My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Howard. I am also a member of your Lordships’ committee on the Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol. As a resident of Northern Ireland, I firmly believe that the Bill is
not the way forward. In fact, it acts as an impediment and a barrier to those negotiations. I am pleased that the negotiations between the UK and the EU have resumed, because there are issues with the protocol. I speak as someone who supports the protocol because, during and post the Brexit referendum, we always said that Northern Ireland needed to have special status—and the current UK Government negotiated the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol. So, as regards as any other stories that might be coming at us, we might be talking porkies, as my noble friend Lord Murphy said, and the Government should remember that they negotiated it.
There are issues with the protocol that have to be addressed properly in the negotiations—in relation to tariffs on steel and in relation to groupage and the issues encountered by the haulage industry—but these can be resolved only by proper negotiations between the UK and the EU, without placing guns on the table to act as impediments to the discussions. There are challenges and difficulties in the Bill: it is a breach of international law; Ministers are given undue powers to legislate later on to do what they wish; and it will not deal with the problems in Northern Ireland.
Over the summer, I talked to many people—including members of Newry Chamber and the Warrenpoint chamber—who operate along the border. I talked to people in industries, including Seatruck Ferries and HMT Shipping in Warrenpoint and Lakeland Dairies. For the dairy industry, which is all-island, the Bill will legislate inefficiencies into the dairy supply chain with the dual regulatory regime and certification process. The Bill does not work for primary producers, and it has the potential to undermine Northern Ireland’s access to the EU single market. I have talked to the Ulster Farmers Union and, although it sees issues with the protocol, it also sees benefits.
The Bill rejects the NIP joint committee process for resolving disputes. It removes the ECJ from NIP decisions, and VAT and excise duties will be set by UK Ministers, rather than at agreed EU rates. In fact, the Bill is at variance with the Good Friday agreement because the principle of consent in that agreement centres around the issue of unity—“Do you want to be part of a united Ireland or to remain within the United Kingdom?”—and we do not need any confusion around that issue. The equality and human rights commissions, which are mandated to look after Article 2 of the protocol, greatly fear that Clauses 13, 15 and 20 will dilute those human rights and equality protections. This needs to be looked into.
Environmental organisations, such as Greener UK, believe that the Bill is
“extremely broad in scope and creates significant risk to the natural environment across the single biogeographic unit of the island of Ireland”,
through the powers taken by government without parliamentary scrutiny and, above all, the insufficient protections for the natural environment within the protocol.
There are areas for negotiation: the resolution of the customs issues and controls; the need for an SPS veterinary agreement; and the solution to the EU steel tariffs in Northern Ireland. We want streamlining, with no more individual certificates for agri-food products.
Through Vice-President Šefčovič, the EU has indicated that it is prepared not only to negotiate but to provide those solutions, so let us get down to those negotiations. Only through proper negotiations between the UK and the EU will we achieve success and the restoration of our political institutions of the Good Friday agreement, which should never have been blocked or brought down in the first place.
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