It is a little more than just “a need to”, which is definitely there. I can see perfectly clearly that the noble Lord is not familiar with Article 1(5), to which I referred, which is an international agreement held in the United States. The crucial thing is that this is also about the commitment to support the Good Friday agreement in all its parts. I am saying something slightly more complicated. We have both agreed to do this. The EU does not understand, for example, that “in all its parts” includes east-west, the totality of relations, a benign relationship and so on. It is impossible to fit the description of the east-west trading relations we now have from the protocol. This is very much a matter of decisions made by the EU, such as on how much intervention was required—or not. This is very much about its regulatory interventions going beyond what is necessary in anything that is actually in the protocol because the protocol itself says that the integrity of the UK single market will be upheld. Those are the words of the protocol—the important bit is in paragraph 25—but that is not what has happened.
My point is this: it is not just a question of the EU and the responsibility of one community, which is definitely there in paragraph 1 of the international agreement. This is about strand 3. At this point in the negotiation, we are simply saying, “We have both agreed to this. Your regulations most certainly break strand 3 at the moment”. I cannot understand why that is such a terribly complicated point in international law. We have all signed up to this; it is an argument about the interpretation of it.