Resetting the UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I welcome the publication of this report, but the process in these negotiations is very uncertain and it remains to be seen whether the outcome will be in the best interests of the United Kingdom. The report suggests that the Government have made a good start but, for Northern Ireland, that assessment simply does not reflect reality, as the noble Baroness who has just spoken mentioned.

I am very much aware that the committee’s remit was not to discuss Northern Ireland, because there is a separate Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee within your Lordships’ House which looks at that matter. However, in the context of this debate, it is important that we reflect the fact that we have the Windsor Framework/protocol, which impacts not just on Northern Ireland’s trade, politics and constitutional position but directly on the United Kingdom, because the Government have made it clear that they are preparing to align in order to avoid divergence with Northern Ireland in many respects. In our view, unless the Windsor Framework/protocol is fundamentally dealt with, there can be no genuine reset of relations with the UK.

Some might say, “Well, things are settled”, but as we were reminded by noble Lord, Lord Bew, earlier in Question Time, the situation in Northern Ireland is far from settled. When there comes a point when this issue of the Windsor Framework/protocol and our relationship with the EU remains unresolved and the Northern Ireland Assembly and other institutions are in peril, people in this House and in the other place will say, “How did we get to this place?”

The reality is that unless we deal with the issue of the Windsor Framework and its economic detriment for Northern Ireland, its constitutional detriment and the denial of democracy, we will inevitably reach that place. I think that at that point, this House will say that we need to take these matters much more seriously, because the Windsor Framework leaves large volumes of EU law in place over Northern Ireland. There is no democratic control. It preserves a customs border down the Irish Sea between one part of the United Kingdom and the other. It maintains a role for a foreign court in the internal trade of the United Kingdom and embeds regulatory divergence inside our own country, as the backstop proposals would have done as well. This is not normal or sustainable in any modern democracy and it is not compatible with equal citizenship within the United Kingdom.

Businesses, as the Federation of Small Businesses’ report recently said, face massive bureaucracy and compliance costs. The Trader Support Service is already costing half a billion pounds of public money, just to help traders negotiate this labyrinthine process. We have to accept that this is not what sovereignty in a modern country looks like; it is what colonialism looks like. The principle of consent that lies at the heart of the Northern Ireland political settlement is being devastatingly eroded day by day. Legal changes imposed without that consent have altered Northern Ireland’s place within the UK internal market.

When we discuss the issues of the UK-EU relationship, we must not turn our eyes away from the fundamental problem that faces us in this United Kingdom, which is the democratic denial of consent to British citizens in this country in the 21st century. This needs to be continually highlighted because it is going to lead to real problems—not just for Northern Ireland but for this whole country.