My Lords, in his eloquent speech, the noble Lord, Lord Hain, set out the background and the history to this important group of amendments on Northern Ireland. I am pleased to have been able to add my name to the amendments. I am also delighted to have received the support of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on Amendment 58, although I felt that there were perhaps some contradictions in his argumentation. I look forward to seeing him in our Division Lobbies when we come to vote on this on Report.
We heard some extremely passionate speeches from other noble Lords, in particular from the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, who has also signed these amendments and who spoke so movingly about the realities and threats that we face on the ground in Northern Ireland. I shall limit my remarks to Amendments 58 and 59.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, if a year ago there was already a strong case for these amendments, since the introduction of the internal market Bill they have become ever more important to safeguarding the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. I hope that these amendments, or similar, will be retabled on Report, so that we can test the opinion of the House.
It is worth briefly recalling how the Government have taken us to this point. We are in this situation because from the outset the Government have promised a series of incompatible things, namely that the whole of the UK would leave the customs union and the single market, that special status for Northern Ireland was ruled out and that there should remain no border on the island of Ireland.
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As the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, so powerfully said, since the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement, trade, business and complex supply lines on the island of Ireland have all developed against the backdrop of membership of the EU single market and EU trade policy. These positive links across the island of Ireland are perhaps one of the reasons why the majority of people in Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU.
We then had the flawed deal proposed by Theresa May’s Government—but which was, perhaps, arguably better than the agreement that we now have—which ultimately failed. Then in January of this year, the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act, including the Northern Ireland protocol, was passed into law. We should recall that that protocol was agreed by this Government as part of the withdrawal agreement; it is not something that was imposed by Brussels. It is therefore a sign of the rather peculiar times in which we are living that a cross-party group of Peers are having to defend what is this Government’s own stated policy.
The Northern Ireland protocol is, we believe, the very minimum that is acceptable to defend and maintain the progress made on the island of Ireland. It is there to maintain the peace process and to prevent a hard border. Amendments 58 and 59 are both, in essence, restating what is—and I hope will still be—the stated policy of the Government. If there is any uncertainty, then that is also of the Government’s own making, with the introduction of the internal market Bill. On that basis, I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to this debate and to these amendments.