Brexit: Devolved Administrations

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, like other Members of your Lordships’ House, I thank the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, and congratulate him on introducing this debate. Even though most of my ancestors were Irish or Cornish, I speak in the debate today as one of the few people from England rather than from one of the devolved nations, Although I like to think that I might be entitled to an Irish passport I believe that I am not entitled to one and I shall speak, therefore, to the second part of the title of the debate and refer to the opportunities for strengthening the union of the United Kingdom.

As my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness pointed out, the Liberal Democrats is the one party which is unambiguous in its support for both the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and for the European Union. For us, the two unions have long been important.

In her maiden speech in the other place, the late Jo Cox MP said there is more that unites us than divides us, and yet just a week before the referendum in June 2016 she was tragically killed. The debates ahead of the referendum began to highlight some of the deep divisions in the United Kingdom, and the vote to leave the EU on 23 June highlighted many other divisions—obviously between leavers and remainers but also between the metropolitan elites and those who felt left behind. There are people for whom the idea that reducing roaming charges is a great benefit of the European Union, but how is that a benefit if you never travel abroad? There is division between the elites—those people who are seen as having a particular interest in membership of the European Union—and those for whom EU membership seems to offer very little. There are divisions between urban and rural areas and, most importantly for today’s debate, differences between Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England.

When travelling to north Wales just after the referendum I spoke to someone—we were travelling to a meeting together—who said, “I am regretting coming to Wales because they all voted to leave”. I said, “That is not quite true—they did not all vote to leave”. She said, “I suppose you are one of those leavers then”. I said, “No, I am not. In fact I am a Liberal Democrat remainer but I feel it is necessary to point out that while a majority of people in Wales voted to leave it was not all the Welsh people—just as it was not all the English people voting to leave or all the Scots and people in Northern Ireland voting to remain. Occasionally we have to remember these things”. I sighed a bit and went into the dinner, where somebody sat next to me and spent the whole evening telling me why it was absolutely essential that we leave the European Union, rehearsing all the arguments we had had before. I thought, “This Brexit process is going to be rather long and rather tedious”. So, in many ways, it is proving.

When she became the leader of the Government, Theresa May stressed the importance of healing divisions. Then in January last year in her Lancaster House speech she stressed not just a general healing of divisions but the importance, as she put it, of,

“the preservation of our precious union”,

which was going to be put,

“at the heart of everything we do. Because it is only by coming together as one great union of nations and people that we can make the most of the opportunities ahead”.

Obviously that is what the noble Lord, Lord McInnes, thinks, yet so far we are not seeing that great coming together. How often do people in England bother to think about the interests of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland? It is perhaps rather less than the EU 27, because one of the key issues brought to the fore in the first phase of negotiations was precisely the situation of Northern Ireland, the relationship with the Republic and the issue of whether there would be a border, or what sort of border there would be between the north and the south. We have already heard from the noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Bew, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, of the importance of those border questions. As a non-Irish person I have no intention of getting into the detail of Stormont and the devolved Administrations, but the question of Northern Ireland is a matter not just for the United Kingdom, although it is vital for us, but for the European Union and the European Economic Area.

I was in Oslo two days ago giving a public lecture. People were asking, “What is happening about the border with Northern Ireland? What is going on? Please can you explain to me what is meant by the idea that there will not be a hard border?” There will be full regulatory alignment, which is obviously what the European Union and the Republic of Ireland want, yet it is not what Arlene Foster, the leader of the DUP, appears to want. She wants there to be no difference between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

I would be most grateful if the Minister could explain to us—after so many months of negotiations, nearly two years after the referendum and rather closer to the point when we are meant to be leaving the European Union than voting on leaving it—what Her Majesty’s Government understand by having no hard border, yet the United Kingdom is, we are led to believe, leaving the European Union, the single market and the customs union? If we do all those things it appears to most observers, whether in the United Kingdom, the EU 27 or Norway, that we are trying to square an impossible circle. Finally, does he really believe that the Prime Minister is putting all the effort she could into ensuring that this “precious union”, as she calls it, will really be stronger in the event of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union and that the United Kingdom will not feel that its peoples are being divided and taken out in a way that damages their national interests?