Contribution
My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. There is no doubt that one of our greatest national institutions is the NHS. The people of the United Kingdom have in the past been exercised about the possibility that those whom they elect might tamper with it, notwithstanding their accountability to the electorate. Imagine, then, the concern that attends the prospect of having a key aspect of the NHS placed in jeopardy by the politicians of a foreign country who are not accountable to you. That is the plight that befell UK citizens living in Northern Ireland when the EU Parliament voted EU Regulation 1849 in 2024.
Being disenfranchised, which has already been mentioned, in some 300 areas of law is bad enough. But when the laws give the foreign legislators the power to strike down any aspect of one of our great national institutions, the justice of that disfranchisement is completely intolerable. It is an indignity to which the people of England, Wales and Scotland should never be subjected: why, then, the people of Northern Ireland?
In this context, I was aghast to listen last week to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right honourable Member for Leeds South, giving evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee in another place that the Government had “solved” the amalgam problem. That was just quite extraordinary, to put it mildly. A piece of legislation has been imposed on part of the UK by a legislature in which it is not represented, and which places a key component of one of our greatest institutions in jeopardy. Rather than standing as citizens, we are subjected to the humiliation of being taken as supplicants to the bar of the grace and favour of a foreign Executive to see what crumbs they might be persuaded to toss from their gilded table.
To make matters worse, we are expected to be thankful, grateful and accepting of it, even though we have no more made the concession than the original legislation. Whatever happened to self-respect? Whatever happened to the United Kingdom? We are then forced to confront the consequences of the fact that, rather than being treated as legislators, we are taken for dumb supplicants in the development of the alternative provision through the fact that this alternative provision further alienates us from the rest of our home country.
Under the Commission notice, from 1 July 2026 it will be illegal to produce amalgam in Northern Ireland and it will have to come from Great Britain. This introduces two compulsions. First, in order to have amalgam, Northern Ireland must buy it from GB because it is not allowed to be produced in Northern Ireland. Secondly, its movement from Great Britain to Northern Ireland is subject to the imposition of an international customs border, cutting the United Kingdom in two. This means that, from July 2026, it will only be possible to take amalgam across the red lane as if moving it to a foreign country.
In a context where the number of traders selling goods from GB to Northern Ireland is falling all the time because of the cost of having to negotiate the border, what certainty do we have that anyone in GB will be ready to sell dental amalgam to Northern Ireland from July 2026 until December 2034? While UK citizens living in England, Wales and Scotland will be protected from this uncertainty, apparently it is fine not to afford the same protection to UK citizens in Northern Ireland.
We must confront the fact that the regulations before us today rest on a very uncertain foundation. The fundamental problem is that, when interpreting the relevant EU law to which these regulations seek to relate, the European Court of Justice will have to confine its interpretation to the law. It will have to ask what EU Regulation 2024/1849 means in relation to Northern Ireland and not what the EU Commission notice means, because, rather than being the law, the latter is simply the Commission’s rather extraordinary interpretation of EU Regulation 2024/1849.
In her response, the Minister might be tempted to say that there are other examples of Commission notices performing the same kinds of feats as that which underpins the regulations before us today. I can locate only two, both of which come with the heading “DISCLAIMER” and seek to interpret the relevant legislation to the point of changing its effective meaning. Interestingly, they both relate to the Irish Sea border and attempts to interpret one’s way out of earlier problems. One relates to human medicines and the other to veterinary medicines.
Finally, could the Minister explain why it is acceptable to bring legislation to your Lordships’ House that does the following? First, it testifies the disfranchisement of the people of Northern Ireland in relation to key aspects of the NHS; secondly, it further alienates us from the rest of the United Kingdom through the imposition of a dental amalgam sea border from July 2026; thirdly, it presents all this on a legal foundation that relates not to EU law but to an interpretation of it that bears no relation to the actual legislation, and which could be struck down by the European Court of Justice at any time; and, fourthly, it acquiesces with the unconstitutional practice of, in effect, using the Executive to suspend laws made by this legislature.