My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Morrow on bringing forward the amendment to the House this afternoon.
It is perhaps good to look back at how we arrived at the situation we have; it certainly did not happen overnight. When the decision was made by the then Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to move ahead with the Northern Ireland protocol without unionist support, a delicate balance was upset and a long-established commitment to cross-community power-sharing was disregarded. It gives me no pleasure to say that, in getting Brexit done, Boris Johnson split the UK by agreeing a border down the Irish Sea. This was a Conservative and Unionist Prime Minister, who knew exactly what he was doing.
To add insult to injury, after telling the people of Northern Ireland that having a border down the Irish Sea would be over his dead body, Boris Johnson came back to Northern Ireland and, when the business community asked him what they would do with the mountain of paperwork, do you know what he said? He said bin it or send it to him. Then we had the Secretary of State, Brandon Lewis, telling the people of Northern Ireland that there was not a border down the Irish Sea—in fact, he said that he could not see one. How ridiculous the whole situation has got in Northern Ireland.
What has happened in Northern Ireland is that there is a total lack of trust in this Government. That is the issue. After all that has happened with former Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State, there is, unfortunately, a total breakdown of trust around how we move forward. Then of course we had the leader of the SDLP out; we had Naomi Long out; and we had Michelle O’Neill telling the Government to fully implement a protocol that was destroying the economic life of Northern Ireland, as if unionist concerns did not exist.
Let us be in no doubt: we are in this unsatisfactory situation because of a failure of the Government to listen to the concerns of unionists when we were operating the Assembly. The Government just sat back and did nothing. Our party leader at the time, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, said on a number of occasions that we could not continue in government in Northern Ireland if the Government did not do something to address the issues within the protocol. We were quite clear, as our party leader said on many occasions, that we could not stay in government. Unfortunately, neither the Secretary of State nor the Prime Minister did anything to try to resolve the issue. That was the point at which to try to resolve it—when we had the Assembly up and running. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and we are now in a total and absolute mess around all these issues.
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Noble Lords can see how trust needs to be built again between all the parties in Northern Ireland, but especially our party, to try to bring a resolution to this very serious problem. In fact, I remember being told on several occasions by Secretaries of State and other people that the protocol was the only show in town and was not to be renegotiated. That is what we were told when the Assembly was up and running. Would it
not have been common sense for the Government to have moved and said, “Look, let us find a way of resolving the issues that the protocol is causing”? Of course, that did not happen.
Let us be very clear: power-sharing works only with consent across the community. Indeed, cross-community consent was the very basis of the Belfast agreement, which so many claim to understand and champion. Our party is a devolutionist party. We believe that delivering effective government for all the people of Northern Ireland is necessary. But we cannot get to that point with these arrangements, which do not have the consent of the unionist community in Northern Ireland. Nobody who has the label of unionist could sign off an agreement that sees Northern Ireland treated as a colony. We are left behind as a rule taker in the single market of another foreign power.
The Northern Ireland protocol has not been dealt with by the Windsor Framework, which makes only limited legal changes to it. In fact, UK law is now secondary in a vast swathe of areas where EU law is supreme. In fact, do you know what the European Union has said? These are not my words. It has said that it has been very clear from the start of the negotiations, from the beginning until the end, that the role of the ECJ as a sole and final arbiter of EU law stays in place in this United Kingdom. The European Union has said that. When the former Greek Finance Minister was asked about the agreement, he said that it was a fudge, but that it was a good fudge. He said that the protocol had new clothes on and that they had moved it forward. This is somebody who worked in Europe for many years. Somewhere in the middle of all this is the truth.
The text of the Windsor Framework is clear that full customs formalities will remain for many businesses importing goods from mainland Great Britain. The so-called green lane is available for only a limited number of goods considered to be not at risk. Businesses in Northern Ireland will be denied the benefits of new non-EU UK law that is applied in Great Britain. Post-Brexit, they will face in their own home market competition from goods supplied by mainland businesses that comply with UK rules. As my noble friend Lord Dodds has pointed out in this House, no such bureaucracy and customs paperwork exist for moving goods between Wales and Scotland or England and Wales, because there is no customs border between Wales, England and Scotland.
Although I recognise and welcome the efforts by the Government to give local politicians some say over the new rules in Northern Ireland, the Stormont brake is simply not a brake in the real sense. It will have no real impact on many of the existing EU laws that impact on Northern Ireland. For the brake to have any impact, there is a complex qualification process whereby the UK Government of the day can decide whether to apply the brake. Given the very fact that we are in the most regrettable situation, after so many years of negotiations and renegotiations, promises and failed promises to deal with these issues, I have my doubts whether a future Government would want to rock the boat by daring to apply a brake and take Brussels on. I contend that the Stormont brake is, in fact, unworkable. It is therefore not what seemed to have been promised.
Articles of the Acts of Union 1800 have not been restored. Again, this is wholly unacceptable to the unionist population in Northern Ireland.
We will continue to work with the Government on all the outstanding issues relating to the Northern Ireland protocol to seek the necessary legal changes. But, as I keep saying today, trust must be built to try to achieve what we want to achieve. That is important. The Secretary of State has left the Chamber. What plan does he have to try to move this issue forward? He keeps threatening unionists. He talked about there being an Assembly election, and said that he was going to call an Assembly election at a minute after 12 o’clock on a particular evening. He is now out telling unionists that he will change the Assembly’s procedures, against unionism, to get it up and running. What planet are these people on? You will not get the Assembly up and running and get these issues resolved with threats to one community or the other. I certainly want to know from the Minister what plans there are to get us to where we need to get to.
Our priority remains to ensure that our place in the United Kingdom and its internal market are properly respected in law and in practice. We will not be pressurised by spin from anyone, including the European Union or this Government. I support the fatal amendment to the Motion before the House this evening.