Northern Ireland

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Anyone who ever becomes Father of the House is obviously wise and well experienced and that was a particularly wise comment from a particularly well experienced hon. Member. My hon. Friend is completely right in everything he said.

Crucially, this legislation will also change the law so that new regulatory borders between Great Britain and Northern Ireland cannot emerge from future agreements with the European Union. That is an important new safeguard to future-proof Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. No Government in the future can agree to another protocol; neither can the UK internal market be salami-sliced by any future agreement with the European Union.

This legislation will also introduce safeguards so that Government Bills that affect trade between Northern Ireland and other parts of the UK are properly assessed. Ministers in charge of such Bills will need to provide— my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) raised this point—a written ministerial statement to Parliament as to whether a Bill would have a significant adverse effect on trade between Northern Ireland and another part of the United Kingdom. If the legislation does carry that significant adverse effect, the House would expect the Minister to set out any steps to be taken in response to that assessment. Indeed, we have Select Committee Chairmen present, and they would expect to do high levels of scrutiny in that space. This is a very good transparency measure that we should all welcome.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

The Secretary of State has repeatedly said that the deal we are looking at today will not prevent Britain from diverging from EU laws, which is obviously welcome. On page 17 of the Command Paper, it states:

“We will also…set out plans to introduce legislation in the spring that would avoid new regulatory divergence between GB and NI on veterinary medicines.”

Is the Command Paper saying that in that area there will be no future divergence?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

If my right hon. Friend goes through paragraphs 136 to 141 of the Command Paper, she will see us stating that we know that the current situation is not right. We have a grace period that will run out soon, and we want to find a solution similar to the one we found for human medicines. It has been suggested that we set up a working group of experts and people who truly know and care about this subject to look at this matter quickly and come to Ministers and Parliament with a solution that we will take to our European partners and negotiate hard to get, and we want to do that. The situation is not quite as she states; there is a process to get to a point where we have a settled view from this House, and indeed from experts from Northern Ireland in this space, so that we can move forward on this matter. I know it is important to all Members from Northern Ireland.

As I was saying before that intervention, the SI will increase transparency by ensuring that Parliament is presented with evidence of the GB-NI trade impacts of relevant legislation before proceeding with it. The concrete steps we are taking and enshrining in law will deliver clarity to business that Northern Ireland’s unfettered access to the UK internal market will not be threatened by a new regulatory border.

Finally, with this legislation the Government will provide for additional duties and further requirements in statute regarding the operation of an independent review of the Windsor framework, reflecting our steadfast commitment to ensuring that the framework operates on the basis of the broadest cross-community support. As Secretary of State, I will be put under a duty to commission a review within one month of the Assembly having passed a consent vote, but without cross-community consent, and I will be obliged to respond to the report from that review within six months. That constitutes a new and important commitment by this Government. All those steps we are taking are designed to ensure that tangible action is taken off the back of a review and solutions are found. Government Ministers are being placed under a legal duty to raise the contents of the review at the UK-EU Joint Committee on the withdrawal agreement.