That brings me to my next point—that introducing reserved matters to the North South Ministerial Council would mean that the controversies that have currently stopped it working, and stopped the Northern Ireland Assembly working, would be imported into the North South Ministerial Council so that we would not get the kind of agreement that the Member talks about. Amendment 14 would reinforce the impact that the protocol has had on the current institutions of the Belfast agreement and bring them into the remit of the North South Ministerial Council in future.
New clause 15 goes down the same route of introducing an input for the North South Ministerial Council, and another barrier to the introduction of dual regulation in the Bill, by requiring that the Executive endorse the arrangements—and in a way that, as we have heard, would exclude Unionists because the SDLP has now adopted majoritarianism with regard to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
A comparison was made with Brexit. Brexit was a majority decision. It was not a majority decision in Northern Ireland; it was a majority decision of the people of the United Kingdom as a whole. A referendum was held across the whole of the United Kingdom and it was binding in all parts of the United Kingdom, regardless of pockets where there was a majority for Brexit or a majority against it. If we had gone down the route of consensus on a referendum as suggested by the SDLP—which would of course be impossible—then what would we have done about London or other pockets across the United Kingdom? We cannot make that comparison between the dealings of this Bill regarding the arrangements within the Assembly and a referendum vote.
I hope that the Committee will accept the points I have made and will not vote in favour of those amendments.