Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Bill [HL]

My Lords, I indicated in Committee some of the difficulties that the noble Lord, Lord West, and the Government might face, not least in respect of the recent meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. I indicated that I had been interested in the security problems of the border and I take this opportunity to thank the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, for reminding me of the subject some time back on the occasion to which he alluded a moment or two ago. It is a classic utility of this House that people say things, which you remember four or five months later, that pertain to new matters. I warned the Government in Committee that they needed to prepare at least Irish Ministers, who might be asked questions about these matters, in advance of the occasion. It is quite clear to me from the report of my noble friend Lord Cope and the opening remarks of my noble friend Lord Glentoran that unease still obtains in the Channel Islands, in the Republic and in Northern Ireland. I in no way blame the Irish Government—they have not been able to get over what is happening—for what occurred, if it did occur, at the meeting in Donegal. I am sympathetic to the views, which my noble friend Lord Cope indicated, about the significance of where the border is and the fact that it is a border. When he referred to the people who go backwards and forwards across the border every day, I said to myself in my corner of this Chamber that not only people but animals do that. Indeed, one of the interesting issues during our debates on the Hunting Bill was how on earth the Government of either country could control the behaviour of hunts in Northern Ireland if they were subject to the present provisions. If hounds took off, they could easily find themselves 10 miles across the border before they could be brought back. I remember one memorable moment in the other place; the rejoinder to this will require some familiarity with former Northern Ireland affairs. Bees were crossing the border in large numbers and there was an issue as to what was to be done. Some wag called out in the midst of Oral Questions, ““Send for the Bee Specials””. The B Specials were, of course, the original force in the Province. There is a need to convince the interested parties that everything is being done fairly and to ensure that they understand it. I will give a couple of instances that relate to the seemingly irrelevant issue of notionally and virtually moving the border from where its 320 miles now lie, with the 28 border crossing points, to the border of the Irish Sea. In a debate on security in about 1991 in the other place, the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis of Drumglass, as he now is, who was not wholly uncritical of the Government’s security policies, attributed to the Anglo-Irish agreement the rise in terrorist activity immediately after the agreement had been brought in. He said that the agreement had wholly failed to fulfil the ambitions of the then Administration to improve security arrangements across the border. I told him gently in that debate that I thought that it was more likely that the increase in terrorist activity had resulted from the response of President Gaddafi in Libya to the fact that Mrs Thatcher’s Government had allowed British airfields to be used for the bombing of Libya. Mr Gaddafi responded with a series of arms shipments to the IRA at a time when previously it had been running extremely short of arms. The other example is that Her Majesty’s Government are constantly saying to the people of Northern Ireland, ““You have to have the corporation tax of the rest of the United Kingdom. You cannot have the corporation tax of the Republic””. Some of the implications of that have been alluded to. The issue of gasoline, to which my noble friend Lord Cope alluded, which is governed by the implications of the Kyoto principle for our Government and for the Irish Government, is just another such case. However, I recognise that the gasoline problem has become less acute. As regards relations between the two sides of the Irish Sea, which have become extremely good, I cannot say strongly enough that it is critical that the people involved have the sense that what is being done is right and fair. I agree with the conclusion of the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, that other things could be done to improve the situation and reduce the threat, which would be preferable to what the Government are at the moment contemplating.