Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)

My Lords, noble Lords should be clear that these regulations, which allow the law in Northern Ireland to diverge from that of Great Britain, violate Article 1(2) of the Windsor Framework, which clearly states that the purpose of the Windsor Framework is to protect “the essential State functions … of the United Kingdom”. Surely the most basic function of the state is to ensure the nation’s security. A critical component of that is biosecurity. What the Government have not admitted is that this legislation applies different biosecurity standards to Northern Ireland and Great Britain because of the EU diktat, is set in the context of an SPS border dividing one part of the UK from another, and steps beyond the bounds of the Windsor Framework. Last week, the noble Baroness sought to dismiss concerns of this kind by arguing that the island of Ireland has long been treated as a single area for epidemiology. This argument does not work, because there is a distinct difference between being treated as a single area for epidemiology in a context where we set our own common UK biosecurity standards and what happens now. Today, we are being divided in two by international SPS border control posts at Belfast, Larne, Warrenpoint and Foyle, supposedly to protect Northern Ireland from the threat from our own country—what a ridiculous thing to say. Those control posts have cost £152 million so far of taxpayers’ money to construct. The truth is that although we have ceased being a member of the EU, we have still not left the EU. While the Windsor Framework is in existence, the United Kingdom will never experience a true departure from the European Union. This point is so eloquently demonstrated by the regulations, which, as mentioned by many noble Peers, state: “A reference to a member State is to be read as if Northern Ireland were a member State of the European Union”. How dare His Majesty’s Government write out Northern Ireland from its own country and into the EU’s regulatory territory? They also refer to GB as a third country, which is also really outrageous. Even worse, any future changes that Brussels wants to bring in will simply be nodded through and business will have to comply or be sanctioned: changes to all things—passports, farm machinery et cetera—with no public consultation and not a single farmer, garden centre or grower asked for their view. How dare the Government again say that these are just technical changes? I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, that we will keep having these SI regret debates because they are the only way that we in this Chamber get the chance to discuss the constitutional outrage of what is happening and the drip-by-drip moving Northern Ireland away from the rest of the United Kingdom. This is not going to go away. I will very much support the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, if he decides to go for a vote on this, to show, as a matter of principle, that we object to this kind of treatment.