Good Friday Agreement: Impact of Brexit — House of Lords, 2018-10-11
Topic: International Affairs
Ian Duncan (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I always come to the Dispatch Box with a prepared speech, but I always find, during the first half of the debate, that while that preparation may have been broadly useful, it is not necessarily instructive. I find myself again paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for calling for this debate at this time. Perhaps now more than ever, this is the critical aspect of the ongoing negotiations between the UK and the EU Let me try to find a way to begin the journey into the discussions we have had. The Belfast/Good Friday agreement is an historical document; it is history, and as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, has reminded us, we cannot rewrite that history. There is a quote from Seamus Heaney that is helpful here: "If you have the words, there’s always a chance that you’ll find the way" That is where I believe we are right now. There is no doubt that, in this House, support for the Good Friday agreement is solid and sure. I am always seeking out synonyms for "steadfast" and "unwavering", so I will add "abiding", "unfaltering" and "resolute", to the vocabulary I used the last time we discussed these issues. The key thing about the Good Friday agreement is that it brought about change for the good. Many noble Lords in this House were the mechanics who were instrumental to ensuring that that change could be put into writing. That in itself is an extraordinary thing There has been a peace dividend from the agreement. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, reminded us, anyone who has spent time in Belfast of late can cast their eyes towards the horizon and look at the cranes and gantries being used to build a new Belfast. I stood on one of the upper floors of Ulster University looking at the extraordinary investment being made in the future of the young people not just of Northern Ireland, and not even just of Europe, but across the globe as the university recruits the brightest and the best into Northern Ireland. That is an extraordinary thing The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, has been paying attention. It is indeed my first anniversary in the job. As many noble Lords will be aware, the traditional gift for an anniversary of one year is paper, and I can think of no greater paper than the White Paper which has been put forward by the Government—I gently segued that in there. But in modern parlance, the gift now being given is not paper; it is a clock. Who could think of a more telling metaphor right now than the clock as it ticks its way towards that point next March when we will reach the end of our current relationship with the EU and begin to forge a new relationship with the EU There has been talk in the debate of the backstop position. The backstop position, mentioned in the joint report published in December last year, has been parsed, examined and marshalled in different ways. Let me stress at the outset that the first and most important aspect of the backstop position is that it should never need to be used. The backstop is there to provide a safety net for the discussions, during which we can forge that new relationship with the EU and, as the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, reminded us, importantly, with Ireland itself I concur wholeheartedly with the noble Lord’s view that the bilateral discussion between Ireland and the UK should have been more significant. Whatever way one wishes to look at this, the EU 27 will be able to negotiate strongly together, but the island of Ireland itself is at the heart of this: it is where the rubber meets the road; it is where the border is a counter between the EU and between the UK. Those discussions should have been prioritised alongside the others. They should certainly have been there. As we consider that we are in the middle of negotiations—actually, we are not in the middle anymore, let us be frank; we are probably past the final furlong post and now in the home stretch—noble Lords will be aware of the elements of the current Chequers arrangement. That seeks to find a means to secure a common rulebook for agri-food produce and manufactured goods—again, this is the bulk of the trade which crosses the land border and, indeed, the sea border between Ireland and the UK Now the position which the Prime Minister has adopted has been published and is available, and the question is: what emerges then from those negotiations with the EU? There have been various different noises, all from various comments being passed, but the clear thing right now is that an agreement is in everyone’s interest. As a number of noble Lords today have pointed out, we would suffer and struggle through a bad or no-deal Brexit—there is no question of that. Ireland, too, would be at the sharpest point of its experience. It too would suffer and struggle through that particular process Indeed, that is why the backstop position is there: to ensure that, should we not in this particular moment be able to secure the appropriate relationship, the UK as a whole—not divided up across any internal borders—remains within the customs union until such time as we can secure the appropriate, developed, sensible relationship between the EU 27 and ourselves. Let us hope we do not need that backstop, because, at the present moment—