My Lords, the protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland has never been far from the news since it was agreed. Activity over just the last few days shows how timely today’s debate is. The encouraging thing is that dialogue is seen by all as the correct route forward. The two reports provide analysis of the protocol approximately seven months before and seven months after it came into effect on 1 January this year. I will introduce the first report, undertaken by the former European Union Select Committee, which I chaired. My noble friend Lord Jay of Ewelme will introduce the second report, which was undertaken by the new Sub-Committee on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.
I thank the Chief Whip for bringing forward this debate at this time. I also most warmly thank the staff of all the committees concerned. I particularly thank Chris Johnson, who was the principal clerk at all the relevant times, and Stuart Stoner, who has the unique distinction of being the clerk to both committees when the reports were settled.
The European Union Committee’s report on the protocol followed its previous scrutiny of the revised withdrawal agreement and political declaration negotiated by this Government in October 2019. That report included a much shorter initial analysis of the protocol and was published in January 2020. It was clear to us that, as it was such a technically complex and politically contentious document, further detailed work on the protocol was a necessity.
Our fresh inquiry started in February 2020. There followed a careful process which included discussions on the ground with politicians north and south, business leaders and academic experts. The Government published a Command Paper on 20 May on their approach to the protocol, which we took into account. We published
our report on 1 June 2020. The report was intended to be a reasonably complete guide to the protocol on which any interested party could rely, with analysis of the protocol, its recitals, its 19 articles and seven annexes. In our conclusions and recommendations, we highlighted the main elements of the protocol, the tensions and contradictions at its heart and the “many unanswered questions” about its operation that remained outstanding. The government response of August 2020 was commendably on time and addressed some of the issues we had raised but was less helpful on many others, on which the Government were simply silent.
A moment ago, I said “tensions and contradictions” because there is not only the matter of the recitals at the front of the protocol and how they relate to the true construction of the articles, and especially their implementation, but also the matter within the articles themselves. In particular, there is an inherent tension, or perhaps an apparent contradiction between and among, Articles 4, 5 and 6. Article 4 states:
“Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom”.
This is reinforced by Article 6, which states:
“Nothing in this Protocol shall prevent the United Kingdom from ensuring unfettered market access for goods moving from Northern Ireland to other parts of the United Kingdom's internal market.”
However, these are offset by Article 5, which applies the entirety of EU customs legislation, including the union customs code, to Northern Ireland. Article 5 thus retains a single regulatory zone for goods on the island of Ireland, achieving the key aim of avoiding a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Yet this requires the imposition of new customs processes and regulatory checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
The first paragraph of our summary noted that:
“On the one hand, the UK Government has been unable to explain precisely or consistently what it agreed with the EU. On the other … the EU’s insistence that ‘the rules are the rules’ has left Northern Ireland businesses fearing that there will be no flexibility to apply the Protocol proportionately. This has led to a diminution of trust between the two sides, with the upshot”—
in the words of a witness—
“that Northern Ireland has felt like ‘a pawn in the game’.”
Those words date from 1 June 2020 and events since then, notably in the last few days, suggest that the drafting has withstood the test of time. A good number of the issues that we highlighted in June 2020 remain matters of contention today. Indeed, the report anticipated many of the concerns set out over a year later in the Government’s Command Paper, Northern Ireland Protocol—Next Steps, published on 21 July this year. There are many potential illustrations of this point. To pick just two, in paragraph 25 of our report we said:
“The Protocol must ultimately be viewed through the lens of the peace process, and therefore judged by the impact it has on the people, communities and economic prosperity of Northern Ireland and Ireland.”
The first of a few questions for the Minister is: will he confirm whether or not he agrees with that assertion?
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