If the powers were ever needed, Ministers would return to this House with a statutory instrument on which a vote—perhaps this is the question to which the hon. Gentleman is awaiting an answer—would be held. We would simultaneously pursue every possible redress—to get back to the point I was making to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill)—under international law, as provided for in the protocol.
In addition to our steps in domestic law, if we had to make clear that we believed the EU was engaged in a material breach of its duties of good faith, as required and provided for under the withdrawal agreement and the Vienna convention on the law of treaties, we would seek an arbitration panel and consider safeguards under article 16 of the protocol.
It is a question not of if we meet our obligations, but of how we fulfil them. We must do so in a way that satisfies the fundamental purpose of the protocol, the Belfast Good Friday agreement and the constitutional position of Northern Ireland. We will work with the EU on all of these issues. Even if we have to use these powers, we will continue to engage with the joint committee so that any dispute is resolved as quickly and as amicably as possible, reconciling the integrity of the EU single market with Northern Ireland’s place in the UK’s customs territory.
What we cannot do now is tolerate a situation where our EU counterparts seriously believe that they have the power to break up our country. If that is what hon. Members on the Opposition Benches want them to have, then I am afraid that they are grievously mistaken. That illusion must be decently dispatched, and that is why these reserve powers are enshrined in the Bill.
In addition, the Bill will help deliver the single biggest transfer of powers to the devolved Administrations since their creation, covering a total of 160 different policy areas. Each devolved Administration will also be fully and equally involved in the oversight of the UK’s internal market through a new independent body, the Office for the Internal Market. The Bill will maintain our common cause of high standards, where we already go beyond the EU in areas ranging from health and safety to consumer and environmental protections.