Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)

My Lords, I will address principally the arguments that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, used in the third part of his speech—the ones that relate more generally to the SPS agreement that on 19 May our Government and the European Union agreed to negotiate. When I listened to the noble Lord introducing his regret Motion, I hardly noticed any recognition of the fact that we would not be discussing this tonight were it not for his dereliction as a negotiator, when the negotiations were being carried out, to find any protection for the extremely valuable agri-food exports that we make to the other countries of Europe. Nothing was done about that when he was a Minister in the Johnson Government, and no attempt was made to negotiate provisions in the trade and co-operation agreement with the EU aimed at protecting those valuable exports and the people who produce them. It seems to me that he was also, apparently, unaware of the fact that the SPS agreement, if negotiated successfully—which the Government agreed to attempt to do on 19 May, as did the European Union—would have many additional aspects that could be of great value. Those, of course, are the ones that relate to Northern Ireland, because it is rather clear that if there were an SPS agreement, quite a lot of the problems that have arisen in the operation of the Windsor Framework and the arrangements for trade between Northern Ireland, the rest of the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe would simply fall away. They would not be necessary. That in itself is surely a major prize to reach for.