UK Parliament / Open data

European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill

I will try to be as brief as possible, to allow others to speak.

I wish to come to what the Bill is actually about, rather than what people say it is about, but first I want to dispel the idea that it would mean going backwards. The idea of mutual enforcement in fact originated, as others have said, in the EU itself at the time. It came from those who were tasked, as senior officials—British and others—to come forward with a solution, before the end of the Brexit debates and so on, with an alternative way to make the borders work and to take the heat out of what later became really quite powerful and ended up with a Government literally unable to move any motion at all and have it succeed.

I have personal experience of this issue because, when there was a break in the negotiations between the UK Government—who handled it pretty badly at the time, by the way—and the Commission, I managed somehow to get a team of people together to go and see Monsieur Barnier directly. We sat at a table with all his negotiators, and a few of ours who were there, and we talked through the principles. This was before mutual enforcement became a concept, but we talked about what already existed in the EU with others from outside the EU and inside the EU, and how they traded. We ended up reaching very much the same conclusion as originally reached by Sir Jonathan Faull and others: that mutual enforcement was the better deal. Monsieur Barnier agreed with us. At the end of that agreement—I can see him following me out as I put my coat on—he said, “The principle behind any chance of this being agreed is that we must have trust. Without trust, we cannot have an agreement.”

The sad part about it was that when I came back to the UK to speak to my Government, they did not want to take any interest in that as a departure. They had already got bogged down in other areas. Sadly, two weeks later, what actually happened was that the Government went back in and carried on with their

complicated and hopeless negotiation, without first setting out the principle of what they wanted. I think Monsieur Barnier was open to that and I think the EU wanted mutual enforcement. At that stage, there was no question about weaponising the border; it was about how we could reach an agreement. We could have done much more then, and I still today think that this idea is it.

The Bill, then, is not about going backwards in the sense that it destroys what we have done; it actually says something about what we have done so far in two stages. The protocol, it seems to me, could only ever have been temporary, and the Windsor agreement, which I did not support, opened up the negotiation again, which was good, but the ask was so limited, and in some ways rather restrictive, that we have ended up with the principle being there, but the practical bit does not work. That was the moment when we should have used the opportunity to go back into mutual enforcement. What is so wrong about that? The EU already uses the principle in its dealings with other countries.

As I said in an intervention earlier, the classic example is New Zealand. The EU trusts the New Zealand veterinary officers—particular key ones, but they trust them all once they are registered—to say whether certain foodstuffs are, under SPS rules, packaged properly and agreeable under the EU rules. They are trusted to say that EU rules are met. That is a critical component. When those foodstuffs are shipped and arrive at Rotterdam, most often it comes up on the computer and they are waved through. Any checks that have to take place in Rotterdam for non-EU countries take place 30 km behind the border, and they are spot checks just in case something has happened en route or something else has changed on the way. In other words, things move smoothly through. But such arrangements were not agreed in the various agreements here.

Eventually, in trying to draft this idea together, I sat down with others to try to figure out how we could make mutual enforcement work. I give credit to the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) for having brought forward the Bill, because it gives us a chance to debate the matter. I know very well what goes on in this Chamber and I know only too well how Fridays work, and the sad part is that if the Government do not want to have any further debate on something, they arrange for it to be talked out. It has happened on both sides; cynicism exists on all sides. I understand that. Lots of people will have come in, particularly from London because they are closer, and they will do what they have to do to talk this out. The Bill is not going to get through; I never expected it to. [Interruption.] Honestly, do not object; Government Members know very well that that is exactly what happens. Some will be here because they believe in something—I look across at my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy)—but the majority are not. Therefore, let us just understand fundamentally what we could have been discussing and what the current Government could now be engaged in; they could be talking to the EU about changing these arrangements.

The current arrangements are damaging relationships and causing issues around Northern Ireland. We know that; nobody is arguing that that is not the case. If we have such problems that affect the constitution and the

smooth running of businesses both in Northern Ireland and the wider United Kingdom, then surely any Government would want to make sure those are settled. It is not a polemic, it is not a right or left wing thing to do; it is called practical governance to try to figure out how this works.

I did not agree with my Government when they brought forward the Windsor agreement in its final stages, and I voted against it. I voted against it because I thought they had lost a real opportunity. The EU had accepted that its imposition earlier on did not work and it had to change it, but what we ended up with was a de minimis change which did not solve the problems; in fact some of them have got worse.

When we strip out all the politics, the key component is that mutual enforcement requires each side to make reciprocal legal commitments to each other and to enforce the rules of the other with respect to trade across the border. In other words, we would accept that where our exporters export to the EU, we are responsible if they breach EU regulations. So if the EU says a company or individual is exporting goods in breach of the terms of its trade, the UK Government will take the responsibility to proceed against them, and vice versa for the EU.

That does not require no border, because there has always been a border in Northern Ireland; we just do not want a hard border. That was always the issue. People talk about borders, but they mean a hard border. I had some experience of that when I had to man one of the checkpoints there when I was sent to Northern Ireland. I hated doing it, but that was a hard border. We do not want a hard border and mutual enforcement obviates the need for a hard border. Borders will exist, and we talked about that in terms of currency and VAT.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
758 cc586-620 
Session
2024-25
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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