Jim Allister MP: speeches

Speeches

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will be absolutely honest with this Chamber, and to be absolutely honest with this Chamber, the hon. Lady is not addressing the issue as it emerges. I will deal with the impact of article 2 of the protocol. I want nothing more for my constituents than the same rights that the hon. Lady’s constituents have, be they human rights, the right to make the laws of our land, or any other rights. I ask for no privilege, but I certainly do not accept any detriment. That is the point here.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will give way to the hon. Member in a moment, because I have mentioned her. How can the hon. Member, who calls herself a Social Democratic and Labour Member, look her constituents in the eye and say, “I believe you are not worthy to have your laws made by those you elect: I would rather they were made by those you don’t elect”? Is it because the nationalist reach of the protocol is more important than the democratic detriment of the protocol?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I fear that there is a lot of truth in that. As I say, the politics took over. A further truth is that for some—not all, but some—enthusiasts of the protocol arrangement of a nationalist or Irish republican persuasion, there is a political gain that subsumes all doubts that they might have as democrats. For 30 years and more, the IRA terrorised through bomb and bullet to try to push the border to the Irish sea: “Brits out—push the border to the Irish sea!” That is precisely what the protocol has done: it has pushed the border to the Irish sea.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  This Bill is prospective in its tone and purpose. It is about going forward. It is about solving the problem that has been put upon us. The hon. Member says, “Oh, let’s reset.” For some, of course, that means, “Let’s rejoin.” That is a matter for those who are advocating for it, but it is certainly not where I would like to see this United Kingdom go. Yes, we need to reset, but we need to reset on the basis that Brexit is for all, not just for some. When we reset on that basis, the Government will not have me constantly raising these issues, because I will have the equal citizenship that has been denied to me and my constituents by these arrangements. Fundamentally, this is an equal citizenship issue. The thought that they are being treated differently, by being denied the equal citizenship of the rest of the United Kingdom, is quite appalling and insulting to many people in Northern Ireland. Article 2 of the protocol has been mentioned in an intervention. The Government said a couple of nights ago that they will appeal the findings in one of the cases in Northern Ireland, although, listening to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, I think it is a pretty half-hearted appeal. Article 2 shows us that it is not just about trade. That was the initial selling point of the protocol, “Oh, it is only about trade,” but now we have discovered, through article 2, that it has a most pervasive effect on all sorts of things. Legislation in the last Parliament has been overturned in its application in Northern Ireland. Why? Because of article 2. Now, whether we liked or disliked the Rwanda Bill is not the point. The point is that our High Court and Court of Appeal have ruled that the provisions of the Rwanda Bill cannot be operated in Northern Ireland. Why? Because of article 2. Why is that? Because article 2 subjects Northern Ireland to the EU’s human rights provisions, not the UK’s human rights provisions. Protections that exist for asylum seekers under EU law therefore prevent the measures from operating. It is not about the debate of the merits or de-merits; it is about the constitutional fact that a Bill of this House, the sovereign will of that time of this supposedly sovereign Parliament, could not be implemented in a part of the United Kingdom because of the supremacy of EU law.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  What the hon. Member seems to be saying is that if the United Kingdom decides to acquiesce in—indeed, support—the infringement of its own territorial integrity, that is all right. If that is the basis, is it not all the more reason why the Government—a new Government—of the United Kingdom ought to address this humiliating concession?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member may wish to see the whole of the United Kingdom sucked back into the EU. I want to see my part of the United Kingdom enabled to follow the rest of the United Kingdom properly out of the EU. All this is for an international border over which the trade flow is infinitesimally small. We have had diversion of trade since, but in 2020, 0.003% of all the goods going into, and trade with, the EU passed from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland. Yet for that, we are building border posts at the cost of tens of millions of pounds, in the constituency of the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), in Larne, Belfast and Warrenpoint. As I will set out, there is another way.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Is the Belfast agreement not an international treaty subject to international law? Is it okay to breach that agreement when it comes to its provision of every key decision being taken on a cross-community basis? I suppose that is okay because it affects only Unionists.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member may object from a sedentary position, but the challenge for her is whether her nationalism is more important to her than her democratic credentials.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will when I have dealt with some other points. That is an assault upon the sincerity and efficacy of those who dare to say, “If we are part of the United Kingdom, we need to be treated as part of the United Kingdom.” The hon. Member for Belfast South and Mid Down (Claire Hanna) did not explain why she thinks it right to disenfranchise her constituents and to reject a workable and practical solution. Those who reject a workable and practical solution are those who do not want such a solution in respect of the Irish border. That was very clear from her intervention.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  How else would the hon. Member describe a scenario in which a huge quota of laws are made in a foreign jurisdiction? How else would he classify that than as colonialism?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Given the right hon. Member’s experience of international affairs, what does he think are the prospects for the present arrangements? Are they an incentive or a disincentive to securing a trade deal with the United States of America?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  The core operating principle of the devolved institutions of Northern Ireland was that key issues have cross-community consent. That is what has been ripped out for Tuesday. I have yet to hear a rational, convincing explanation for that. Maybe the Minister has one. Why have we ripped out of the heart of the Belfast agreement the very thing that was supposed to give comfort to both sides—that neither side would get one over on them? Why have we ripped that out of this agreement? If the Minister wishes to tell me, I will gladly give way on that point. There is even a further point about this vote on Tuesday. Article 18.2 of the protocol says that the consent vote was to be “reached strictly in accordance with the unilateral declaration made by the United Kingdom” Government of October 2019. I repeat: “strictly in accordance with”. That unilateral declaration of October ’19 promised a public consultation before this vote. It is there in black and white in the words of the declaration. There has been no consultation. So why are the Government inviting the Assembly to conduct a vote which breaches the guidelines laid down by the protocol itself—that the consent vote should be strictly in accordance with that declaration? That declaration included the promise of a public consultation, of which there has been none. That is another question—

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Absolutely. I printed them off a couple of months ago and I was staggered by how voluminous just the titles are. It is not just 300 laws; it is 300 areas of law which have been surrendered. I have a challenge for every Member of this House who comes from a different part of the United Kingdom from Northern Ireland—those who represent GB constituencies. My challenge to them today is: “How would you feel if in 300 areas of law affecting your constituents, you had no input—you couldn’t change, you couldn’t move an amendment—because those laws were made colonial-like in a foreign Parliament by those elected not by your constituents but by the constituents of 27 other countries?” How, I ask this House, could any democrat, any representative MP, say that is right and correct?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  And if we can pull it, nothing happens. That is the value of it. The most limp excuse that I hear for this plundering of the Northern Ireland statute book by the EU is, “Oh, international law requires this.” Sorry? What sort of international law says that a state must self-harm by disenfranchising its own voters? There is no such international law. I will deal later with the fundamental basics of international law and how they have been distorted in justification of these arrangements.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member knows that from experience. I want to make some progress, and to make one point very strongly: the economic consequences are dire for Northern Ireland. We have heard much talk about the fantasy of a dual-access bonanza. We have been told that Northern Ireland will become the Singapore of the west, that we now have unrivalled access to the UK market and to the EU market—consisting of 500 million people—and that everyone should be overwhelmed by the fantastic opportunity that this provides. How wrong that has turned out to be, and for one very simple reason, already alluded to by the right hon. Member for Belfast East. We have heard the suggestion that inward investment will flow into Northern Ireland because of this dual market access, but it has not done so. Invest Northern Ireland has had to admit that there has been no upturn—and why is that? Because any benefit, if there is one, is countermanded by the fettering of the trade from Great Britain. A manufacturer wishing to set up a business in Northern Ireland in order to have access to the EU market is bound to say to himself—because investors are intelligent people—“Where will I get my raw materials? Oh, I will get them, as most do, from Great Britain.” But then he will discover that those raw materials will have to pass through an international customs border, with all the regulation, all the delay and all the inspection, and the shine soon goes off that idea. Far from being a bonanza, this has turned out to be anything but. I have already pointed out that the one sector that is flourishing is the service sector. That does not just happen to be the case; it is able to flourish because it is outside the protocol. And things will get worse: next Friday, when the general product safety regulation comes into force, many small suppliers will simply stop supplying because of the bureaucratic burden that will be placed on them. Already, in so many cases, when someone wants to buy an item online, this will pop up: “Not available in Northern Ireland.” Why is that? Because the small suppliers from Great Britain find it impossible to handle the burden of bureaucracy, so they are simply saying, “We are not supplying to Northern Ireland.” That is hugely frustrating for so many people in Northern Ireland—including, I might say, Mrs Allister, who, like many a woman, wants to order things and then finds that they are not available in Northern Ireland. How would hon. Members from Great Britain feel if “not available in Scotland,” “not available in Wales” and “not available in England” constantly popped up? Would they not be asking why? And when they heard the answer, “It is something called the protocol,” why would they continue to be enthusiasts for the very thing that is blocking their consumers from getting the supplies they need? This is a practical issue.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I have given way quite often, so I am going to make some progress. That is why what I regard as the two liberation clauses in my Bill, clauses five and two, exist. They are the clauses that will free the whole United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland in particular, from this malevolent situation in which a huge portion of our laws are made not by ourselves but by others. That is very important. I have spent a lot of time in this debate talking about the constitutional import of all this, and that is very important, because it is that which gives certainty and assurance to any part of this United Kingdom. However, before I leave that issue, I remind the House that, because of the protocol arrangements, our Supreme Court had to rule that article VI of our Acts of Union, which guaranteed unfettered trade access between and within all parts of the United Kingdom, stand in suspension. There cannot be a higher authority than the Supreme Court to demonstrate that a key component of the very Acts of Union that makes this Union is in suspension, and if the cause of suspension is the protocol or the Windsor framework, then no one who believes in that Union should be sanguine or at ease with that. There are also economic consequences. Before Brexit, Northern Ireland had an economy that was very integrated with the rest of the United Kingdom. It had the free, unfettered flow of goods one way and the other, as we had and would still have from Birmingham to London or Edinburgh. We had exactly that.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I respectfully suggest that the hon. Member reads a little deeper. She will discover that the Stormont brake is farcical. The previous Member for North Antrim in this House aptly said it was like someone sitting in the back seat of a car and saying to the driver, “Would you ever be so kind as to pull the brake?” That is what the Stormont brake is: a request to the British Government to pause the imposition of an EU law. The British Government do not have to do it—there has been one request to date and nothing has happened about it—so it really is a fiction, and an insult to the democratic mandate of the people of Northern Ireland.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  The whole purpose of this Bill is to restore equilibrium and to get us to a point at which we have a sensible relationship based upon mutual respect, not on the grabbing of the sovereignty, one from the other. That is where we have got to. The hon. Member may not like to face up to it, but a whole raft of jurisprudence and lawmaking has been removed from within the reach of this United Kingdom and placed within the control of a foreign body, and that is not the basis for a sustainable solution.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I will be dealing with that, but the hon. Member invites us to think that it is appropriate that those elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly should turn up on Tuesday of next week and vote to disenfranchise their own constituents—to say, “You, our constituents in Northern Ireland who sent us to the Northern Ireland Assembly, we are not worthy to make your laws. We must bow to the superiority of a foreign Parliament, and we must surrender to that foreign Parliament the right to make these laws in hundreds of areas of law.” The hon. Member might think that is admirable and is the very epitome of democracy, but I happen to think it is the very opposite.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  I can tell the hon. Member that it is exactly what businesses need. My constituency office is choked, from time to time, with businesses saying, “Why is it that I cannot get the goods I need without all this paperwork and bureaucracy?” There are many small businesses in my constituency and elsewhere, such as small engineering businesses, which rely for their raw materials not on huge containers coming in, but on parcels of bolts and everyday materials, six, seven, eight or 12 of which come a week. Come early next year, the Irish sea border is going to extend to a parcels border, and we are going to have a situation in which those businesses that rely on the daily arrival of a parcel of some raw materials from GB will be put through the red lane of this full-blown international customs border. The hon. Lady may think that that is good for business. It is a death knell for businesses. That is the problem that we have. The economic consequences are severe. Even with the Windsor framework, all our raw materials that feed all our manufacturing industry and that come from GB now have to pass through the red lane in a full international customs border. Think of that—think of the effect on a business. That is what is stifling, not growing, business. In consequence, we have had trade diversion—of course we have. We have veterinary medicines. In the main, our veterinary medicines come from GB, and always have done, but now we face a cliff edge where, according to EU diktat, they can no longer come because we are subject to the veterinary requirements of the EU, not the United Kingdom. Medicines that we have used safely and with no problems for decades are suddenly to be stopped. The Government say that they will get a deal—well, let us see it. Even the very thought that we have to go cap in hand to a foreign power to say, “Please could we have an arrangement where, from within our own country, we could bring our own medicines to another part of our own country? Please could we do that?”, is so humiliating at a national level and so prejudicial to our farming community.

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member touches on a fundamental. In June 2016, we all had the opportunity to vote on Brexit. Some liked it and some did not, but the question on the ballot paper was: “Do you want the United Kingdom to leave the EU?” The question was not: “Would you like GB to leave the EU, and leave Northern Ireland behind?” But that is what we got. That is a fundamental denial of Brexit to my constituents in Northern Ireland. That is the source of the disparity, and undemocratic consequences have flowed from that. I mentioned the 300 areas of law. They are all recited in annex 2 of the protocol. It is no surprise that the first area of law covered in annex 2 is customs, and that the first law put on the people of Northern Ireland is the EU’s customs code: EU regulation 952/2013. What does the customs code do? It operates on the basis that GB—those who got Brexit—is no longer a part of the EU; it is, in the words of the customs code, a “third country”, or in common parlance a foreign country, whereas Northern Ireland is treated as EU territory. Therefore we have this absurd insult under the customs code that goods coming to Northern Ireland—a supposed part of the United Kingdom—from GB must be subject to all the rigour of declarations, checks and reporting of data recording. Why? Because GB is treated as a foreign country when it sends its goods, particularly its raw materials, to my part of the United Kingdom. That is the iniquitous effect of the Union partitioning and dividing the customs code and protocol. Some Members seem to find that amusing. If hon. Members believe at all in the United Kingdom—maybe some do not—they should be as offended as I am by the fact that moving goods from one part of the United Kingdom to another involves an international customs border under the control of foreign law. How could any MP—amused or otherwise—think that is right and equitable?

• 6 Dec 2024 · European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member has recited what some might have thought were erudite contributions in support of these arrangements, apparently with the insinuation towards the end that we have considered this whole matter. Have his friends not spent since July trying to undo the very things that the previous Government did on so many other matters, because they thought that they were wrong? They were wrong on this, so should they not be trying to undo it?