Northern Ireland After Brexit (Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee Report)

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not delay the Committee in repeating what both the chairman and the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, said, with which I am in complete agreement. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, for working with us on his report. It was wonderful to have these two reports going simultaneously. I thank the clerks of the House of Lords for working with the members of the committee, because it has been great fun and hard work, of course. I thank the organisations, both non-profit and enterprise organisations and companies, that have been in touch with the committee and me to put forward their case on what they feel is the deficit for them within Northern Ireland. I thank the businesses that we had the pleasure to visit and the other ones that invited me.

The one answer that we cannot give them, as others have said, is that we need a one-stop shop. The Government, in their reply to us, have promised this. It should be now, not in 2026-27. It is needed now and it must liaise with Brussels as well. It cannot just be about Britain and Northern Ireland; it must have Brussels’ input.

At the moment, there is a big deficit of goods going to Northern Ireland. We know that there are empty shelves, problems with getting parcels and problems with deliveries. I heard from haulage organisations and the committee heard from large supermarkets and others that they cannot get the goods, fresh goods in particular, across the border in good time to be delivered. There are problems at the ports and everywhere. This is an urgent issue. I know that the Government have heard us going on and on about it, but it is up to us, and it is destroying people’s lives every day, when they cannot get what they need. These are very basic goods: parts for cars and washing machines. There are problems with combi washing machines. These are daily lives. These are not just fancy goods.

Another issue that we need to look at is that, while this is going on, we will not be able to get people to invest in Northern Ireland from other parts of Europe and the world. We desperately need good investment to come to Northern Ireland. Under the Biden Administration, we had support from Joe Kennedy III to bring jobs and employment to Northern Ireland but, under the new regime in America, that has come to a halt. I would very much like to see the Government look at that again. Northern Ireland needs not only good employment but jobs that will bring apprenticeships, and it needs companies that have long-standing agreements that will want to do that. There is a deficit of skilled workers, as we talked about earlier and many times before.

If we do not have that for Northern Ireland’s GDP and education, its people will not have a future. I ask that we look at that as part of the one-stop shop, by having it appendaged to it in one way or another, so that we work on bringing employment and good jobs to Northern Ireland—not just back-office jobs but much more important ones. I hope that we can look at that for the future, because we need it. We also need everybody to work together and no longer in silos. We have started having engagements, but we need more engagement, clarity and transparency. We need the bodies all working around the same table. Now that we have come to this, it has to happen.

Further, as a committee, we should not be doing the scrutiny for Northern Ireland. There has to be some infrastructure in the Northern Ireland Assembly so that it can do its own scrutiny, employing people as clerks and other staff who can help it to do so. We can do the scrutiny, of course—it is a pleasure to do so, and it is interesting—but it is wrong for us to do it, and we said that in our report. I hope that, in the long term, we will be able to support the Northern Ireland Assembly in its scrutiny. We have had joint meetings with its scrutiny committee, but it is important that that comes in the future.

I do not want to delay the Committee any more. We need clarity and more engagement. The one-stop shop, with Brussels as well, must happen now, because this cannot go on. At every meeting we have had we have been told from the outside that there is no proper way of finding out what is going on—how the legislation is working. The Cabinet Office is trying, but there are not enough civil servants and there is not enough contact between Northern Ireland, Brussels and us on these clear issues that could make Northern Ireland go further.