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Brexit: Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration

My Lords, I feel I have heard some of those words before in many other Statements. To be clear, what the Urgent Question asked was when the Government intend to publish the full legal text of proposed changes to the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration. MPs will be asked to make a judgment on this and consider the Prime Minister’s offer. I am not going to call it a deal, because a deal to me is something that is agreed between two parties. At the moment, this is an offer from the Government which, as I understand it, has not found favour with anyone yet except the Government’s partners, the DUP. Unfortunately, they are not in the Chamber.

The Prime Minister’s language on this has changed. First, he said he would die in a ditch rather than ask for an extension beyond 31 October, then this was going to be a take-it-or-leave-it offer and now he talks about negotiations and having a basis for discussion. There are probably three things to ask here. First, there is the issue of confidentiality. My understanding is that both the President of the European Commission and the Irish Prime Minister have called for the legal text to be published. It is just the British Government who are saying that they do not want to publish it.

Secondly, in two different places, the Statement says that:

“Under no circumstances will the United Kingdom place infrastructure, checks or controls at the border”.

“At the border” is very specific. I have two questions for the Minister about that. Could the offer that is being made to the EU, which we do not know the details of, mean that the EU would need to put checks or infrastructure in place? Is the UK considering checks or infrastructure at locations other than the border? Those are very important questions, given how specific the Statement is.

People also want more information on employment, consumer and environmental rights—that is why seeing the detail of the legal text, rather than just brief Statements, is so important. Can the Minister confirm that we will maintain the levels of protection we have and keep pace with the EU in future?

My final point relates to the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive having to consider the arrangements on the border every four years. Can the Minister give any examples of such arrangements being in place, or reference any treaty or agreement, in respect of which the parliament or assembly that has to make the decisions is not active? It seems an extraordinary way forward.

It would help the House if the Minister could respond to these questions. I struggle to understand why the legal text cannot be published to parliamentarians in this country so that we can see the detail of it.