Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 13th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, as usual. I have to say that I have never heard those requests.

Amendment 10, again tabled by the hon. Member for Foyle, relates to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland. They are, of course, important and well-respected institutions. They were established on the basis of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. They undertake important duties and any change to their remit should not happen arbitrarily. The Government engage regularly with the commissions and they have powers to provide advice to the Government on issues arising from article 2 of the protocol. The Government have engaged broadly on the issues created by the protocol with stakeholder groups across business and civic society in Northern Ireland, the rest of the United Kingdom and internationally. In fact, the engagement has been considerable. As the Committee will know, the Bill provides specific powers to establish a new regime in Northern Ireland which addresses the issues with the current operation of the protocol. We are consulting stakeholders on the detail of how the powers are to be used. We will give plenty of notice to those affected in due course. Therefore, amendment 10 would compel the Government to do what, in many cases, they already intend to do.

We are moving quickly with the Bill because the situation in Northern Ireland is pressing. The power in clause 15 that would, among other things, allow Ministers to reduce the amount of the protocol that is excluded is designed to ensure that we can get the final, detailed design of the regime right. Its use is subject to a necessity test against a defined set of permitted purposes. It is designed to provide stakeholders in Northern Ireland with certainty that the Government will deliver the solutions that we have outlined to the problems that the protocol is causing.

It is essential that the power can be used quickly if needed. Although, in normal cases, the Government will of course engage with stakeholder groups in Northern Ireland, there may be occasions when the urgency of a situation means that the Government need to act swiftly. This amendment risks tying the Government’s hands behind their back, and that is why I ask the hon. Member for Foyle not to press it.

Amendment 40 is in the name of the right hon. Member for Tottenham, who I do not think is in his place. This is the first of a number of amendments from him in the same vein, to which the Government have a single view. The amendment would replace the test of “appropriateness” in the use of the Bill’s delegated powers with one of “necessity”. Members should not confuse this with the international law doctrine of necessity, as the right hon. Member is doing.

The question covers well-trodden ground. Members may remember the extended debates on this topic during the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The powers there are similar to those in this Bill, the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 and the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020. I note that the House and their lordships in the other place ultimately accepted that the word “appropriateness” in this context was, in fact, appropriate.

The word “necessary”, which this amendment seeks to import, is a very strict legal test for a court to interpret. Where there are two or more choices available to Ministers as to what provision is appropriate to address the issues that the protocol has created, arguably neither one is strictly necessary, because there is an alternative. Ministers need to be able to exercise their discretion to choose the most appropriate course. That is why the word “appropriate” is the correct word.

There are clearly multiple choices in how to replace the elements of the protocol that no longer apply in our domestic law. The Government must propose that which would be the most appropriate choice. That is why we have chosen that word. I therefore ask the right hon. Member not to press his amendment.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before the Minister comes to his next point, I draw to his attention that a great many people wish to speak in the debate. A lot of people have a right to do so because they are proposing amendments to which I would like to give them time to speak. The Minister has had the floor for 41 minutes. I hope that he might soon be able to draw his remarks to a close, possibly by addressing just the essential parts without the peripheral parts. In that way, there might be enough time, as we have only an hour and a half left of the debate.

[Michael Ellis]

I am in full agreement with you, Dame Eleanor, and I am coming rapidly to a conclusion with my points on new clauses 1, 2 and 3, which relate to the Government’s approach to environmental protection and principles as related to the Bill. They introduce new provisions to the Bill that require Ministers of the Crown to provide statements on the environmental impacts of any powers taken under the Bill prior to being able to exercise those.

I understand the desire of the hon. Member for Foyle to ensure that our high environmental standards are upheld across the United Kingdom. In the UK, we already have some of the highest standards of environmental protection in the world. We have no intention of weakening or lowering those standards. The Government are proudly committed to enshrining better environmental protections in law to demonstrate a firm commitment to the highest environmental standards, as we did in the Environment Act 2021.

The UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive are already held to account by the independent Office for Environmental Protection, which was created under the Act and has a statutory duty to monitor and report annually on progress on improving the environment in accordance with the UK Government’s environmental improvement plans. The OEP also monitors the implementation of, or any proposed changes to, environmental law, and may hold the Government and public authorities to account for serious failures to comply with it. In addition, the Act already creates a duty on Ministers to be guided by five internationally recognised environmental principles when making policy.

In that context, new clauses 1, 2 and 3 are not necessary, as their purpose is served by existing protections, both practical and legislative. I therefore ask the hon. Member for Foyle not to press the new clauses.

May I return very briefly to the consent mechanism, which operates on an international level? We are committed to the 2024 consent vote, which was a principal goal of the Government’s negotiation, as I alluded to a short time ago.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We had three hours for this debate. The first four speeches have taken more than two hours. We have about 55 minutes left and 10 people wish to speak. I do not have the power to put on a time limit, but you all have the power to act decently, and speak for four or five minutes and no longer. I hold you all to honour. You should take four to five minutes, otherwise you are preventing other people from speaking. I call Sir Geoffrey Cox.

[Sir Geoffrey Cox]

I will be quick. I have listened with fascination to the contributions and speeches made this afternoon. If I thought that the Bill would produce a durable and permanent solution, I would support it, but I do not believe it will produce a durable and permanent solution. The fact is that we cannot impose on Northern Ireland, or on any other party to a treaty that we signed, unilaterally a political solution. A political solution has to be reached politically; it cannot be imposed by this House through legislation. The EU—like it or not—and the Irish Government are a party to these negotiations. Unless we are able to achieve assent to the arrangements that we propose, they will not last. It will have to be resolved ultimately by agreement. It is much the same as the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill—another attempt by the Government to impose a political solution on Northern Ireland, without first having reached the solution and then produced the legislation that works out and implements that solution. I do not believe that this legislation will produce a permanent solution.

We come to the question of necessity. I am not prepared to say that there is an impossibility that the basis of necessity could not justify the actions that the Government are taking. I have the gravest of misgivings about it, and the deepest of scepticism about whether or not it affords a proper legal basis as a matter of international law, but we have not seen the evidence. It is possible that the Government and my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General have seen some evidence that we have not seen that could crystallise at least the plausible case that this action needs to be taken.

I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), but the fact of the matter is that even necessity is not a legal basis for a permanent solution. The doctrine of necessity in international law requires the measures that have been implemented as a necessity to answer the urgent and imminent peril to be removed as soon as the basis for taking action on the grounds of necessity has gone. Indeed, necessity does not even remove the breach; one is still in breach of the agreement. Necessity simply removes the wrongfulness, which further emphasises the fact that necessity cannot produce a permanent solution as a matter of international law. Only agreement—only the reaching of a political solution—can do so.

Nobody need tell me about the politically tone deaf intransigence of the European Union in negotiation. I recall vividly in my visits to Brussels in the early months of 2019, saying to Michel Barnier, “But do you not see, Michel, that this produces an anomalous situation? If a farmer in Northern Ireland wants to take up the issue of cattle tagging, to whom does he go? When the law is imposed by the European Union, the only place he can go is either to Brussels itself or to Dublin, and how will that feel for one whole section of the community of Northern Ireland?” I must tell the Committee that the European Union representatives reacted as if they had been stung by wasps. We have to understand that those at the European Union believe the protocol to be the very zenith of creative diplomacy. They cherish and prize it, as if it were their own child. But that does not mean that we do not need to engage in the patient effort—maybe it will take months, maybe years—gradually to make them see that this is an unsustainable situation.

What we should not do is reach immediately for a solution, over which there are the gravest doubts as to its efficacy as a matter of international law, over which there are the gravest doubts about the sincerity and good faith of the Government—for I take it that the Government have advanced their case on the basis of necessity sincerely. I assume that they must mean, and genuinely mean, that they genuinely believe that there is a respectable case on the basis of necessity. If they do, why should we not at least be told the evidence—the evidence! We can gist it, we can summarise it if it is security sensitive, but at least let this House acquit itself of the doubt that exists over its legal efficacy as a matter of international law. It is no light thing for this House to take a step—

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[Peter Kyle]

New Zealand has been able to negotiate quite diligently and swiftly a veterinary agreement with the European Union. Turkey has been able to agree a customs arrangement with the EU. There has been no law breaking, no storming out of negotiations; representatives sat round the table and got it done. Why does he think that this Government have failed where other Governments have succeeded?

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before the right hon. and learned Gentleman answers the question, I must say that his rhetoric is matchless, but his arithmetic is rubbish. He has held the Committee for 10 minutes with his matchless rhetoric, and I beg him to draw to a conclusion.