I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention.
I agree entirely with the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon: although the Government have not yet been able to deliver on their commitment to restore Northern Ireland’s place within the UK internal market, the biggest culprit in all of this is the European Union. The European Union was formed and founded on the basis that developing consensus in Europe was preferable in order to avoid conflict—that was its original concept. Two terrible world wars had absolutely destroyed Europe, with millions of lives lost, and there was a genuine desire on the part of many European leaders to develop a basis for working and co-existing together through consensus to avoid conflict.
The principle of consensus is central to this discussion. Since 1972 and the collapse of the then Northern Ireland Government, every single Government in this House have made clear that power can only be devolved to institutions in Northern Ireland on the basis of power sharing—a cross-community consensus. I was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly during the mandate from 1982 to 1986, and the hon. Member for Belfast South (Claire Hanna) will recall that the SDLP refused to take their seats in that Assembly. They did so on the basis that they would not enter any devolved legislature in Northern Ireland unless an agreement had been established on the basis of power sharing. That has been the case ever since: it is accepted that in a divided society such as Northern Ireland, only a cross-community consensus offers the basis for stable government. After the Good Friday or Belfast agreement, we worked hard from 1998 until 2007 to create the conditions in which that stable, cross-community, consensus-style government could be delivered, and it was created. For 10 years, from 2007 to 2017, we had a stable devolved Government in Northern Ireland, which then collapsed in 2017 when Sinn Féin withdrew.
It concerns me when people talk about the need to normalise politics in Northern Ireland—what does that mean? Does it mean majority rule? Does it mean excluding one section of the community? That fundamentally will
not work, and I say that as a Unionist, part of a tradition that held the majority in Northern Ireland for very many years. Now, as the hon. Member for North Dorset has reminded us, we have three groupings. There is no majority in Northern Ireland, in the sense that although support for the Union remains the position of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland, the parties in the Northern Ireland Assembly that they vote for belong to three different political groupings: Unionist, nationalist, and other. However, the idea that an Executive can be created that excludes the largest grouping—the Unionists—simply does not wash.
If we are going to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Belfast agreement, we have to accept and recognise that the principle of consensus is the way forward. As the Secretary of State acknowledged, that consensus on the protocol does not exist. On Thursday, I think, the Supreme Court will rule on the case that has been brought in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol. However, the High Court and the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland have already ruled that the protocol supersedes article 6 of the Act of Union.
Article 6 gives the people of Northern Ireland the right to trade freely with the rest of this United Kingdom. It is the embodiment of the economic Union—this is not just a political Union, but an economic Union—and article 6 says to the citizens of Northern Ireland that they have the right to trade without barriers with the rest of the United Kingdom. As the High Court and the Court of Appeal have confirmed, the protocol creates barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. It subjugates the Act of Union. For us as Unionists, that represents a fundamental change in our constitutional status as part of the United Kingdom, yet we are expected to suck it up and operate political institutions that implement that change—that impose barriers to trade in our country. We are simply meant to accept that that is the way it is, but I am sorry, that is not the way it is. My party will not be in a position where it implements measures that harm our place in the United Kingdom and create barriers to trade with the rest of our country. We will not do that, which is why the protocol needs to be resolved. It affects trade.
I understand that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is proposing a pilot scheme, to be introduced in conjunction with Fujitsu, that would seek to digitise arrangements for checking the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In other words, it would digitise the Irish sea border. Let me absolutely clear: the digitisation of the Irish sea border does not remove it. Tinkering around the edges of the protocol will not resolve the problems that it creates. The EU needs to understand that.
Last week, the Prime Minister spoke with great clarity when he was challenged on a story that appeared in The Sunday Times stating that the UK Government were prepared to consider the Swiss model as a way forward for our trading relationship with the EU. The Prime Minister said that the UK will not be aligning with EU laws. When we met him that evening, I reminded him that not only is Northern Ireland aligned with EU laws, but we are subject to them. Our ability to trade with the rest of our country is subject to legislation over which we have no control and on which we have no say. More than 300 areas of law govern the way we trade with the rest of the United Kingdom and we have no say on them.