I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention and for her ongoing interest in Northern Ireland, which is always great to see. She is right. Intertrade UK will cover not just issues related to the availability of goods in Northern Ireland, but trade across the UK, between Scotland and England, England and Wales, and so on. It is designed, in the new environment we find ourselves in, to encourage greater trade within the United Kingdom. We have a market in the United Kingdom in the region of 60 million people. It is the second-biggest market in Europe and we should be selling more of our own goods to our own people. The purpose of Intertrade UK is to encourage those enhanced, stronger trading links across all of the United Kingdom. Of course, the Union is not just a political union; it is an economic union. It was the economic union in particular that was harmed by the protocol. The new measures are designed to restore those trading relationships to a more healthy place.
In welcoming the restoration of the devolved institutions, it is important to recognise that one key difficulty with the protocol was the lack of democratic input for the political institutions in Northern Ireland. Laws were being applied automatically to Northern Ireland—new laws and changes to the law—on which Northern Ireland had no say whatever. We welcome the establishment of the Democratic Scrutiny Committee in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which will now have the function to scrutinise laws that are coming forward. It will have the power to stop those laws applying, as I said earlier. The UK Government ultimately have the power of veto if laws are deemed to be harmful to Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom and its internal market. That is all progress.
I note that some who were critical of the new arrangements and said that the new Democratic Scrutiny Committee was powerless now complain that they are unable to obtain membership of it. Furthermore, I note that some of our detractors now talk about the risk of what they call “trivergence” whereby if the Assembly, exercising its power, vetoes a new law being applied to Northern Ireland, all of a sudden that might create a problem in so far as Northern Ireland will have different
law from the EU and, potentially, different law from Great Britain. But in the new arrangements put in place as a result of the Command Paper, Northern Ireland goods will be available for sale in Great Britain regardless of the circumstances. There is a goods guarantee built into the legislation that this House has approved, which means that Northern Ireland goods, in all circumstances, can be sold in Great Britain. However, I note that those who said the new arrangements would be ineffective now complain that they will be so effective that they might be counterproductive when it comes to Northern Ireland’s interests. Which is it? Either they are effective or they are not. We believe that they can be effective, and we are prepared to test the new mechanisms to ensure that they protect the interests of everyone in Northern Ireland.
Let me make a few general points. We welcome the commitments that the UK Government have given about Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom, including those given from the Dispatch Box this evening, but I also note that we hear much talk about border polls, and much talk, particularly from Sinn Féin, about the need for such a poll. It is worth recalling the history of Sinn Féin’s approach to border polls. As long ago as 2011, Gerry Adams told us that by 2016, Northern Ireland would leave the United Kingdom. We are almost 10 years on from 2016, and we are still in the UK. By August 2021, Gerry had changed 2016 to 2024; well, 2024 has arrived, and we are still in the UK. In May 2022, Mary Lou McDonald called for a border poll by 2027, but then she changed that to 2030, and just this month Michelle O’Neill shifted the Sinn Féin goalposts once again to call for a border poll by 2034. But they recognise the reality—that it is the settled will of the people of Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom—and all this talk of divisive border polls is designed simply to reassure the Sinn Féin base.