My Lords, I rise to speak to the regret Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. She and I are very old friends and have agreed and still agree about many things, and I regret not being able to support the regret Motion that she has put before the House tonight, although I agree with much of what she said and much of what has been said from the DUP Benches.
I was particularly encouraged to hear the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, say that the crucial thing was the response to the seven tests. That is a very important matter. I also noticed that the first test makes reference to Article VI of the Act of Union, and the fulfilment of that promise. I regard that as somewhat encouraging. As the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, is a man of great honour, I am certain that he will hold to that position, as it is a matter of some substance. What has happened is that we have moved away from the seven tests, and much of the discussion tonight has moved away from the seven tests.
To go to the heart of the regret Motion of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, the Windsor Framework is actually based on technical data-sharing and agreed application and reinforcement. This is a key part of it. In late 2022, I think, in a series of asks, we were able to say to the European Union that we have a new technology that permits us to do things in a new way. The Windsor Framework is not just about that, but it certainly builds on that. Of course, if we refuse to share data, the EU can respond by not accepting the easements that it has put in place and the changes that it has made. But this is a two-way street, and it cannot act arbitrarily—it is as simple as that; it is that sort of agreement. It is important to understand that.
Numerous solutions have been suggested to the 2017 agreement—the UK-EU agreement, which was a major defeat for the United Kingdom. A snap election was called, and the Government were really on their knees. The Irish Government pushed for certain advantages, which it won—and we are still here tonight, six years later, having not escaped from the toils of that Irish negotiation. It is on record that Irish officials were surprised at the ease with which the UK Government conceded. That having been said, it is water under the bridge; we are still here after six years trying to sort it out, but we have an international agreement, and the May withdrawal agreement did not even mention the
Northern Ireland Assembly. It is obvious that we have moved on a considerable degree over seven years, in respect of the Government, with regard to the opinions and views of the people of Northern Ireland, the Stormont brake being an obvious example in the Northern Irish Assembly.
I feel that I should say one thing. The latest polling gives the Windsor Framework 60% support in Northern Ireland. It is correct to refer to the polling at the weekend, as the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, did, which shows strong support for the union. There is very strong support for it still in Northern Ireland—there is a very substantial lead. But it is also true, although support for the union is at 50% in that report, and for a united Ireland 30%, if I remember rightly, that support for the Windsor Framework is running at 60% in the latest academic polling. Sometimes, when one listens to the rhetoric about how terrible it all is, one would think that the people of Northern Ireland must be incredibly stupid if 60% of them think that it is actually working quite well and they are prepared to support it. It is worth bearing that in mind.
The opinions of other people in Northern Ireland do matter. I have stood beside the DUP through many debates in this House and supported its objections, but the opinions of the whole community also matter in the consideration of these outcomes. The 2017 report was unleashed in our lives and pockmarked everything since—for example, the concept of the island economy. This is also related to the so-called mapping exercise, brilliantly intellectually deconstructed in the Irish Times by Newton Emerson a couple of years ago. These concepts—duff, essentially—play into British official documents, and the United Kingdom Government say that they will continue to support these things, some of them slightly fantasy elements.
We are nearing the end of the road. The government White Paper that accompanied the Windsor Framework marks a gradual detachment by the UK Government from this level of green fantasy. This is not to say that there is not an island economy in agri-food, by the way, which is one reason why a hard border would have been very difficult, but overall there is not an island economy. The island economy argument has been used by the TUV in particular to say, “We have created an island economy; this will lead to a politically united Ireland”. The difficulty with that is that it is exactly the same argument that Jim Allister put 25 years ago about the Good Friday agreement—which has now been supported, I am glad to see, from the DUP Benches. It is exactly the same argument he put then. Twenty-five years ago, the facts did not bear him out. The island economy was not a growing thing that was going to lead there—two economies on the island of Ireland leading to political unity—but, 25 years later, heigh-ho, we are back with a version of the same argument.
My friend Lord Trimble, in his last public act, introduced a paper for the think tank Policy Exchange by Graham Gudgin. It argued that
“there are two distinct economies on the island of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland is a sovereign state, fully part of the European Union but also one the world’s largest tax havens … With different currencies, different fiscal and monetary arrangements including different interest rates and VAT excise duties, and with separate legal systems, the two areas are distinct … Only 4% of
the goods and services produced in Northern Ireland cross the border to the Republic while 16% go to GB; 31% of imports to NI are from GB. Only 2% of the Republic’s exports go to Northern Ireland … Currency, tax rates, excise duties, social security systems, government spending regimes, interest rates, credit and banking rules and business law all differ from those across the border”.
This is really quite important: there are two economies on the island of Ireland, and the Northern Ireland one is locked into the UK in a massive way.
In his realistic worst-case scenario about the future, Dr Gudgin acknowledged that
“the NI economy will be less different from the Republic than would have been the case without the Protocol but little less different than has been the case for decades”.