My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister for the efforts he continues to make to promote the peace process—as he did through a number of Administrations—of which these regulations are a step. But it would be curmudgeonly not to acknowledge the efforts of other Governments in promoting the peace process, of which the Belfast agreement, which your Lordships have mentioned across the House today, was a major step.
The fact that the Belfast agreement was accepted reflected two truths. First, it was accepted across the majority of parties who were party to the sad legacy of Northern Ireland—a legacy that was a historical inevitability, perhaps. But it was also a success because it built on recognition of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland within the UK, and that that status would not be overturned except with a majority vote of the people.
We have heard today how the Northern Ireland protocol has undermined the Belfast agreement in a number of ways. It has also undermined the economic integrity of the United Kingdom and the UK’s economic area. That it was signed or reached was the result of a determined plan by the EU from 2017 to play the orange card against the green, and to use that card to undermine Brexit and its success economically and politically.
While the negotiations leading to the Windsor arrangement and the Stormont brake are to be welcomed as a step in the right direction, I do not think we should forget that the real problem remains. It is the problem of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and its part as an integral part of the UK’s economic area. Therefore, until the protocol itself is addressed, as noble Lords have acknowledged today and have urged my noble friend to take account of, these problems will remain. I therefore urge my noble friend to do all
he can to address the constitutional problems that remain within the Northern Ireland protocol so that we can move to a position where the UK and the EU are not the sole parties—indeed, not the major parties—in this arrangement and the Dublin Government and the UK Government continue the process they reached in the Good Friday agreement in 1998 without the help, for better or worse, of the EU.