Trevor Smith (York, House of Lords): Gordon Brown has presented himself as a Prime Minister who takes the overview, is aware of the forces undermining the unity of Britain and will do something about it with a new settlement, no less. But for all his talk of Britishness and binding everyone together, he seems to be making things worse. Has the government thought through what it is doing with respect, say, to Ireland? It seems unlikely.
They seek to establish “e-borders” to help everyone feel the country is secure and respected. But Northern Ireland may not fit neatly into the proposed new security system. For a start, what is to be done about the Common Travel Area (CTA) that has operated since the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1926? This has greatly facilitated mobility between Ireland and the UK, but now it is in jeopardy.
If the e-borders are drawn around the UK to include Northern Ireland, that will be welcomed by political Unionism, if less so by Northern Irish business. Equally, if they are drawn round Great Britain, excluding Northern Ireland, that would be more acceptable to Irish nationalist sentiment but risks alienating the Unionists; a classic illustration of the zero-sum nature of politics in Northern Ireland.
Contriving a system that would cover both the UK and all -Ireland is not without its difficulties: while it would preserve the CTA, it would strengthen the link between the Republic and the UK and would thus detract from the former's more recently acquired identity as an enthusiastic member-state of the EU - and that would create a political problem for Dublin. Indeed why should the Republic accept this if it seems like a step backwards?
Some bright sparks have suggested that the solution would be for both the UK and the Irish Republic to sign up to the Schengen agreement, to which most of the EU member-states are committed. This aims to create an EU border and provide for a Pan- European common security and intelligence system while allowing unrestricted movement between Schengen countries. The problem is that EU borders have proved rather porous so far as Britain is concerned, while the kind of homeland that Gordon Brown is seeking is not one to be defined in terms of shared sovereignty with Europe!
The e-borders project is predicated on the introduction of a computerised travel document (i.e. ID card). Two factors may intervene to stop this. One is the procurement of a robust IT system that can be relied upon. Given the poor track record of costly and overambitious such schemes, this may founder. Then there is the related problem of data protection and privacy. Recent and highly publicised government failures to protect the details of individuals may well mean that the compulsory introduction of ID cards and their like will prove to be politically unacceptable to the British public.
If the best practical solution to the conundrum posed by e-borders is not having them, which would relieve the hapless, ‘call me a simple sailor’ Lord West of a very severe headache as the security minister, the whole episode shows how introverted Brown’s grand constitutional talk really is. Instead of being a pro-European constitutionalisation built on our shared sovereignty with European partners, it is a defensive and closed approach to identity and security. So much so it is starting to make Ian Paisley look broad minded!
Moderator: Trevor Smith is the Liberal Democratic spokesperson on Northern Ireland in the House of Lords
