Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is interesting to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. We faced each other across the Dispatch Box 25 years ago, but I rather fancy that he should be directing his comments to his own party instead of at us, because of the civil war that has occurred within the Conservative Party over the past number of years. However, I want to speak briefly on Northern Ireland.

Members of your Lordships’ House will recall that Northern Ireland was hardly mentioned during the referendum campaign and that when 56% of the people of Northern Ireland voted in favour of remaining, as they did, again that was almost wholly ignored on this side of the Irish Sea. Indeed, Ministers who have since resigned from the Cabinet—the former Foreign Secretary, the former Brexit Secretary and the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland—all indicated that they thought that the border issue was not significant and that it could be solved easily. Well, the events of the past 48 hours have proved that to be absolutely wrong. The border and the backstop are the most significant issues at the heart of the current debate on the agreement.

Of course, it is not just the border that is an issue. In the political declaration, for what it is worth, mention is made of security, but there is no mention of the disappearance of the European arrest warrant. We have had three decades of co-operation between the police services north and south, and with the disappearance of that warrant, huge problems will result. The common travel area, which has been about for a very long time, is mentioned in the declaration, but no mention is made of the fact that we will actually return to what it was 40 years ago, because, since we joined the European Union in the 1970s, huge additions to the common travel area have occurred in health, education, employment, law and so on. Moreover, Northern Ireland citizens will be divided between those who will have European Union rights and those who will not. That is a big issue in Northern Ireland.

Yesterday in this debate the noble Lord, Lord Bew, argued powerfully that the principles of the withdrawal agreement are not in line with the Good Friday agreement, and that indeed the withdrawal agreement itself is putting the stability of Northern Ireland at risk. Over the past two wasted years in terms of diplomacy so far as Northern Ireland is concerned, the principles of the Good Friday agreement have been ignored, where nationalists and unionists come together to agree on a common course of action. It was the genius of that agreement that, after decades of turmoil and frustration in Northern Ireland, they were able to come together. However, had the two Governments and Members of the House of Lords decided to impose an agreement on the people of Northern Ireland 20 years ago, it would have failed miserably. As the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said yesterday, it was the people of Northern Ireland, through their political representatives, who worked from the ground up and pursued, agreed and succeeded in bringing about that agreement.

Instead, we have a free-for-all. Many nationalists see Brexit as a means by which we can have a united Ireland. Many unionists see it as a means by which the union can be strengthened even more. That undermines the work of three decades. One of the problems in the negotiations was that the European Union could have delegated the details of the negotiations on Northern Ireland to the Governments of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Had it done that, a lot of the problems we now face could have been resolved. Instead, the negotiations have been botched. We had the daft decision to put a date in the legislation. We had Brexit Secretaries who never negotiated and were there in name only. The so-called red lines put down by the Prime Minister at the beginning of the negotiations were more about bringing the Conservative Party together than about the national interest—and a fat lot of good it has done them.

At the same time, there have been no institutions in Northern Ireland—no Assembly, no Executive and no north-south bodies—to deal with these issues for two years. That is almost the same length of time as the negotiations have taken. Everybody understands that, had the Assembly been up and running and had the Executive been working, the nationalists and unionists would have had to come together to resolve the issues that currently face Northern Ireland—but they have not done so. They have not got together because there has been no restoration and no urgency on the part of the Government to restore those institutions. Had there been, we would not be in this mess today. We would not have had the chaos of the Brexit issues on borders and backstops had there been a proper Government of Northern Ireland where nationalist and unionists Ministers could have got together, thrashed the issues out and come to a compromise based on the principles of the Good Friday agreement, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said.

But it was not to be, and the result has been two failed negotiations: the failure to restore the institutions in Northern Ireland and the failure of the Brussels negotiations to understand why the principles that underpin the Good Friday agreement should have underpinned the negotiations regarding Brexit borders and the backstop as well. As a result, the withdrawal agreement is unquestionably doomed and, in my view, destined to be a footnote in constitutional history.