Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)

My Lords, in moving this amendment in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn, I will speak also to Amendments 120, 201 and 216, in my name, to which the noble Lords, Lord Dodds and Lord Naseby, have added their names. I should say at the beginning that I wholeheartedly support Amendment 207 but will not refer to it. When the Windsor Framework was proposed, I and others warned that it would be anti-democratic, in the sense that it would lead to laws being introduced in Northern Ireland over which the people had no democratic say. We warned that it would mean that laws approved by our elected Parliament could sometimes be blocked in a constituent part of the United Kingdom, so these amendments are all about the primacy of our law over EU law. Since the framework, EU rules have quietly been applied to Northern Ireland, affecting items such as mundane tumble dryers, smartphones and vehicle imports. Those are all very irritating and anti-democratic, but this Bill is really on a different scale. The generational smoking ban and the Tobacco and Vapes Bill are flagship policies of His Majesty’s Government. They were in Labour’s manifesto and have sweeping implications, which have been debated, for trade, retailers and hospitality. They touch on civil liberties, on our culture and on the integrity of the union. When foreign states seek to use the Windsor Framework to obstruct the implementation of this legislation in Northern Ireland, the matter cannot simply be waved away. I am afraid that that is precisely what the Government appear to be doing on this issue, right from the beginning of Second Reading. Seven EU member states have said that the Bill violates EU tobacco directives and undermines the single market. They have formally registered their opposition and called for the law to be blocked. The Government’s response is to say, first, that they have a different interpretation of the law; and, secondly, that, even if that is wrong, they should be able to proceed on public health grounds. However, we have known about the legal issues that this Bill faces in Northern Ireland for over a year. King’s Counsels, former Ministers, leading journalists and leading academics have raised the alarm. Of course, they have been proved right on other Bills where government legal experts said that they would be fine and that nothing could stop them being implemented in Northern Ireland—then, of course, we saw that they could be.