EU Relations — House of Lords, 2021-11-10
Topic: Foreign Trade
Richard Newby (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I thank the Minister for making the Statement. However, just as he refers to the production by the EU of "non-papers", it seems to me that this is largely a non-Statement. It contains nothing new and largely consists of yet more sabre-rattling—something that, I have to accept, the Minister excels at. He says that the trade and co-operation agreement is working well. According to the OBR, its effect is that our GDP will be 4% lower than if we had remained in the EU, so I suppose we should be very grateful that it is not working badly Underlying all the issues to which the Statement refers are two substantive problems for the Government. The first relates to trust. As the Minister made clear in his Lisbon speech, the UK is widely distrusted as a reliable partner. As a result, everything becomes more difficult, and what should be relatively small, easily resolvable issues, such as the licensing of fishing boats, become potential major flashpoints The second is that there exists at the heart of the Northern Ireland problem the irresolvable issue of where the EU-UK trade boundary is set. The Government in reality do not want a boundary at all when it comes to GB trading with Northern Ireland but want one when it comes to trading with the EU. The Good Friday agreement means that they cannot possibly have this best of both worlds. In seeking to achieve that impossibility, the Government are, understandably, running into problems, but it is completely disingenuous for the Minister to protest about unintended consequences of having a border down the Irish Sea when the Government’s own impact statement at the time set out in major detail exactly what those deleterious impacts would be. The Minister negotiated the deal. I cannot believe that he did not understand the consequences at the time. Did he think that it would be possible to live with them, or did he even then think that he could renege on the deal once the main trade and co-operation agreement had been signed? Either way, he was less than straightforward in presenting the deal as a Great British negotiating success On the operation of the protocol, the EU has made very substantive concessions which appear to offer the prospect of a resolution of the main operational problems. In these circumstances, repeatedly to dangle the prospect of Article 16 in front of the EU just looks like a provocation which will make the negotiations harder rather than easier. At the weekend, in commenting on the Article 16 threat, Sir John Major said that it was "colossally stupid" and "un-Conservative". In part, he said this because it would threaten a trade war with the EU, a prospect which Simon Coveney again raised at the weekend, which would indeed be colossally stupid. But in part also, he said it because it undermines the Government’s central claim that they "got Brexit done". Triggering Article 16 would lead to chaos and confusion, when businesses, not least in Northern Ireland, want stability and continuity. It would be the opposite of Brexit having been done. How, therefore, does the Minister rebut Sir John’s comments? How does he respond to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, that the majority of people in the Province do not believe that triggering Article 16 is in their best interests or that the potential involvement of the European Court of Justice is a red line—it is not; it is for the Minister, but it is not for the people in Northern Ireland It is overwhelmingly in the national interest to deal unemotionally with the problems in the operation of the protocol on the basis of the proposals now on the table. Can the Minister assure the House that he will finally put his sabre away and just get back to straight- forward negotiating?