My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my colleagues, my noble friends Lord Morrow and Lord Dodds, in this debate.
One way in which the constitutional importance of the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations before us today is evidenced is in the decision to describe the alternative standards that are, in some cases, to be enforced in Northern Ireland as GB standards rather than UK standards. If that is so, and standards are to be applied across the whole of the United Kingdom that currently operate only in GB, and which would have been applied to the UK as a whole had we left without a deal that sought to dismember our body politic, they become UK standards, not GB standards.
Why then does the Explanatory Memorandum on these enforcement regulations not designate them as UK standards? Instead, it states that the purpose of the regulations is to:
“Ensure that appropriate enforcement powers are in place for retail agri-food goods moved from GB to NI under the Northern Ireland Retail Movement Scheme, which meet GB public health and marketing standards … catch documentation”—
as the Minister has already quoted—
“requirements for certain species of fish, and organics standards (referred to as ‘relevant GB standards’) and are placed on the NI market”.
Given that the EU jealously guards its default right to press for its full pound of flesh against the default full border set out in Article 14 of EU Regulation 2023/1231 to which the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023 are wholly submitted and without which they become entirely meaningless, the EU regulations need to remain in place, at least in some ways. They are not removed, just made non-binding for the duration
of the EU’s pleasure. In that sense, the EU plainly does not want the standards to be made to sound entirely natural and thus properly permanent, so they are categorised as GB standards because it implies that even when governance standards are UK-wide, they are still somewhat foreign if they apply in Northern Ireland.
Moreover, this arrangement is also helpful to the Government as they seek to address the challenge of the border control posts under construction between now and July 2025. If the standards were described as UK standards, the use of border control posts for 10% to 5% identity checks and other risk-based checks would be like using border control posts within any part of this United Kingdom. By contrast, defining the relevant standards as GB standards makes the deployment of border control posts seem less controversial because it will enable the Government to claim that these border control posts should not be understood as border control posts in any normal sense as their purpose is actually to give effect to rather than undermine our sovereignty by simply imposing standards that arise from within the United Kingdom Government within the borders of the United Kingdom.
The Government may feel that this presentational approach is to their advantage as they seek to bow to EU demands to disrespect the territorial integrity of this United Kingdom. However, it is also to their disadvantage in creating a new impression that brings two difficult and embarrassing questions into focus.
The Explanatory Memorandum to these Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations is clear that the purpose of the application of GB standards is for protecting the biosecurity of the people of Northern Ireland. Specifically, it states:
“Part 3 of this instrument ensures that appropriate enforcement powers are also available in NI to protect NI consumers in cases where retail agri-food goods, moving from GB to NI under the Northern Ireland Retail Movement Scheme and placed on the NI market, do not comply with the relevant GB standards”.
The first difficult question arises from the fact that this suggested commitment to the biosecurity of the people of Northern Ireland is that it necessarily creates the basis for biosecurity within Great Britain because it implies that even while the goods have either been created in Great Britain or have come into Great Britain, we cannot be confident that they are to Great Britain standards. In making this assertion, the Government are admitting that the UK is failing its citizens living in Great Britain in a most basic way with respect to their biosecurity. That must be of huge concern to anyone living in Great Britain and to all the Members of this Committee and House who represent GB constituencies.
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The second difficult question that arises from the Explanatory Memorandum is that if it is so important that we uphold GB biosecurity standards in Northern Ireland that we must spend millions in the provision of border control posts within the United Kingdom, why is it acceptable to have a completely open border to the south of Ireland, with another country entirely? In a context where the EU said to the UK, “Given that we cannot have a hard border across the island of Ireland, we must have checks on goods coming to the island of
Ireland through Northern Ireland ports to EU standards, or standards that we are prepared to tolerate, in order to protect our biosecurity”, why did the UK Government not say, “Okay, but you must understand that if we are to accept that, we must obviously make equal and opposite demands so that all goods entering the island from ports in the Republic are checked to UK standards”?
If it is important to check goods coming into Northern Ireland from Great Britain to Great Britain standards, where those standards should have already been enforced, why is it not equally important to protect the people of Northern Ireland from goods coming in from elsewhere to the same standard? The people living in Northern Ireland are the same people. They will not be damaged by goods that fail to meet GB standards if they come from Great Britain but are completely immune to the danger arising from the same goods travelling from somewhere else into Northern Ireland and failing to meet GB standards because they come from elsewhere.
It is completely wrong to seek to protect people in Northern Ireland to standards designated as Great Britain standards instead of UK standards. The idea that people within the United Kingdom need to be protected by standards existing within the United Kingdom through border control posts between one part of this United Kingdom and another is as absurd an application in the UK as it would be in any other state that had not embraced Alice in Wonderland politics.
How could the UK so lack self-belief that it readily turns itself into Alice in Wonderland at the behest of the EU? The humiliation of our body politic to the EU is surely now more pronounced than it ever was between 1973 and 2020, such is the Brexit deal humiliation to which the Government have subjected us. All this talk of enforcing GB standards in the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023 really amounts to is an attempt to dress up the implication of what is actually being effected—a border that insults the intelligence not only of the people of Northern Ireland but of the people of the wider United Kingdom. If ever there were a Government to be weighed in the balance and found wanting, this is surely it.