My Lords, it is hardly surprising that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlighted this instrument as likely to be of interest to the House on the grounds that it is
“politically or legally important and gives rise to issues of public policy”.
To that, I would add that it is constitutionally important.
I am therefore grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for proposing this Motion to annul the regulations. Under them, the UK Government will impose EU import laws on certain packed agri-goods entering this country from the rest of the world such as basil, cut flowers, fruit, and certain chicken products from Thailand and China. Not only, therefore, is Northern Ireland to be subject to the EU’s economic and trade laws, or even the lighter-touch version we are told is the aim of the Windsor Framework for goods going there from GB, but so too is the whole of the UK to be under certain EU laws.
The Government say that they want to promote the integrity of the UK’s internal market. That is something they also claim to desire in the new Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. I suggest that one way to do that is to extend the UK’s post-Brexit trade freedoms to Northern Ireland and continue the serious negotiations for revising the 2019 agreement, which combined sticks with carrots. However, the Government intend to do so by imposing EU laws on the rest of the UK by statutory instrument and instead of the UK’s own statutory regime. That sounds to me to be mighty like the Chequers agreement, which was rejected the by House of Commons three times, but piecemeal and by the back door of statutory legislation. Can the Minister reassure me that this is not the case?
The Windsor Framework, which was at least put to a parliamentary vote, is, like most episodes in the complicated history of my native country, Ireland, testimony to the way difficult problems become intractable, and complexities become overwhelming as a result of political interests which want not to resolve them but to the exploit difficulty for political gain. We heard about some of those interests tonight. The Windsor Framework was announced by the then Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak. It was said to ameliorate the obstacle-ridden movement of goods from one part of the UK to another —Northern Ireland. There was much fanfare, many photocalls with the EU commissioner, warm words and a hotchpotch of operational changes to another flawed settlement imposed by the EU on this country: the Northern Ireland protocol.
However, the protocol was not supposed to be permanent. In parts, it made it clear that both parties accepted the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and the integrity of the UK’s internal market. Each party was also bound to best endeavours legally to resolve what was acknowledged to be a temporary arrangement and designed—I fear—to meet the EU’s desire to keep Northern Ireland as a fief subject to EU economic law. By retaining under its laws part of the sovereign UK, the EU violated the Good Friday agreement, whereby constitutional change must be by the consent of the people, and the promise in the 2019 settlement to respect and accept the integrity of the internal market. This instrument under the Windsor Framework therefore has a flawed pedigree.
I did not vote for the Windsor Framework. I did not and do not support the imposition of EU laws on one part of the UK in violation of this country’s sovereignty without a policy of such importance being a matter of primary legislation. It should not be smuggled in the back door to undo the gains of Brexit for most of this country in order somehow to right the wrongs under which Northern Ireland continues to suffer.