My first response is that I did not advocate Brexit. The protocol will never be a clean solution to these issues. There is no perfect outcome when a single market is broken up in the way that has happened. This is about managing and mitigating the fallout.
The hon. Gentleman may well be pleased to know that I recognise his point about eggs. I have written to a Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to advocate for ongoing flexibility on that. For some agricultural products, Great Britain is our main market, but for others—particularly milk and the wider dairy sector—the Republic of Ireland and beyond is the key market. There are a lot of subtleties there that we have to work through.
There is frustration at the moment about the fact that we are almost in danger of re-treading a lot of old arguments that I hoped had been put to bed, but which seem to be resurfacing. With reference to Brexit and Northern Ireland, there are essentially only three choices available to policy makers. The first is to go for a soft Brexit, minimising diversions between the European Union and the UK or Great Britain, and that would ease tensions particularly in relation to Northern Ireland. The second is to go for a hard border on the island of Ireland, which, for various reasons, is politically and economically unviable. The third is to have some form of special arrangement for Northern Ireland—we could call it a “protocol”, or we could call it something else. That involves Northern Ireland being treated differently in certain respects, which is not new; it has been part and parcel of the Northern Ireland’s entire history from the early 1920s.
People get exercised about the Acts of Union being breached, but no such arguments were made in 1920, 1949 or even in 1998 with the Good Friday agreement. In practice, a single-party Unionist Government in Belfast were more than happy to diverge from the rest of the United Kingdom whenever that was viewed as in their interests. That is before we even get to the current iteration of devolution.
I will focus in particular on the democratic deficit. As I have already said, that was not an issue prior to Brexit, when the UK had full representation at all levels of the European Union. Our biggest democratic deficit by far is the failure to have an Assembly or an Executive alongside the other institutions of the Good Friday agreement. Looking ahead, we need to drill down and see what is most important in terms of addressing the democratic deficit. I recognise that there is an issue, as did the European Union in its October 2021 non-paper.
The key issue is ensuring that Northern Ireland officials, businesses, civic organisations and political voices are able to get in at ground zero whenever a new EU law that may become applicable to Northern Ireland is
being designed. As I am sure everyone in the Chamber will appreciate, the most important time to try to influence a law is before the final decision is taken, rather than while it is being ratified through the various structures, when it becomes much more difficult to change the course of action. The Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), made reference to Norway. Places such as Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland and even Switzerland, which are outside the European Union but are part of the single market or within its orbit, direct most of their lobbying energy at Brussels. We do not at present have that route directly in Northern Ireland, and that is what I want to see addressed when we talk about a democratic deficit.
By contrast, the sign-off of EU law is a secondary issue. In practice, once those laws are developed, it is in our interests to go along with them to preserve dual market access. However, I have concerns about the tenor of the democratic deficit emerging from this deal. If we end up in a situation in which there is a lack of certainty about Northern Ireland’s ongoing compliance with the aspects of EU law relevant to us gaining access to the single market, that will have a detrimental impact on the certainty of Northern Ireland’s existing businesses that they can trade with the EU. That huge issue may well deter investors from coming to Northern Ireland. There is the danger of a big asterisk beside Northern Ireland, meaning that, although we have access to the single market, it will say between brackets that it is subject to whatever mechanism is used to try to cover up this non-existent issue. That very process creates uncertainty for businesses.
I do not want to see a situation whereby, in trying to fix one particular problem in the current stand-off, we end up perhaps inadvertently creating a wider problem that acts to the detriment of our current and future businesses and the future prosperity of Northern Ireland. People talk about the “sweet spot” of Northern Ireland’s dual market access, but that will only come to fruition if we do several things. We need to promote it politically and through our investment agency, but we must not create any uncertainty in that regime beyond what we currently have.
That also applies to the European Court of Justice, for example. Whenever people talk about the European Court of Justice coming in and imposing things on Northern Ireland, I say the opposite: the Court is a means to an end. If we are abiding by a certain aspect of EU law, the Court comes as part of it. If we want to put various layers in between, that is fine—nobody will object to that particular point. But the converse is that there may well be a situation in which there is uncertainty about the access of Northern Ireland businesses to parts of the single market, and in which we are wrongly blocked from access in investment decisions, procurement opportunities or things along those lines. In that context, the European Court of Justice becomes our potential ally, opening up those doors that have been wrongly shut in the face of Northern Ireland businesses. Again, it is important that we do not inadvertently throw that out and miss the wider point of what is in the best economic interests of Northern Ireland.
I will conclude on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. It is appropriate that the protocol Bill is parked or drifts away—or however that may happen. I trust that the Secretary of State, who has been at the coalface, will appreciate this point more than most. Progress has been made over the past number of months because, under this Government, trust has been rebuilt with the European Union. We saw that with the breakthroughs on data sharing and, just before Christmas, on longer grace periods for veterinary medicines. But we cannot build trust and, at the same time, retain the tool to break that same trust. That is not going to close this deal.
I wish the Government well over the coming hours and days—but hopefully not weeks—in concluding a deal, but that deal has to be one that works in the interests of all the people of Northern Ireland, not just those from a Unionist background, and that works for the future economy and prosperity of our region.
2.26 pm