My Lords, I raise this issue because the question of the Irish border has increasingly become a major obstacle to the whole issue of withdrawal. Despite a debate last week of some two hours, very little progress has been made.
For me, this whole debate has been immensely enlightening and indeed entertaining, if sometimes a little long. I have been rather disappointed in the Government’s rejection again and again of noble Lords’ suggestions. It reminded me of AP Herbert, who, after he had chaired a committee and was asked to make recommendations, made them, and they were rejected by the Government. He wrote a short letter to the Times saying that the Government,
“like an elderly hypochondriac, is always asking for a second opinion but never accepts it”.
At any rate, I will quickly set out the assumptions on which I think we agreed last week. The common travel area must be retained. There can be no physical border for the movement of people by land between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. There should be symmetry for persons travelling from Northern Ireland to the Republic and those travelling from the Republic to the north. The national security of the UK will be protected and enhanced against the growing threat from terrorism regardless of how the terrorists seek to enter the United Kingdom.
It was made very clear in the debate last week that to impede the free movement of people over the land border would intrude on the social life and indeed the community relations that have, thankfully, been building up since the Good Friday agreement. I have what I hope is a simple and practical suggestion by which these objectives could be achieved. I do not of course claim to be able to help on the parallel issue of trade and the movement of goods over the border.
Let me first describe briefly how I came to the conclusion that I shall put to your Lordships. Some months ago, my wife and I flew from London Heathrow to Dublin to visit friends. My wife is Italian and has an Italian passport. I have a UK passport. On arrival in Dublin Airport my passport was looked at and waved through. My wife’s passport was scanned and she was waved through. The whole process took seconds rather than minutes.
When we returned to Heathrow some days later, by the same airline—British Airways—all the passengers on the aircraft after disembarking were directed by a special route straight to baggage collection. There was no immigration procedure whatever. I should mention that there were a multitude of nationalities on board the aircraft, although of course I have no idea what passports they held—nor did anyone else have any idea. However, it appeared that there was absolutely no sort of border control. My proposal is therefore that this asymmetry be removed by making the border of the island of Britain the border for those travelling to or from the island of Ireland. The immigration procedures would be identical for both directions of travel.
To those who say that this removes or infringes the rights of passport-free movement I would reply that to be required to show that you hold a passport that entitles you to passport-free movement is no more an infringement of your rights than it would be if any of us claimed that to carry—and wear, as we are nowadays required to—our parliamentary passes is an infringement of our rights to be in the Palace of Westminster. Surely this simple measure of common sense, made necessary by the sad state of the world we now live in,
must trump the memories and prejudices that were so justifiably generated by the many sad periods of the history of the relationship between the British and the Irish. I feel that we need some action and I hope that I am not going to hear from the Minister that it is all impossible, unless he has a better idea to suggest. I beg to move.