Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, and I understand what she is saying, but the issues that were being discussed at the time by Her Majesty’s Government, as it then was, and which the Labour Party was responding to, are the same issues that are before us today, which are affecting the political process in Northern Ireland and leading to problems with the supply of goods from Great Britain. They are exactly the same but when the solution, “Let’s trigger Article 16; let’s go into negotiations”, was suggested, the Labour Party derided that as being toxic. The Labour Party gave support and succour to those who have allowed this position of instability and economic and constitutional harm to continue. A lot of lies have been told around the place, but it is no good, if I may say so, the noble Baroness putting all the blame on to the Government when everybody in Parliament and all political parties have to accept that the goalposts have been shifted, often by consensus, in a way that has done damage to the Belfast agreement, as amended by St Andrews, in a way that has undermined the trust of the people in Northern Ireland in the institutions.