Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Debate between William Cash and Claire Hanna

Committee stage
Wednesday 13th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

Section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020 includes the word “notwithstanding”. In relation to section 38(2)(b), the use of that word applies to direct effect and direct applicability. I have some experience over the past 38 years of dealing with a lot of these treaties. We have had to implement every one of them as they have gone through, much to my regret—Maastricht and so forth. If there is the necessity, to use that expression, to have to pass legislation in order to implement a treaty into domestic law, I see no reason at all why we should not introduce legislation when that treaty does not work, as in this case, to disapply it. It cuts both ways.

There is a lot of huffing and puffing over this international law business. I was shadow Attorney General during the time of the Iraq war, and I saw things going on with the then Prime Minister, now Sir Tony Blair, implementing arrangements and bringing forward the Attorney General’s opinions. In fact, it was I, on the Opposition Front Bench, who instigated the necessity for him to bring forward his truncated opinion, which was done in order to assuage Labour Back Benchers.

I do not get too worried about the idea of disavowing treaties where they necessarily have to be disavowed in the sovereign national interest of a country. There is a lot of pretty rank huffing and puffing going on about how solemn and sacred all this is. If a treaty does not do something that it is in the interests of the voters and is seen to be doing damage, it requires review. The Bill will do a great deal of good in mitigating the damage. It does not rip up the protocol; it amends it in a sensible manner.

I do not need to repeat my point about the democratic deficit. I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) for acknowledging that this point needs to be made. The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) made the same point himself. He and I have had long discussions about all this. It is unanswerable, perfectly clear and self-evident. It is coram populo. It has nothing to do with an evidence base—the amendment does not even refer to one; it talks about parliamentary approval for a Bill. It is neither chicken nor egg, nor are there any feathers on the chicken. For practical purposes, with great respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), the amendment is not worth pursuing, but I leave it to him to make his own decision.

When I heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) attack this Bill, I was reminded, because I have been watching these matters as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee for a very long time, that the Northern Ireland protocol had its origins in her Administration. Let us not think for a moment that the protocol was an invention of the Prime Minister; it was conceived of over a long time. The pass was sold during the previous Administration. That is the point I needed to make.

I have heard the condemnations from the former Prime Minister, which I find to be completely unjustified in the circumstances. I was privy to the negotiations going on when Lord David Frost and Oliver Lewis were involved. I know a little about the background, and I suspect my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox) knows a great deal more than me. I can tell the Committee that the whole thing was conceived in the previous Administration. Let us not put up too much—or at all—with criticism made of this Government, or as it proceeds, a new Administration with a new Prime Minister reasonably shortly, on the basis that they are responsible for the protocol, when it was the previous Administration in the first place.

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

I rise to speak to the amendments tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), in which we hope to address some of the issues around consent, protection of the Good Friday agreement, environmental protection and the economy of Northern Ireland, because those are the stated aims of the Bill. While the Social Democratic and Labour party believes that the Bill is damaging, we are in the business of finding and providing solutions, and that is what we have tried to do throughout this process. Our amendments offer a constructive way forward that is negotiated, is compatible with international law, is genuinely square with the Good Friday agreement and is in the interests of the people and the economy of Northern Ireland. Anyone who shares those aims should have no issues with the amendments.

The Minister in fact made the case for a number of our amendments by indicating that the Government have no intention of doing some of the things that we are trying to guard against. I respectfully advise him that taking assurances from this Government, who pinball about on this issue and pinball about on their legal obligations, would be, to quote the SDLP founder Paddy O’Hanlon, like asking Atilla the Hun to mind your horse. We will press ahead with our amendments to try to get some of those commitments in the Bill.

The irony will not be lost on people that in Committee of the whole House, considering a Bill that is supposed to be about stability and consent in Northern Ireland, no amendments will be entertained from elected Members for Northern Ireland. Once again, in Committee of the whole House, Members of Northern Ireland are scrambling to barrel through their points in the scraps of minutes at the end of the debate.

The recent focus on the distortion of the principle of consent in Northern Ireland has been a bit of a political earworm since supporters of the Bill picked it up a few years ago, but it was not always so. Until the plans for a very hard form of Brexit finally collided with reality, Brexit was being presented as a consent-free adventure. My party and others, in this House, in Stormont and through the courts, attempted to insert mechanisms to give a voice to the people of Northern Ireland. They were dismissed by some champions of the Bill, who were adamant that there could be, should be and needed to be no role for people in Northern Ireland and insisted that the Good Friday agreement was irrelevant to these procedures.

The SDLP is content to acknowledge the frustrations of some people, but it is annoying that some of the arguments about consent are “Now you see them, now you don’t”. People are left with the view that the consent of certain parts and certain voters are all that a party is concerned about.

The result of our efforts on consent and the belated acknowledgement of that by others in this House was the insertion of article 18 into the protocol, so it is bizarre that the Bill seeks essentially to override the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland. Under our amendments, once the bulls are allowed into the china shop—as they would be with the extravagant powers that Ministers are being granted in this Bill—the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland would be protected. That would be further enhanced by our amendment 14, which would provide that a Minister cannot harm either the Good Friday agreement or the economic interests of Northern Ireland. Again, that should not pose a problem to anybody who seeks to protect those issues.

In a similar vein, amendment 10 would provide for consultation with human rights groups, business groups and other civic voices before powers are exercised. The Minister made some comments about the sociopolitical impacts and damage in Northern Ireland, and I ask him to clarify that, because bringing in those groups would in fact ensure much more consent and consensus in Northern Ireland.

In addition to consent and protecting the agreements, supporters of the Bill suggest that they seek a negotiated outcome, and we are told that the EU is engaging insufficiently. Our amendment 5 would include in the Bill the requirement that the powers can be used only after good-faith, documented negotiations that are endorsed by this House and by Stormont. It would be useful for us to see exactly what is being discussed—not just that people have tabled the same paper 17 times—and to be allowed to see past the spin to see which parties to the negotiation are in fact moving their position.

With our amendments, we are offering Members the chance to make the protection of the Good Friday agreement, in all its parts, a real and reliable standard, not a vague and variable part-time application. We offer a way to uphold international law and abide by the treaty while using the flexibilities and room for adjustment within the treaty. Instead of the destructive abandonment of the rule of the law in the Government’s clauses, we are outlining a pathway of constructive adjustment, applying both the structures of the protocol and the ethos of the Good Friday agreement.