I will not begin by following my noble friend with an autobiographical diversion, but I want to start with what he said at the beginning of his remarks. It is not outwith our experience in this Chamber or elsewhere to begin a speech by saying that everything one wanted to say has already been said, then to say it all over again rather less well than some others said it.
I wish to be very brief. I will not follow the arguments about the lack of wisdom of turning Henry VIII into our legislative guru in this House. I will not follow what has been said about the way in which the doctrine of necessity was tortured in a way the American constitution would surely regard as “cruel and unusual” treatment into providing whatever Ministers wanted it to say.
I want to borrow from a corruption of what Lord Alfred Douglas said and raise another issue which has not for some time dared to speak its name, and that is Brexit. We sometimes get the legislation and arguments about it the wrong way round. It was Brexit which was a threat to the Good Friday agreement and the relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic. The Northern Ireland protocol was meant to deal with that in an acceptable way.
The last Prime Minister—let me get this right—but two had her own proposals for dealing with the problem, which was to have the whole of the United Kingdom more or less inside the customs union and single market. That was opposed by the last Prime Minister but one and the European Research Group. They saw off Theresa May and produced the Northern Ireland protocol as their own answer to the problem. At the time, the then Prime Minister gave lots of assurances to the DUP and others that the Northern Ireland protocol would not have any effect on trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I assume it was his usual habit of saying things he hoped would be true but turned out not to be, or maybe he just had not read what he had signed up to.
We are left with this debate about the Northern Ireland protocol. I think we are debating it with a Prime Minister who wants to unite the Conservative Party and the country, rescue the economy from Singapore-on-Thames-ism and do what he can to bring us all together in that very difficult fight. In doing so, I am sure he will be aware of the impact on the economy of having another row with the European Union, which remains—even though we are outside it—our largest trade market. It cannot make sense, as my noble friend said earlier, to do that. I very much agree with what both my noble friends Lord Hailsham and Lord Howard said on this. It makes sense to give Mr Sunak and the new Government a chance of looking at these issues again.
5.15 pm
Do we need what people have called a “shotgun under the arm” or a “pistol on the table” to encourage our friends in the European Union to do whatever we want them to do? I remember Enoch Powell suggesting that Iain Macleod should have a pistol on the table when he went into discussions with Mr Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home, the then leadership of the Conservative Party. Confronted with the question that the pistol might go off, Enoch Powell said, “Yes, that’s what pistols do; they have a trigger. When firing with a shotgun or a pistol, you are not firing doves; you are firing pellets, which kill doves”. So if we are serious in our negotiations about really wanting a deal with the European Union, what is the point of still using this blunderbuss, shotgun or pistol and thinking that it is necessary to have it on the table? It surely adds to the confusion among those with whom we are negotiating and gives them perfectly valid reason to doubt whether we are really sincere in the whole enterprise. Some say that we have to do it because we cannot challenge the European Research Group’s veto over policy, or because we have said things to the DUP leaders that we cannot go back on—but what about the things we have said to the majority of the community in Northern Ireland?
It would be a great help all round if the Prime Minister would simply encourage people to go slow on all this and listen to what has been said in this debate by my noble friend Lady Altmann and others, which would be the right and sensible way forward. It cannot make sense to proceed in this way with a rotten Bill, which may be regarded, at best, as a way of getting other people to the negotiating table. It is no way for a grown-up Government to behave. We now have a
Government again with adult supervision, so I hope that we can see the Government behaving sensibly on this in relation to our European friends. I am grateful to both my noble friends Lady Williams and Lady Altmann for giving us the chance to talk about this this afternoon.