My Lords, I will move Amendment 17 and speak to Amendment 18. Both on the Irish border and have been largely superseded technically, if not in spirit, by the December deal. I will also speak to Amendment 26 on the Irish Sea, on which I will seek leave to divide, with the permission of your Lordships’ House. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Altmann, Lady Suttie and Lady Ritchie, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack.
First, I will address Amendments 17 and 18 on the Good Friday agreement and the Irish border. As I have argued before, both on this Bill and on other Brexit-related Bills, I am profoundly convinced that the objectives of Amendment 18 are absolutely essential to provide for full protection for the Good Friday/Belfast agreement in all its parts, and, as part of that, to prevent a hardening of the border on the island of Ireland. Very importantly, the amendment is also consistent with, and indeed complementary to, the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, into which this House placed important text along similar lines to Amendment 18, with the eventual agreement of the Government in the other place at the final stage.
There is now agreement between the UK and the EU on how to implement the Irish protocol, which is fully incorporated in the December deal, but we must help the Government to keep to their word and stated commitment to the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, not least—crucially—when negotiating future trade agreements.
The future relationship agreement, negotiated just before Christmas, thin though it is, at least removes the question of tariffs from the long list of barriers that Brexit has put up around this country. Those of us who have served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, whether Labour or Conservative, know how politically unique and ever-fragile matters are on the island of Ireland.
Amendment 18 is consistent with our international legal obligations. In fact, it will help with trade negotiations, because our potential trading partners will know where they stand and what the parameters related to the protocol are, and it would therefore be good to hear the Minister uphold the principles within the amendment when he replies, even if technically its drafting is now outdated because of the deal struck in December.
Let us remind ourselves one more time why we have the Northern Ireland protocol. The border is the key sensitive issue: it is 300 miles long, with 300 crossings, unlike almost every other border in the world. Of course, there is more to the protocol than the border. We have the unique arrangements under the Good Friday/Belfast agreement for north-south co-operation: no less than 157 different areas of cross-border work and co-operation in Ireland, north and south.
I have said it before here and will say it again: the work of successive UK and Irish Governments, in helping courageous and visionary leaders in Northern Ireland, was all about taking borders down, not putting them up. It is vital that the United Kingdom and its Government keep in line with that. No new international trade agreement between the United Kingdom and another nation must ever be ratified unless it is compatible with the Good Friday agreement and Northern Ireland Act 1998, is fully compliant with the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, does not negatively affect any form of north-south trade in goods and services, and does not create physical infrastructure related to customs checks, customs or regulatory compliance checks. These are all things that Ministers say they agree with, and they are contained in Amendment 18.
I turn to Amendment 26, on the Irish Sea, on which, as I said, I will seek to divide. It is designed to ensure unfettered market access for goods moving between Northern Ireland and other parts of the United Kingdom’s internal market, and unfettered market access for services between the two. It is also designed to ensure that there are no tariffs or customs procedures for goods originating in Northern Ireland that are entering Great Britain so that there is no discrimination against Northern Ireland’s businesses.
We had significant progress last month in the meeting of the co-chairs of the UK-EU joint committee, which was most welcome and not before time. That “agreement in principle” was to implement the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland in a way that reduces potential friction and burdens on businesses come 1 January. However, the protocol is not an event but the environment or a process in which Northern Ireland’s economy will have to develop, and many uncertainties remain for Northern Ireland’s businesses, which have suffered huge stress because of that over the past year, and in many respects are still suffering.
The conditions of Northern Ireland’s economic development will be directly affected by the UK’s trade deals to be sought and negotiated with other countries beyond the European Union. This is not just by virtue of its access to those free trade agreements; it is also by virtue of the potential consequences of those deals on Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market.
The protocol that was agreed and ratified as part of the UK’s withdrawal agreement puts Northern Ireland in a wholly new position. It is a unique set-up in terms of global trade, let alone a distinctive arrangement with the European Union. The protocol text makes it clear that there are significant limitations and boundaries to its scope, most particularly when it comes to trade. Article 4 states that
“nothing in this Protocol shall prevent the United Kingdom from including Northern Ireland in the territorial scope of any agreements it may conclude with third countries”.
Article 4 also states that
“nothing in this Protocol shall prevent the United Kingdom from concluding agreements with a third country that grant goods produced in Northern Ireland preferential access to that country’s market on the same terms as goods produced in other parts of the United Kingdom.”
Furthermore, Article 6 of the protocol states that there is nothing in it that would prevent
“the United Kingdom from ensuring unfettered market access for goods moving from Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom’s internal market”—
as this amendment states. Those restrictions on the scope of the protocol put the onus squarely on the United Kingdom to deliver such things for Northern Ireland—access to the UK’s free trade agreements and unfettered access to the markets in Great Britain.
However, what the protocol does not and cannot do is ensure that there is no discrimination against Northern Ireland, and no knock-on consequences for its place in the UK’s internal market when it comes to the UK’s future trading relationships.
We saw with the recent UK-Japan free trade agreement an acknowledgement that there could be an “inconsistency” between a free trade agreement and the protocol. Thankfully, in the case of the UK-Japanese deal this will be minimal, because—I stress this—of the pre-existing conditions of the Japanese trading partnership with the EU. It was much easier to protect Northern Ireland’s situation in this new Japan-UK deal because the Japan-EU deal meant that Japan could offer “full extended cumulation” in its deal with the UK: it could count all goods with EU origins, and even those part-processed in the EU, as being from the UK. This helps to keep Northern Ireland, which is producing to EU standards, in the ring.
These conditions, however, will not be the same for many future free trade agreements. It is quite conceivable that differences between the UK’s rules and the EU’s rules in trading with any particular country could bring friction for Northern Ireland, both on the entry of its goods into Great Britain and on the entry of goods from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Given these risks, it is quite extraordinary that the UK Government’s own impact assessment on the UK-Japan free trade agreement explicitly acknowledges that it did
“not explicitly take account of any impacts arising from the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland”.
Amendment 26 is necessary for four main reasons. The first is the distinctiveness of Northern Ireland’s economic and trading position under the deal. The second is its dependence on the commitment of the UK to delivering on filling the gaps in its trading arrangements. The third is the possibility of tensions between the
terms of new UK free trade agreements and Northern Ireland’s position in the protocol. The fourth and final reason is the failure of the UK Government, in their most substantial non-EU free trade agreement to date—with Japan—to give due consideration to this matter.
We can be sure that the economic and trading environment for Northern Ireland—de jure in the UK’s customs territory, but applying the European Union’s customs code—will become only more complicated over time. It is therefore absolutely essential to put protections for Northern Ireland into UK domestic law that ensure that government commitments to this most vulnerable of UK regions are upheld and secured, even as the tough decisions and pay-offs in international trade negotiations become an increasingly familiar reality.
The same applies to services as to goods. Though they were not covered by the protocol—or by the deal struck with the EU before Christmas—and are often not included in free trade agreements, we must ensure that there is no discrimination against services either, because they are a very important part of both the Great Britain and Northern Ireland economies. I therefore urge your Lordships to support Amendment 26, on unfettered access for Northern Ireland, when the House divides.
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