Northern Ireland Protocol Bill — House of Commons, 2022-07-13
Topic: International Affairs
Layla Michelle Moran (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), and I completely agree with him. I and the Liberal Democrats intend to vote against this Bill when it eventually comes to its Third Reading. I will speak today particularly to new clause 8 and its paving amendment 26 First, however, I want to put on record my huge disappointment that the Bill is in Committee today because, since Second Reading, we have had a lame duck Prime Minister and a Foreign Secretary who cancelled her meeting with G20 leaders in Bali, where she should have been, and instead came back to start her leadership campaign. This Bill is an incredibly controversial move, and it would have been right and proper for it to have gone away for a while—under the definition of "urgent" that the Minister put forward, that would have seemed to make sense—and then come back when it is clear what direction the Government really want to take. Make no mistake, this Bill is going to affect our standing on the world stage My amendments relate to the release of the legal advice. It is absolutely right and proper that the Conservative leadership election has turned our eyes to honesty, integrity and, in particular, trust following what has happened with the current Prime Minister, and that is what my amendments do. They ask the Government, "What have you got to hide?" If there is nothing to hide, they should publish the full legal advice and trust this House to scrutinise it properly I urge Government Members to look carefully at what the Attorney General has said since giving her advice on this Bill, because she is also running to be leader of the Conservative party, and she has suggested pulling out of the European Court of Human Rights. As we know, the Court underpins the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. The Attorney General does not seem to understand how that correlates with the Good Friday agreement, yet we are relying on her legal advice. I would suggest that that is nothing we can rely on. We understand from newspapers that the Government shopped around for legal advice, and reportedly they even spoke to a former adviser of President Trump. However, if they have nothing to hide, they should publish the advice In the Minister’s response to my question earlier, he said the Government may well go to litigation over this and may well be taken to court over the definitions in relation to the doctrine of necessity. As a reason for advice not to be published, he said: "We know that, famously, from the Labour Government a couple of decades ago, when there was an enormous controversy about that." That suggests that we should not see the legal advice because of what happened following the release of the advice on the Iraq war, but we know from the inquiry that that is nonsensical because the Government in that case did have something to hide and were found out later. If this Government want to get the trust of Parliament and do not want to have egg on their face in the international courts, they should release the advice. I urge them to support amendment 26, which I hope—by your leave, Dame Eleanor—we can push to a vote later.