Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)

My Lords, before I speak to my regret amendment, I want to take this opportunity to thank the Secretary of State for Defence and the Defence Minister in this House for their very welcome decision to judicially review the decision of coroner Justice Humphreys, who ruled that soldiers who killed the IRA terrorists in Clonoe in 1992 should face trial. This has been widely welcomed by members of His Majesty’s Armed Forces and all decent, law-abiding people in Northern Ireland. Turning to these regulations, I thank the noble Lord for his explanation of why they are needed. It is a change to have him here, giving the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, a night off from dealing with Northern Ireland statutory instruments. He will not be surprised to hear that I disagree with some of the points he made. We have had many regret amendments on statutory instruments, and they are a very important way of getting such issues on the record, even if there is not much chance of stopping these statutory instruments. These regulations really will hit home with people going about their day-to-day lives. They affect electrical household goods, household tumble dryers, smartphones, mobile phones and numerous other goods in everyday use. There are two central difficulties with the Ecodesign for Energy-Related Products and Energy Information (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2025. The first is democratic, and the second pertains to the division of the United Kingdom. In the first instance, the standards set by this legislation have been drafted by a body of which we are not a part—the European Union—and which the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave in the biggest every manifestation of democracy in our history. I remind noble Lords that people in Northern Ireland had the exact same ballot paper as the rest of the United Kingdom. Yes, like Scotland, there was a majority in Northern Ireland to remain, but it was a United Kingdom vote which all political parties had promised to honour, whatever the outcome. We voted to leave the EU in part because, even when we were represented in it, there was a democratic deficit in the way it worked. The way the EU does politics is entirely alien to our tradition, arising from the fact that the power of legislative initiative in the EU rests not with democratically elected politicians, as in our tradition, but with the unelected European Commission. So now, for Northern Ireland citizens, the power of legislative initiative rests not only with an unelected body but with a foreign unelected body—what might be called a double whammy. We did not vote to leave the EU so that we would have no control over our laws in one part of our own country. The European Union has made absolutely no attempt to consult people and businesses in Northern Ireland on these changes, and now our own Government are rushing through the powers to enforce them, again without even the tiniest bit of consultation. They then have the cheek to suggest that this is not a problem.