I rise to support amendments 81 to 85, which are in my name. I will also pick up on a couple of the points raised by the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), who performed some logical somersaults in becoming the defender of free trade. I have to remind Members that it is this Government’s decisions that are erecting barriers, because we were already part of the largest, most stable and most successful free trading body in the world. I suppose we are the ones who are attempting to deal with the complications of those barriers.
I am not sure if it was just rhetoric, or if the hon. Gentleman genuinely does not understand why the regulations that we all shared while we were in the EU are not perceived to be such an imposition. That is the case precisely because they have raised standards in things such as environmental protection, food standards, the safety of products and toys, and workers’ rights. We see them as a guarantor, an enforcer and a raiser of standards. Unfortunately, we see the Government as no such thing, and in the first year of their term they have resisted and rejected numerous attempts to put into legislation protections for food and environmental standards. This Bill makes absolutely no mention, let alone guarantee, of consultation.
I do not like to keep refighting the last war, but the fact is that when the UK was in the EU, 95% of the regulations that the Government want to change—we never know which ones they want to change—were agreed by consensus. The UK had to oppose only 2% of them. Such consensus-based decision making is not currently enjoyed in the United Kingdom.
Our amendments 81 to 85, which are in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), are designed to address a specific issue about frontier workers, and I will take a wee minute to explain what that is. The border on the island of Ireland is soft and invisible, as Members know, and it runs for hundreds of kilometres. It goes through villages and townlands, and even through homes, churches and farms, so a lot of people live a very cross-border existence. Over the last few years we have tried to soften out some of the bumps that will come up, and that is what we are trying to do with this Bill. One of them is about frontier workers. Between 23,000 and 30,000 people routinely cross the border for their job; I am talking not about people going for social reasons or going up and down, but people whose daily commute crosses the border. That is very common, and until now people have not had to think about decisions in their personal or working life that might involve crossing a continental barrier, but now they do, and we are trying to address this.
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Some 19% of frontier workers work in health and social care, which is already an area that suffers from some recruitment issues. Borders hospitals that serve border communities, such as Altnagelvin, the South West Acute Hospital and Daisy Hill, are increasingly doing cross-border services and would be affected, and while the withdrawal agreement protects the rights of workers already in cross-border employment, it does not safeguard the rights of people who will take up an employment after the transition period ends.
EU directive 2005/36/EC currently allows for Irish and UK professional qualifications to be mutually recognised. Both jurisdictions have confirmed that even in the event of no deal they would recognise those existing qualifications, which is very welcome, but in the event of a no deal, qualifications would have to be processed as a third country, and we are told that this would add substantial delays. I am sure Members are aware of people coming from other countries and facing challenges in translating their professional qualifications even in the current situation, but obviously that is more acute in border areas. Some 9% of doctors in Northern Ireland are trained in another EU country, usually the Republic of Ireland but some others as well, and that proportion is consistent across other disciplines. If that level of movement between the services continues, this will be a fairly substantial problem and could add to existing recruitment problems. We would prefer an arrangement that covers everybody within the common travel area. I am aware that those negotiations are very complicated with a number of fences to jump, but we are trying to deal with this very specific problem.
I am also very pleased to have added our support to a number of other amendments, including amendment 9, from our friends in Plaid Cymru, about further attempts to protect the principle and practice of devolution. The song that was in my head and the heads of the hon. Members for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was Simon and Garfunkel’s “If I Could”, which one of us started singing during the last part of the discussion, and the lyrics just popped into my head:
“I’d rather be a hammer than a nail”.
I think that probably applies to those on Government Benches.
We are also very pleased to support Labour amendment 87 on public procurement, which could have positive effects in the area of social causes, and we greatly support new clauses 5 and 10 on the maintenance of food and environmental standards, which I spoke about at the start and which other Members have laid out very well. They would ensure that regulations reflect our moral duties to the planet, with sustainable farming, and compatible with our obligations to the climate, but also protect food standards for consumers. Crucially, in Northern Ireland, which trades very much on its reputation as a high-quality producer of agricultural products, we would be able to continue to protect that standard and would not have to drop our standards and therefore be uncompetitive on price and unable to trade into our existing markets.