noble Lords could pass regulations and at some point, the European Union could make them effectively null and void using Article 14.
The Government keep saying that the Windsor Framework protects Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market for goods. An internal market does not happen because different places can trade within it. Different places trade all the time in international trade between different internal markets—for example, a business trading from London with a business in New York. An internal market means that a business in one part of the internal market can trade with another part of the internal market without leaving it and thus without being subject to everything that has already been mentioned: a customs SPS border, paperwork, and border control posts. The regulations do not remove these. Under these regulations, trade between one part of our country still requires an export number, filling in customs and SPS border forms, being subject to 100% documentary checks and being subject to between 5% and 10% identity checks, which require stopping at a border control post, as well as some physical checks.
Similar arguments could be made here, calling on the Government to stop pretending that the regulations protect the place of Northern Ireland in the UK internal market for goods, when they actually demonstrate that the UK internal market for goods no longer exists and has instead been replaced with a GB single market for goods, placing Northern Ireland in a different single market. If only the Government would be honest.
In the previous Windsor Framework statutory instrument regret debate, I asked the Minister to define “unfettered access”. He answered that he wanted
“goods … to be traded within the United Kingdom in a similar way to anywhere within GB”. [Official Report, 18/10/23; col. 270]
I welcomed him saying that, but the logic of that is that the Government need to accept that they will have to go back to the European Union and stand up for their own citizens in the United Kingdom.
I know that many Government Ministers understand that this situation is untenable, and that there are many in the Labour Opposition who know that it is. Let us not forget that the Windsor Framework was put through on a vote to do with the consent principle, and then the whole thing was accepted, rushed through by a Prime Minister who was obviously frightened that, if people really understood it, it might have been voted down or at least have had a bigger vote against it. I know from many noble Lords who have spoken to me that, despite their vote for the Windsor Framework, they now realise it was a rushed attempt to be seen to do something about the protocol which everyone, even those in the Alliance Party who had called for its rigorous implementation, had realised had to go. But the hype and the misinformation—indeed, the lies that were told—about the framework made the old saying “the truth will find you out” so true.
If we want to uphold the international society of states that is definitive of world order and upon which international law is based, we have to remember that valid treaties are not just whatever two parties agree. They are agreements made in a context that respects the norms and assumptions on the basis of which the peace and stability of the international arena depends.
For example, the United Nations Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations states:
“Every State has an inalienable right to choose its political, economic, social and cultural systems, without interference in any form by another State”.
It also says:
“Nothing … shall be construed as authorizing or encouraging any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States”
and that:
“Every State shall refrain from any action aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any other State or country”.
As I pointed out on 15 November:
“Lest there should be any doubt about the importance of these principles, the declaration also affirms:
‘The principles of the Charter which are embodied in this Declaration constitute basic principles of international law, and consequently appeals to all States to be guided by these principles in their international conduct and to develop their mutual relations on the basis of the strict observance of these principles’
and:
‘Where obligations arising under international agreements are in conflict with the obligations of Members of the United Nations under the Charter of the United Nations, the obligations under the Charter shall prevail’.
One of the most obvious ways in which a state, A, or a group of states, AB, can act in violation of the territorial integrity of another state, C, is to apply pressure for the right to make some of the laws over part of C, and to insist on the imposition of a customs border across C at the point at which their law ceases to have effect and the laws of C alone obtain. This is what the 27 member states of the European Union have decided to do to the United Kingdom, imposing laws made by a legislature in which we are not represented and imposing a border cutting the country in two”
different legal regimes and two different internal markets—
“requiring the construction of border control posts for its enforcement”.—[Official Report, 15/11/23; col. 524.]
The sense in which the border states of the EU refuse to recognise the territorial integrity of the UK is expressed eloquently through the full title of EU regulation 2023/1231, which is partly given effect by the regulations before us today. The said regulations are defined by the EU as:
“Regulation (EU) 2023/1231 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2023 on specific rules relating to the entry into Northern Ireland from other parts of the United Kingdom of certain consignments of retail goods, plants for planting, seed potatoes, machinery and certain vehicles operated for agricultural or forestry purposes, as well as non-commercial movements of certain pet animals into Northern Ireland”.
It is quite extraordinary legislation when one thinks about it because, far from being a piece of legislation made by and for the 27 EU member states that also applies to Northern Ireland, this regulation applies only to the governance of one country—the UK, a country that is not in the EU—and the effect of that legislation is to divide that country into two.
In 2017, the United Kingdom Government suffered a catastrophic failure of statecraft of a kind we have not seen certainly since 1688. It has resulted in our country being divided into two different legal regimes and a customs border, with UK citizens on one side of the border disfranchised and no longer able to stand for election to make all the laws to which we are subject. It is quite extraordinary that we should have fallen so low that, rather than being the occasion for the UK to reassert itself, Brexit was the occasion for our complete humiliation. While it will come as no surprise to noble Lords to know that I disagreed profoundly with Mrs Thatcher on the Anglo-Irish agreement, I cannot imagine she would ever have contemplated a Brexit deal that not only failed to secure the departure of the whole United Kingdom from the EU but split the nation territorially in the process.
We are all familiar with the phrase, “When in a hole, stop digging”. In 2017, the then Government fell into the hole and since then every Government have kept digging. The time has come for a fundamentally different approach. The imperative for making it is not merely to help UK citizens living in Northern Ireland or restoring the honour of the United Kingdom as a whole in the face of an extraordinary humiliation, but about upholding the fundamental foundational norms and assumptions on which the well-being of the international society of states depends. If one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council is unable to defend its territorial integrity in peace, what hope is there for the world?
There has been an alternative to the protocol since 2019, namely mutual enforcement. The EU decided not to go for this solution, but it is interesting to note that, in the context of expressing real concerns about the reasons for rejecting it, one of its authors, Professor Weiler, acknowledged that the alternative has been
“the introduction, however disguised, of a customs frontier within the UK”.
So it is not only unionists who are saying this; others are saying it too. He then poses a profound question. Let me say it again: the result of the EU decision not to run with mutual enforcement was
“the introduction, however disguised, of a customs frontier within the UK. But does anyone believe that this is a stable solution?”
Today’s debate has helped expose some of the disguise and has answered the question about whether anyone believes this is a stable, sustainable solution. The answer is an emphatic no. What we need is not a Government who table regulations such as those before us, so obediently and attentively to the EU’s bidding, but rather a Government who discharge their basic function in standing up for their people as a people and a Government who restore the dignity and territorial integrity of the United Kingdom. In contemplating this need, I continue to greatly rejoice that no Parliament can bind its successors.
In the context of the established meaning of “internal market” following these developments, you cannot have an internal market divided by a customs and SPS border. If you have an internal market and divide it with a customs and SPS border, you no longer have one internal market but two internal markets.
The key point here is that an internal market is secured by a right to trade between A and B. German businesses have a right to trade with Japanese businesses and vice versa. Having this right to trade, however, does not have the effect of putting Germany and Japan in the same single market. This means that businesses trading between these two countries have to encounter border formalities. In other words, goods in Germany do not enjoy unfettered access to Japan any more than Japanese goods enjoy unfettered access to Germany. If, however, the border were removed and Germany and Japan were placed in the same internal market, not only would businesses in Germany have a right to trade with Japan and vice versa but their goods would also enjoy unfettered access to Japan, just as Japanese goods would enjoy in relation to Germany, within the newly created internal market.
It simply is not possible to take the regulations before us today or, indeed, other Windsor regulations, and assert, as government Ministers continue to do, that they help to
“restore the smooth flow of trade within the United Kingdom internal market”
or unfettered access. The truth that the regulations before us today confirm is not that Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom internal market has been restored, securing unfettered movement within the United Kingdom internal market. Rather, giving effect to EU regulation 2023/1231, they confirm the termination of the UK internal market for goods and its replacement with a GB single market for goods, which no longer embraces Northern Ireland.
It might be correct to argue that the suspending of 60 EU standards by these regulations eases the flow of goods in some senses—although the requirement for “Not for EU” labels off-set this benefit—but it does not ease the flow of goods within the UK internal market; that is not true. Rather, it eases the movement of goods across an international customs and SPS border between the two different internal markets for goods that the UK now covers.
In the same way, it is time for the Government to level with the British people and acknowledge that, rather than giving effect to a green lane, the regulations before us give rise to an alternative red lane. They also need to be honest and acknowledge that, far from reintegrating Northern Ireland within a UK single market for goods, the regulations confirm that the UK single market for goods no longer exists. It has been replaced, for the first time since 31 December 1800, with a Great Britain internal market for goods, and Northern Ireland has been placed in a different internal market for goods governed by a polity of which it is not a part.
In this, I greatly welcome the timely intervention this week in another place by the right honourable Dame Priti Patel, the Member of Parliament for Witham, who was Home Secretary from 2019 to 2022. She reminded us of the 2019 Conservative manifesto which pledged, on page 44, to
“ensure that Northern Ireland’s businesses and producers enjoy unfettered access to the rest of the UK and that in the implementation of our Brexit deal, we maintain and strengthen the integrity and smooth operation of our internal market”.
She was very clear that Windsor—and thus the regulations before us today, which seek to give effect to it—is not in any way consistent with that pledge. In other words, the Government have broken their election pledge.
Dame Priti Patel wrote:
“For me, as a Conservative and Unionist, maintaining the integrity of the internal market should have been a red line in negotiations with the EU and while the Windsor Framework does improve the situation with some goods facing fewer barriers, the flow of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is still being disrupted. Northern Ireland also faces the ongoing imposition of EU rules affecting certain parts of its economy, which undermines democracy”.
She concluded:
“No business should face a barrier or restriction to trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and more work is needed to achieve this outcome. Technology, common sense and a dose of good faith should be at the forefront of the solutions needed to remove these barriers and put an end to the tentacles of EU control over Northern Ireland. The Government needs to act and the Conservative Party’s manifesto at the next General Election must reaffirm our commitment to Northern Ireland and the importance of securing the integrity of the internal market within the UK”.
On her latter point—that they have indeed scrapped their previous promise in the last manifesto—it will take more than words in an election manifesto to prove that they are as good as they say. Some of us are aware that, in the Brexit negotiations, the EU did everything within its power to humiliate the United Kingdom for having the audacity, through the authority of the ballot box, to leave the EU. It has deviously but deliberately sought to undermine the unity of the United Kingdom.
I tell noble Lords, this House and the Government Front Bench: do not treat unionists as fools. We know a good deal when we see it, but we also know a bad deal when we see it. Surely, after all that we have endured over 30 years of IRA terrorism, we have a right to expect that a Government with the title “Conservative and Unionist Party” would tell us the true facts of the protocol and the Windsor Framework. I believe the Windsor Framework is but another part of the gameplay to destroy the union.
There are those who believe they can sleepwalk unionism into a united Ireland by stealth; but unionism is awake and alert, and is aware of the treacherous plan and will not comply. Any action of this Government in response to genuine unionist concerns over the Windsor Framework will be judged in the light of the seven tests already set by the DUP and clearly endorsed by the unionist electorate. Tinkering, sleight of hand or double-talk will not be acceptable. Actions will speak louder than words. I believe that wisdom will demand careful scrutiny of anything that the Government propose.