My Lords, I too support my noble friend’s amendment. When we look at this pointless and rather daft Bill, we realise that it has achieved absolutely nothing. They would have been more influenced by the man in the moon than by this Bill.
The Bill might have done something, but so far has done nothing, to achieve progress in Northern Ireland. I would be very interested if the people negotiating on the European Union’s behalf looked at a video of the last couple of hours’ debate in this Chamber. They would then realise that these are not the “technical issues” that we are told are being resolved at the moment. It is not about oranges, sausages and the rest of it; it is
about people’s identity in Northern Ireland, whether they be unionists, who feel that their own British identity is threatened by the protocol, or nationalists, who feel that they are threatened in some other way.
The first thing the Government should understand is that in some ways the negotiations now have to be parallel: a negotiation between the European Union—with, as I said earlier, a much bigger involvement by the Irish Government—and the United Kingdom Government on the protocol itself, in parallel with negotiations to restore the institutions of the Good Friday agreement. Those institutions have effectively collapsed and there is a case for looking at them again. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, referred to the Taoiseach’s comment about changing the rules on the way the Assembly and Executive operate—remembering, of course, that the St Andrews agreement changed the rules of the Good Friday agreement. But they were changed by agreement. That is the issue: they were not changed unilaterally by one side or the other.
In the next six months—I will come to that in a second—there should be a structured negotiation on the one hand with the European Union and on the other between the political parties in Northern Ireland and, where appropriate, on strands 2 and 3, with the Irish Government. I do not think that has entered the Government’s head over the past eight to nine months. For all sorts of reasons, which everybody knows about, they have not really been bothered; they have let things drift. There have not been proper negotiations. It seems to me that one of the Government’s most important responsibilities is to ensure that Northern Ireland does not go backwards 30 years—and it is quite possible that that could happen.
I think the European Union sometimes does not understand the absolute uniqueness of the Northern Ireland situation, of the Good Friday agreement and of the identity issue. There is no comparison anywhere within Europe, perhaps even in the world, with what has happened in Northern Ireland, and it seems to me that that has not been appreciated by the people doing the negotiating.
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So what should happen? In six months’ time, we will have the anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. We have six months in which proper negotiations should take place. Forget the elections; they will achieve nothing. They will cost £7 million but nothing will really happen and we will come back with a more hardened and polarised Northern Ireland. Forget the elections and have a proper negotiation over six months with people who understand Northern Ireland and have lived their lives in Northern Ireland to try to deal with the issue, and similarly with the European Union. Then we will have the symbolic anniversary of 25 years of the Good Friday agreement, then the St Andrews agreement, and perhaps we will get somewhere —but that must include people in Northern Ireland. You cannot negotiate above their heads.
Any agreement must be owned by the political parties in Northern Ireland. We can talk about vetoes and consent; you can out-veto yourself until you go into oblivion. What we mean by consent is agreement
by positive consent—a positive consensus, which is really what underlies everything we have done in Northern Ireland over three decades. Forget elections, have proper negotiations and let us resolve this issue.