Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Ten minutes is the time usually taken to make opening remarks, and popularity is something that I have always shunned.
The shadow Foreign Secretary is right: at the heart of this is trust or the absence of it—or, as she leaves the Chamber, the absence of Truss. Is the protocol perfect? No, it is not. The question, therefore, is not whether but how changes should be made. There are many ways to achieve change, but this Bill is not one of them.
The Office of Speaker’s Counsel has provided a legal opinion to all members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, and it raises enormous concerns about this Bill’s legality. The Foreign Secretary and others have tried to conflate—they have fallen into the trap of conflating—the resurrection of devolution and the protocol. Those are two very separate and different workstreams, and we need to decouple them. Treaty making is reserved to this place; devolution is the duty of the politicians of Northern Ireland. We can and should be able to see the resurrection of one and negotiation on the other, but to fall into the trap of conflating them, the result of which is this Bill, is very sad indeed.
This is not a well thought-out Bill, it is not a good Bill and it is not a constitutional Bill. The integrity of the United Kingdom can be changed only via the Good Friday agreement. The protocol and trading arrangements do not interrupt or change the constitutional integrity of the UK, so I do not agree with those who try to position this as a constitutional Bill.