14
Examination of witness
Gavin Robinson.
Q120 The Chair: The Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee has today been in the Senate Chamber in Parliament Buildings here, which is a beautiful room and lovely to sit in. We are now holding the 10th public evidence session of our inquiry on Article 2 of the protocol/Windsor Framework—the so-called non-diminution of rights provision. We are joined now by Gavin Robinson MP, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the DUP.
Gavin, you are very welcome and we very much look forward to your evidence. We would be grateful if you would briefly introduce yourself the first time you speak. I remind you that today’s meeting is being broadcast and a verbatim transcript will be taken for subsequent publication, which will be sent to you to check for accuracy. Would you like to introduce yourself and make any introductory remarks?
Gavin Robinson: Lord Chair, thank you for the invitation. It is great to be before you all today. I think it is the second time I have appeared in front of your committee and it is appropriate to thank you for the detailed level of scrutiny that you provide to these important and salient issues, particularly for us in Northern Ireland.
As you know, I am parliamentary party leader and party leader but, in the House of Commons, I sit on the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee, which is routinely copied into the correspondence of this committee. We see the import of the issues raised, although we do not have the time to dedicate the level of detail to them that you do. I formerly sat on the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee, where we had a much greater ability to focus primarily and purposefully on these issues. I lament that the House of Commons, as the democratically elected side of our Parliament, does not have the ability or fora to raise these issues, to scrutinise these issues and to hold the Government to account.
I think the Government benefit from keeping a level of European scrutiny in abeyance in the House of Commons. I have heard, from time to time, the aspiration that a similar type of committee should be resurrected, particularly if there is to be a positive conclusion to the ongoing UK-EU negotiations around SPS. Whether for that reason or because of the totality of issues that pervade politics in Northern Ireland and construct barriers between one part of our nation and another, I genuinely believe that the House of Commons should restore that committee to augment and amplify the issues that you and your committee properly and purposefully look at.
Q121 The Chair: Thank you very much for your support. We are a Select Committee of the House of Lords, but I think all in this room value the word “scrutiny”; it is part of our name—the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee. Indeed, what you have said has been reflected by representations that we have had here, for example, from the Democratic Scrutiny Committee, which has said to us that it obtains information from us relating to actions in the European Union that it does not obtain, directly or indirectly, from the British Government. So we will continue to do what you approve of, in this context at least, and we are very grateful to you for coming today.
Of course, we are here to talk about Article 2, so I will start the questions by asking why, in your view, the EU and UK negotiated on and included Article 2 in the protocol/Windsor Framework. What is its political significance? What were its aspirations and to what extent have they been achieved?
Gavin Robinson: While there are clear elements to the question, there are probably two elements to the first part of it—why it was negotiated. First, it is fair for me to reflect that I do not believe it is necessary. I do not believe it should have been negotiated nor subsequently understood in the terms that some seek to purport. During the vexed years in which we negotiated the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, there were, at times, theatrical—and in my view wholly unnecessary—attempts to portray some level of harm or potential harm to the rights experienced by citizens of this United Kingdom in Northern Ireland.
I do not believe that the rights enjoyed by citizens in Northern Ireland or elsewhere in the United Kingdom were predicated on our membership of the European Union, nor do I believe that our withdrawal from the European Union was going to encroach, in any way, on the rights enjoyed by citizens of Northern Ireland within this United Kingdom. You will know from the time of the Belfast agreement and the chapter on rights and safeguarding equal opportunity that there was a commitment to legislate in domestic law the convention on human rights. That occurred and became operative from the year 2000. There was a domestic avenue for consideration of rights issues within our courts.
So why was it negotiated? I think it was negotiated to assuage a politically motivated and, to my mind, unnecessary concern about a potential infringement of rights. I say it was totally unnecessary; I can point to many examples where our United Kingdom has a rights base and legal protections, in a whole host of areas beyond individual personal rights, that exceed the expectations of the collective across the European Union. I see no circumstances or political will in the United Kingdom to diminish those rights. We are a proud nation of rights, not just in the interpretation or construction of the convention but going back to the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights and further still—although no Member of your honourable House can remember Magna Carta.
The Chair: We get nearer than most.
Gavin Robinson: I did not share, nor did my community share, the concerns that were expressed. I sometimes fear that the Government of the day negotiated and implemented these provisions simply to assuage those concerns, without thinking about the practical application of them. They clearly did not think about the practical outworkings of many other aspects of the negotiated outcome between the European Union and the United Kingdom.
The political import of that, in my view, is to do the exact opposite of what was intended. The purpose was to enshrine rights and reflect protections that you can find in the rights chapter of the Belfast agreement, through a negotiated outcome that had no political support whatever among the unionist community in Northern Ireland. The Belfast agreement requires and is predicated upon cross-community consent, yet none existed, and the expansionist way in which we have seen Article 2 being interpreted confirms this view.
Why was it negotiated? I cannot tell you why, but the political significance of it enshrines in law an oxymoron: something that was intended to protect rights but, in doing so, the very heart of its negotiated outcome undermines the rights of one section of our community within this country.
The Chair: Do you want to develop that, Nigel?
Q122 Lord Dodds of Duncairn: Thanks very much, Lord Chair, and thank you, Gavin, for coming to give evidence. I know it is a very busy week for you, especially with the events of the weekend coming up, so we appreciate it. You have already started to go down the route of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and how you see it being impacted by the protocol/Windsor Framework. People talk in terms of sovereignty and the democratic deficit but, in terms of the Belfast agreement, famously, one of its main architects, David Trimble, was vehemently opposed to the protocol because of the arguments that you started to outline. Could you elaborate on exactly what the problem is with having the protocol sitting alongside the Belfast agreement? What elements of it are in breach of that agreement?
Gavin Robinson: Thank you for the question, Lord Dodds. I touched on it briefly, but I fundamentally said “oxymoron”: a contradiction in terms. Something there to protect against a diminution of rights diminished the rights of half of our population. The Belfast agreement and the rights chapter itself are clear about all of us having the right to pursue democratically national and political aspirations. I take nothing away from that within the Belfast agreement, but in bringing forth the arrangements, as our Government and the European Union did, with no recourse and no consultation or effective understanding of the view of the unionist community, they completely diminished our view and our rights. They have called into question the appellant opportunities; the constitutional position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom—something which, at the heart of the Belfast Agreement, was settled; and the consent principle: the consent required from both communities within Northern Ireland. You can see, over the last four or five years, the discord and the damage it has caused to political stability in Northern Ireland.
So, if the aspiration was to protect political stability, it has been upended. There is a naivety to the view that these issues will subside, and that they are not as genuine or as troublesome as perhaps was made out. That is not the case. From a Northern Ireland perspective, the understanding and recognition of the constitutional sovereignty of my country has been diminished and tarnished by the Government of the day in our national Parliament in agreeing the provisions of the Windsor Framework. That is something that I, as a political leader, have to wrestle with. That is something that I, as an individual who speaks on behalf of a community which has been burdened unnecessarily by these provisions, have to speak to, but also have to maturely and respectfully operate within the realms of our political system. I do not see any concern within this Labour Government, or indeed in the previous Conservative Government, that they have impinged so fundamentally on the foundations of the political settlement reached here almost 30 years ago.
The Chair: Can we just focus on sovereignty a little more? You are a Member of the Westminster Parliament, so you subscribe to the sovereignty of Parliament for the United Kingdom. You are talking about the sovereignty of Northern Ireland as a discrete matter, and no doubt it is—that is what all the devolved parts of the United Kingdom assume—but how far are you limited in your aspirations to sovereignty by the possibility that the United Kingdom Parliament may thwart you through the ordinary democratic process in the United Kingdom?
Gavin Robinson: I do not assert sovereignty on behalf of Northern Ireland, so I will invert the assumption that has been outlined there. I do not assert sovereignty on behalf of Northern Ireland or the people of Northern Ireland. I believe in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, but I believe that our sovereign Parliament and our Government should have had regard for an international obligation which rises above politics in the United Kingdom—an obligation to respect the settlement that was reached in the Belfast Agreement and to understand that any changes to the constitutional position of Northern Ireland require the consent of its people.
So it is not that I assert Northern Ireland’s sovereignty over United Kingdom sovereignty—I do not; I am a unionist within this country—but I expect our sovereign Parliament to have regard to what is recognised as an international treaty and a treaty that brought peace. The very idea that our peace is predicated upon the involvement of the European Union is offensive to those who fought for and secured peace in this part of our United Kingdom. I also regret that, if the aspiration or the intention was to protect the fundamentals of the Belfast agreement, it produced an outcome which is so fundamentally injurious to it.
The Chair: So that means that, if Article 2 was not just unnecessary but very unwise and not required in any way, when we move on to a detail like the Dillon case, you would say, “Actually, the Dillon case in itself is also, on the face of it, completely irrelevant and shouldn’t have happened”, and whatever decision is made on the Dillon case, we should not be there. Is that fair?
Gavin Robinson: There are probably a number of aspects to that question, because, of course, the Dillon case did not consider one Article 2 but two of them. In considering legacy issues, it considers Article 2 right to life issues and the obligations on a state to investigate properly instances where there have been a loss of life. Secondly, and separately, the Dillon case proved fundamentally important in part by satisfying, or at least providing, some level of clarity to what is, in my political view, the outrageous, expansionist approach to Article 2. “No diminution of rights”, asserted in Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, is a commitment given at a period of time—the time in which we left the European Union.
You know well that there are some activists, including those provided for by the Belfast agreement to protect rights, who have interpreted Article 2 as having some level of dynamic alignment. They also seem to infer that there is or should be a greater emphasis and import on ensuring that there is no distinction of rights between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, without any concern about the integrity of rights within this United Kingdom.
When you consider that this framework comes from the Belfast agreement, and that the aspiration was to protect the rights which start with the understanding and appreciation that Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom, I know that I worry about the friction that arises from a trade border in the Irish Sea, and I worry fundamentally that the aspiration is a rights border in the Irish Sea, where the questions of rights within this United Kingdom are determined not by our sovereign Government, our Parliament or our independent courts but elsewhere by others who are not there to protect our interests. That is a concern for me.
Dillon helpfully provided some level of clarity, although not in totality, on the issues that pervade and arise from Article 2. Fundamentally, as a Member of Parliament who represents this party for Belfast in Northern Ireland, and as a political leader who speaks on behalf of Northern Ireland issues all the time, whenever we see legislation proposed in Westminster, sadly, our first question is not, “How will this helpfully impact our constituents or adversely impact them? How will this treat society in Northern Ireland?” It is, “Will it even apply?” and that cannot be right.
The Chair: I have trespassed on your territory, Baroness Foster, but I am sure you have more questions to ask.
Q123 Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee: Yes, thank you, and thank you, Gavin, for your evidence. I wanted to ask you in more detail about the Dillon judgment, but I also want to reflect on some evidence that we were given yesterday by some of the victims groups. They pointed out to this committee that although you talk about no diminution of rights as at 2020, actually there were lots of rights that we did not have at that stage, such as the definition of a victim, which is so broad that it includes those people who blew themselves up in terrorist situations and what have you, and their families. So they were very clear to us that, when you talk about no diminution of rights, we did not have those rights to start with in 2020. They feel very strongly about that.
On Dillon, it was in the Supreme Court—the highest court in our jurisdiction—yet there seem to be a lot of people who want to challenge that judgment and are very unhappy with it. How do you see Dillon and the judgment that was handed down by the Supreme Court as impacting on Article 2? Do you see it in a favourable way? How do you see it?
Gavin Robinson: Thank you for the question. I think Dillon has added helpful clarity but in a discrete way. When it talks about the provisions being too vague and transcribed in general terms within the rights, safeguards and equality of opportunity chapter of the Belfast agreement, it is right to curtail a level of the expansionism but it is only one level of it.
The Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee took evidence last week—if you do not mind me referencing it, Lord Chair—on reconciliation, and there was an exchange between me and one of the witnesses around the Dillon case. I have to say that the position outlined to us, in my view, was utterly pathetic: pleased with the outcome in the lower courts and completely ignorant of the import of the Supreme Court decision.
There was no interest in the Supreme Court’s view and no reflection about how it fundamentally augments the legal advice in relation to the ICRIR and how we deal with issues affecting our past. That is where the politics and the campaigning gets in the way of legal understanding or indeed other associated aspects of their politics.
I respect that everyone has a different aspiration, but you cannot read into that something that is not there. Whether it is on continuing dynamic alignment of rights or the continued opportunity or hope that Article 2 will frustrate the sovereign will of our Parliament, that is not only negative; it is wrong. It is something to which our Government need to be much more full-throated in their response. Our Government have been very disorganised, slovenly and disinterested about the import of particular lines within the Explanatory Memorandum. We know that, throughout all our scrutiny in the past and your committee’s scrutiny to this day, when officials look at proposals for legislation in a singular way, they tend not to think about these issues. They tend not to think about the import for Northern Ireland. Even when they do, there is a concern that was raised in the Dillon judgment about the Explanatory Memorandum, in that some believe that the definitional issue of victims, for example, in the European Parliament may be in scope of Article 2. That is loose language for a government Explanatory Memorandum.
The Chair: Baroness Ludford may want to develop this issue a little further.
Q124 Baroness Ludford: The point resonates. You said that you thought that Dillon provides some clarity, but not total clarity—I think we probably all agree with that—on the scope of Article 2. How do you imagine or envisage that further clarity could be brought? What would be the means and the processes to firm up that clarity?
Gavin Robinson: For those issues outside of our control, there will be further examples of cases brought before our courts and the judiciary will give a view. There is still an expectation on the part of some that the Dillon judgment from our Supreme Court will be challenged in Strasbourg. I do not know whether that will come to pass, but what should we be able to control? I think the time has come for our Government to be incredibly clear in a declaratory way as to what their interpretation is. I do not believe it is right for this to be left solely to our courts or for the judiciary to come up with their construct with the information available to them. I believe fully in the independence of our judiciary, but it is for legislators to legislate, and it is for our Government to be very precise on limiting the scope of Article 2.
Baroness Ludford: So you are suggesting a new explainer document, because the Government withdrew the original explainer document and we have been led to understand—and I think some of our witnesses seem to have the same understanding—that the Government’s position so far is that the written evidence they gave to this committee for this inquiry is meant to be a substitute explainer, but we are not sure.
The Chair: It is not 100% clear.
Baroness Ludford: We are not sure whether we are going to get a new kind of definitive document. Is that the kind of thing that you would want to see—some authoritative document from the Government saying, “This is what we believe Dillon means for Article 2”?
Gavin Robinson: I am not saying that that would be in and of itself an unuseful document; I think it would have a purpose and use. But Article 2 goes beyond Dillon and the issues raised in Dillon. The court answered helpfully some areas of clarification, but I believe the import to be much broader and more significant, and I do not think that it can rest solely through Explanatory Memoranda or through notes from the Government or the Cabinet Office to a committee of Parliament. I think the Government should be bringing forward in Westminster, in both Houses, Motions or legislation to lay it out clearly and assert sovereignty on interpretation.
The Chair: I was following you absolutely until that last phrase, that last clause, about needing further legislation. If one applies an Occam’s razor principle to this—that the simple explanation is often more useful than the complicated explanation—you seem to be saying that Article 2 plus Dillon has reduced the import of Article 2 to a group of issues that were reasonably well defined in Dillon and left open other issues defined by the general law, various pieces of human rights law applying to employment, non-discrimination and so on, and that you do not need much in the way of an explainer document because the ordinary law is there and the only following questions would be whether there are any rights that are applicable in Great Britain that are not available in Northern Ireland and whether we would like to look for legislation to deal with them.
Gavin Robinson: I do not think that is a fair reflection of what I was suggesting. I believe in fairness to our judiciary. A postscript issued by the Government trying to reassert the intention of the day would be insufficient for the judiciary to take it as Parliament’s intention. I believe Parliament would need to be clearer—that is the Government through Parliament—in what it understands, potentially legislatively, the import to be. I see a narrowing of some of the civil rights issues through the Dillon judgment. I see no sense that those who have engaged in judicial militancy or legislative militancy or those who have used judicial activism to try to burnish their view on dynamic alignment of rights, for example, have stopped. I do not believe that they have. These issues will come before the courts again. There were elements associated with immigration. I have said that I do not want to see a trade border in the Irish Sea, and I do not want to see a rights border in the Irish Sea. As a full citizen of this United Kingdom, I do not want to see a people border in the Irish Sea either. Are there applications or implications of Article 2 on immigration and how we, as a sovereign country, protect our borders? Separately, we know from the For Women Scotland case—a very clear case drawing upon legislation that predates our withdrawal from the European Union, so no diminution of rights—still to this day government departments in Northern Ireland are either incapable or unwilling to adhere to the outworkings of that Supreme Court decision because they query whether it can stand in light of Article 2. My view is that, for as long as these things are before the courts, a postscript explainer from government would be insufficient to assist the courts in understanding Parliament’s intention in the provisions of Article 2.
Q125 Baroness Sanderson of Welton: The question we have is, “Do you believe people in Northern Ireland understand what Article 2 is for?” I suppose there are two parts to that: those with the expansionist view are using it for certain agendas perhaps and your view. I am interested in both those sides and your views on it. Also, you are the second person to mention a rights border today, and you think it is naive to think that this will not get bigger, so I am interested. Even if people do not realise that it is Article 2 they are referring to, quite a few people have spoken today of the unease that their constituency, their constituents and their communities feel at their rights perhaps being taken away from them, feeling that on a day-to-day basis, without being able to say what is Article 2. I just am interested in your views on that.
Gavin Robinson: Your question conceptualises it properly. If I were to walk down the Newtownards Road in my constituency, or the Shankill Road in west Belfast, or any other unionist part of Northern Ireland, and ask somebody what their view is on Article 2, they might walk on quite quickly. But the genuine understanding of the encroachment on our constitutional position, of feeling less British, of feeling that the rights afforded to us are not the same as those afforded to citizens in Scotland, England or Wales—they understand that. They understand when they go on to Amazon, eBay or Etsy as consumers and they cannot buy products. They understand when they hear manufacturers say they have to fill out forms to send items from Lisburn to Liverpool—forms that manufacturers from Leeds to Liverpool have never heard of because they do not need to do it. They understand it when the gift shop of the House of Commons refuses to send all of their wares to citizens in this United Kingdom in Northern Ireland.
The Chair: That is a fact, is it?
Gavin Robinson: That is a fact. It used to be solely confined to products containing alcohol. It now captures a whole range of products because of general product safety regulations. Your committee and I will have considered the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. We know that was meant to reach a level of alignment on product safety across this United Kingdom and the European Union, yet still our national Parliament—a sovereign Parliament—is incapable of posting items from one part of our country to another because of these arrangements. I know that is not an Article 2 issue, so I do not wish to deflect.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton: That is interesting.
Gavin Robinson: But it is important to raise it with you all. I know Lord Dodds has somebody close to him who is expecting. If he wanted to buy them one of our great bibs, or Speaker’s teddy bears—
The Chair: My standard gift to people I know who have babies.
Gavin Robinson: Why should he not be able to? He can smuggle it in himself honourably as a Member of the House of Lords, but he cannot post it, and that is wrong. Forgive me for diverting from your question.
The Chair: You have sown in our minds the Lord Dodds bib issue.
Q126 Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: Gavin, you are very welcome. Obviously, you have raised various issues in relation to Article 2. For purposes of clarification, because we live in a divided society here in Northern Ireland, where there are varying views on Article 2, rights issues and the Good Friday agreement—and that RSEO chapter—how can the rights of all be protected?
Gavin Robinson: Thank you for the question; it is good to see you too.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: We have moved away from our Scrabble games.
The Chair: That is a secret we did not know, but carry on.
Gavin Robinson: That is true. The truth is, I do not even call the document you referred to as “the Good Friday agreement” the Good Friday agreement. I call it the Belfast agreement, so we cannot even agree on that. You are right that there are different perspectives in all of this, but I go back to the foundation. The Belfast agreement—or the Good Friday agreement—accepted Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, unless it changed otherwise through the consent of our people. That is there; I do not think we disagree on that.
I do not think you or I would disagree, either, with the RSEO chapter’s assertion that you have the given, assumed and actual right to have a different political aspiration from me. Nobody is challenging that. But when you have provisions that fundamentally unpick those foundations within the Belfast agreement in a whole range of areas, whether it is on trade, rights, immigration, gender issues or all the rest, then my point is that you are right: there will be people with competing aspirations. My difficulty is that the aspirations or the concerns of one section of the community, which I believe were misplaced—but you can set aside my belief that they were misplaced, because that is my prejudiced view—were accepted by a Government. To solve those concerns impacted the rights of the other community, and we are dealing with the consequences of that today. So, you are right to say there are different perspectives and views.
All of those, in my view, as a proud unionist in Northern Ireland, can be accommodated within this United Kingdom. But we should not be in a situation where I, as a democratically elected Member of Parliament, am concerned that legislation brought before our national Parliament on national and reserved issues such as immigration may be impacted upon by the provisions of Article 2 of the Windsor Framework.
Q127 Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: On Safeguarding the Union, of which you were a significant negotiator, were those issues in relation to Article 2 discussed with the previous Government?
Gavin Robinson: I have raised Article 2 continually in the House of Commons. You will see what is there in the document; I am not going to talk behind what is there in Safeguarding the Union. During debates on the Illegal Migration Act 2023, I repeatedly raised on the Floor my concerns about the application of Article 2. Interestingly, both the Secretary of State for the Home Office and the Immigration Minister in the Home Office at the time were Conservatives and disagreed fundamentally with my position. Neither of them is in the Conservative Party today and both of them agree with the position and the concerns we outlined. Article 2 and the impact on immigration is something we have raised and continue to raise.
Q128 The Chair: This committee has received a lot of evidence from people who have broadly comparable views with yours, and you have expressed them with special clarity, in my view. But we have not received evidence from political parties which have a different view. So, supposing this committee were to come to the conclusion that we absolutely agreed with everything you have said, and that Article 2 was now redundant—if it was ever not redundant—and these issues can be dealt with within Northern Ireland in other ways, without the difficulties of Article 2, which was not required under the Belfast agreement: what would be the political response to that, in your view, here in Northern Ireland?
Gavin Robinson: The political response would be one of great joy and jubilation from people like me, so feel free to do it.
The Chair: We are looking for a broader picture.
Gavin Robinson: In fairness to your committee, I expect you to be more detailed and honourable than that, and you will consider all the issues, even if you have not been given reflections.
The Chair: We have been sent written evidence from Sinn Féin and we have heard from the SDLP, but we have not had the opportunity to hear witnesses.
Gavin Robinson: I have not read their evidence and I do not know the content of it. But I suspect that whenever they achieve what they achieved through the political theatrics of Leo Varadkar, papers with border scenes, cross-border checkpoints and all the rest, they really have no interest in what this committee says. I am not saying they are disrespectful, because I do not know what they have said, but I imagine they will be disrespectful to the work in which you are engaged. They will have no interest in anything you do unless they fear you may achieve something by your report, at which point they will speak over your head, and in direct terms express to government how wrong you are. That is what they do. They do not care about the detail of this, nor do they engage from the Democratic Scrutiny Committee’s perspective, or indeed with Lord Murphy. Lord Murphy was not given the courtesy of thorough or thoughtful engagement, because when you have that which suits, and you can express no concern for your neighbours, who happen to have a different view, then you have no need to do anything, and that is a sad thing.
Q129 Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard: Thank you, Gavin, for the presentation and for coming to the committee. My question is more about what may happen now, in light of the Dillon judgment, obviously. Cognisant of what you said about there being a narrowing of the dynamic alignment, and that a new explainer document is probably not going to do anything, greatly, how do you see both the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive meeting the requirements of rights, particularly rights based in their legislation and in any new legislation coming forward? We heard yesterday from the victims’ group, who said that Dillon did not matter to them one way or the other because they did not have those rights in the first place. They did not have inquiries. They did not have further questions that they could submit, simply because their only process was through the ICRIR. They did not have the further inquest or inquiry.
Gavin Robinson: You and Baroness Foster have referenced the evidence you have taken from victims. In these things I always think that, whenever people get what they want, they do not engage in anything that would undermine the position that they have. I do not believe there is one definition of a victim. There was a definition established in law for the commissioning and the creation of the Victims’ Commission, separate and distinct from a completely different but morally pure definition of a victim. Baroness Foster fought continually in respect of compensation for innocent victims. It applies in a separate piece of legislation. There are two competing definitions, one born out of moral principle and the other born out of political expediency. So I hear very much what the victims have indicated to you, but I always think that the danger is that people will give evidence to this committee about victims’ issues and say that there is one legal definition of a victim, but there is not. Still, you will hear asserted as fact that which is promotional or expedient in the circumstances.
Where do we go from here? The United Kingdom needs to assert sovereignty. It needs to assert through our Parliament that it is our courts that interpret our laws. I do not see a screed or a list of areas of life where the rights attached to them are fundamentally different in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom; nor do I believe that, if that were to be the case, you could not assert those rights within our national courts. The fundamental danger that our Government are going to have to grapple with is this ongoing lack of clarity about our national Parliament’s ability to legislate in a uniform way across this United Kingdom, or to consider the competencies of devolved Governments and their ability to legislate as they see fit within our constitutional framework. For me today, even post Dillon, that is still an unclear picture, and the totality of the issues that arise from Article 2 have not been resolved through Dillon.
Where do we go from here? We need the Government, through our sovereign Parliament, to assert themselves on these issues. Do I have confidence that that will happen in the short term? No, I do not. I felt that the Lord Murphy review, good though he is, was a missed opportunity. I believe that the negotiations that were to assist us in Northern Ireland through the UK-EU summit have not been focused on the right issues; they are quite singular in nature. I lament that the summit that was due for the start of July is not likely to happen until the end of this year, potentially October or November. If there is an outcome, that would not be implemented for at least another year, and it would be on SPS and potentially some rights issues around student visas and some associated immigration issues. I do not think that has the aspiration required for the people of Northern Ireland at this stage, and I cannot ignore the commentary in the last 24 hours about the European Union’s focus shifting fundamentally from those negotiations between our Government and the European Union to the notion that Canada could become an associate member. I wonder: for the complexity of things we face here in Northern Ireland, in this one part of our country, compared to the rest of our country, will any of the same constraints be placed on Canada? Will the same difficult, intransigent position adopted by the European Union sustain in respect of it? I suspect not.
Q130 The Chair: We are in negotiations for a reset. I know there has been a change of Ministers that has slowed that down, but we are still negotiating a reset and dynamic alignment is an inevitable part of that reset. If you were given a wish list for the parts of the dynamic alignment that might relate to Northern Ireland, what would that list be?
Gavin Robinson: We are already in the uncomfortable and unconstitutionally sound position of having to adhere to a dynamic alignment in a whole host of areas. In respect of a reset, the aspiration is that England, Scotland and Wales find themselves as subjugated as us. That remains to be determined.
The Chair: If your voice was being heard, what would you want to be dealt with in the realignment?
Gavin Robinson: The outworking of what I believe that reset means is that England, Scotland and Wales would be in such a position that the distinction between the two of us—Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain—was no longer necessary. When I say the Labour Government lack ambition, no one is clear with me about, or capable of outlining to me, how, if you have uniformity in sanitary and phytosanitary products, animal health, general product safety regulations and a whole host of other areas, what is the need for the “separate but equal” architecture? Why should Northern Ireland still sit at the back of the bus?
Q131 Lord Dodds of Duncairn: That is an interesting point, and it is going to be a very relevant part of the debate in the coming months. The argument will be deployed quite extensively, I would have thought, that this is in the best interests of Northern Ireland. However, would you agree that one of the problems with the approach whereby this will lessen the problems of Northern Ireland is that it is a negotiation between Great Britain and the European Union? Northern Ireland’s position is separate and settled. What it does is bring Great Britain into line, but the problem is that that could be an entirely temporary position. There is a realistic possibility that a new Government will come in who will take an entirely different view of dynamic alignment and say, “Begone”.
The Chair: Particularly in relation to rights.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn: Rights, all this trade stuff, SPS—everything. At that point, it is not that everything then disappears, but Northern Ireland will be left back in the same position it is currently in. That is one of the issues that worries us about the idea that this alignment of Great Britain is a solution.
Gavin Robinson: And, worse, the turmoil created between the constituent parts of the United Kingdom as to why other parts of the United Kingdom are going to have to put up with the injurious nature and requirements currently required of us will breed resentment within parts of our United Kingdom. We are only having to do this because of them.
It is interesting that we are talking about rights. I referenced that we should not be sitting at the back of the bus. “Separate but equal” was unsuitable in the United States of America in the 1950s and 60s. it is unsuitable in the United Kingdom in 2026.
Q132 The Chair: There is a new Secretary of State, of course, and a new Minister for Europe, Mr Falconer. To what extent are the Irish political parties being consulted at the present time in relation to the reset? Sorry, I meant the Northern Ireland political parties.
Gavin Robinson: I was thinking of an answer in relation to the Irish. I have no idea about the Republic of Ireland, but I am sure the answer is “too much”.
The Chair: Are you being talked to?
Gavin Robinson: In respect of Northern Ireland, I would have a regular catch-up every month or so with Nick Thomas-Symonds when he was responsible as Paymaster-General. I have not had a detailed discussion with Hamish Falconer since he was appointed, though I had a discussion with the head of the Windsor Framework Task Force team about four or five weeks ago when they were present in Belfast.
The Chair: And the Secretary of State?
Gavin Robinson: On this issue? Not at all. I have not had engagement with the Secretary of State, aside from our introductory meeting where I was outlining our position. The focus of his attention has been on the Budget situation of Northern Ireland and the Troubles Bill that is likely to return to Parliament when we return from Recess.
The Chair: I am afraid we have run out of time; otherwise, we might have continued for a long time with this interesting discussion. I am going to draw this session to a close by reminding you that you will receive a verbatim transcript that will be sent to you for correction—but you know that. Thank you for your evidence. It has been a really interesting session.
