Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support the noble Lord, Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown. Surprisingly, I find myself in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman of Darlington, who made a number of very fair points. Incidentally, it would be good to see her back on the Front Bench eventually; she is much missed on the Front Bench. However, I think the noble Baroness has slightly rose-tinted spectacles in respect of the negotiations, of which I was a small part during the early part of the Northern Ireland protocol. It was never a binary choice between a hard border and nothing else. There were always the options, which were ignored by the May, Sunak and Johnson Governments, of technical solutions that Lars Karlsson, among others, pioneered in the Middle East, Norway and Sweden. I will perhaps pre-empt the perennial comments of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, about how terrible Brexit is; in respect of Northern Ireland, there were always choices which were not pursued. However, we are where we are. In applying EU law, the Windsor Framework relegates Northern Ireland’s citizens to second-class, violates territorial integrity and erodes UK sovereignty. Notwithstanding that this is a technical enforcement instrument, brought about because of the need to avoid legal jeopardy and litigation risk, I believe we are failing in our duty because we are not even fulfilling the traditional parliamentary role of scrutiny and oversight; incidentally, and ironically, nor are the European Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly, because this is generated from the European Commission. The European Parliament is not a parliament we would necessarily recognise in the traditional sense; it is in fact a body subject to huge amounts of lobbying by business in the interests of the countries of the European Union. In effect, we are an appointment body for the market surveillance authority, which is the Office for Product Safety and Standards. That is our role in this sovereign Parliament and it is quite shameful, in my opinion. We are not even looking at the efficacy of the policy—the technical details on carbon footprint, standards, recycling, labelling, the battery passport and CE marking. We are of course diverging from the 2008 regulations affecting Great Britain. This point was made in the committee in the other place: we may have warm words—as they say, warm words butter no parsnips—that Section 46 of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 has not been offended, but it has. We are clearly not abiding by that and by the territorial integrity and importance of the UK-wide, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland single market. This goes to the point made earlier by one of the noble Lords from the DUP. We are talking here about criminal liabilities, not an overdue library book. We are talking about people potentially being the subject of criminal sanction and going to prison. That is not being debated in our sovereign Parliament, or indeed in the devolved Assembly in Northern Ireland, and I think that is a serious issue that should concern everyone, irrespective of their party. I challenge the Minister to talk about that issue, because these regulations are rules set by a body that no one voted for and cannot be removed. I have three quick questions for the Minister. Will she give us more details on the GB-wide consultation? What are the likely producer responsibility requirements that will arise following that? Will she perhaps undertake to review the operation of the regulations, as between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in respect of competitive advantage? Finally, if the noble Lord chooses to test the opinion of the House, he will have my strong support.