You can please some of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time. Like my noble friend Lord Hain, I should like to have seen more reference in the amendment to the customs union that has to be in some way adopted to ensure that there is no very hard border. I also agree, however, with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack: the fact that this amendment is before us at all is an indicator of the work of the Government, the Minister and his ministerial colleagues, including the Member for Worcester, who has been dealing with this. The Bill now refers to the Good Friday agreement, north-south ministerial bodies and the need to avoid a physical border with all its trappings. I am sure that in the months ahead the Minister will be able to find some answer to my noble friend Lord Hain in the
Trade Bill that will come before us—it is a hugely important issue—but I very much take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey. He, the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and I were at the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in County Sligo last week meeting Members of Parliament not just from Ireland and the United Kingdom but from the devolved institutions, and there was unanimous agreement that Brexit is dominating British-Irish relations. No other country in the European Union will be affected like Ireland, and it is very important that we acknowledge that in Parliament as well as in government.
The other point made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is also vital. The Government must concentrate their efforts on restoring the institutions in Belfast. Only this week, the Government announced extra money for the National Health Service. The Barnett consequentials of that for Wales and Scotland will be decided by Ministers and Parliaments. Who will decide where that extra money—hundreds of millions of pounds—will go in Northern Ireland when there is no Executive? More significantly in the context of this debate, there is no political voice from Northern Ireland in the negotiations dealing with these important issues. I am sure the Minister will have this uppermost in his mind in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, we accept that this amendment is not everything we wanted, but it is a lot of it, and I hope that the Commons will accept it when it goes back to them. There is absolute recognition that, 20 years after the signing of the Good Friday agreement, we must not allow Brexit to interfere with all the good work that has resulted from that agreement in 1998.