 So, hello, good afternoon and welcome. My name is Philip Moser and I'm pleased to be chairing today's session of the webinar series which Munkton put on with the Centre for European Negligence, Munkton, Pacheteo or webinar series on EU Relations Law. This is the fourth edition and it's titled UK External Trade Relations. And to talk about that, we have four eminent experts in the field who are ideally placed like us on a trade law. As we know, the UK-EU deal still hangs in the balance 29 days before the end of the transitional period. However, deal or no deal, the UK needs to find ways of replicating or replacing existing trade deals to which a party will be EU. This is what the government calls global Britain. And we also have the implication or speakers will be Professor Catherine Barnard, Professor of European Union Labour Law University of Cambridge. We're looking at a crystal ball to speak on the EU-UK Future Trade Relationship. Next, Jennifer Sennig, you see at Munkton Chambers speculate about approving and implementing a new relationship into domestic law. At third, Alexander Hall, a barrister and legal advisor to the House of North International Agreements Committee, whose expert topic is parliamentary scrutiny of trade agreements. And finally, Dr. Brenda McGurk, barrister at Munkton Chambers, earlier lecturer of Cambridge, who will speak on external relations, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Each of them will have about 10 to 20 on the topic of their choice. And you, the audience, put questions via the question and answer function at the bottom of your screen. And then we'll try to end. So, starting with Professor Barnard, please Catherine. Thank you very much indeed for the kind words. In fact, given that the, there is no deal on the table at the moment. The organizers actually asked me to change the focus of what I was going to talk about, and talk about how any ratification process might work, given the extraordinary short time that's available. What I'm going to do is actually two questions. One, the first one is the screen to move across. Can we have a bit more time please? And secondly, assuming there is magic and the deal occurs, what the process is to get us over the line by the 31st of December. Just before I go on, can I just check you can see the slides? Yes. You can see the slides. Thank you. So, first question. Can we have a bit more time to get the negotiations over the wire? Now you'll recall Article 132 made provision for asking for an extension. The UK government did not take that up, given their manifesto commitment. It's striking that the commission put in its Q&A that the only way to get an extension is the Article 132 process. There is no other legal basis for extending the transition beyond 2020. Now lawyers wouldn't be lawyers if they didn't think creative ways around the problem. So what might the creative ways be? Some people say, well, look, we can use Article 50 because Article 50 is a legal basis for an international law, is a legal basis for an withdrawal agreement and thus it could be the legal basis for asking for an extension. EU lawyers, on the other hand, take the view that Article 50 was probably turned off on the 31st of January and so cannot be used an effective legal basis. We cannot adopt a magnificent EU heads of state and government international agreement, which essentially says, well, of course, we can get EU law to carry on applying to the UK as it does during the transition period for a period of time post the 31st of January. The problem with that, I think, is that is a question of competence that to try and extend the application of EU law in all of the areas which currently applies would require an EU agreement, not an international agreement, so I'm not sure that's going to work. So, more realistically, is that you have a bolt on implementation period, which is bolted on to the front of any deal, and that implementation period is a genuine implementation period, not what Theresa May's government called an implementation period to essentially transition to the new state. The problem is all of that is premised on there being an agreement. So what about seeing if the joint committee can do some of the heavy lifting the joint committee or remember is the committee set up under the withdrawal agreement to sort out all sorts of bumps in the road, which have arisen in relation to the withdrawal agreement. But the problem is article 164 5D, which is the most relevant provision excludes any amendment to the withdrawal agreement about matters contained in part four, which is about transition. Final bid in desperation to try and find a way around the problem some people say what about using article 352 of the treaty remember that's the catch all legal basis provision to attain one of the objectives of the treaty The problem is the draw is not an objective of the treaty. It's a residual legal base. So the bottom line is, it seems to me it's going to be very difficult to come up with an alternative, which is legally watertight. Of course, necessity is the mother of invention, and it may be that if a few more weeks are required some sort of magic solution is jumped up by the brilliant minds in UK government and Brussels but we shall wait to see. My second question I want to have a look at briefly is ratification provision application and I'm going to look at this from the EU perspective my colleagues will look at it from the UK perspective. Well, if there is a deal, it will have to have a legal basis in the treaty. It seems most likely to be article 217. Certainly, the Commission has said publicly in the same Q&A that 217 is currently chosen or would be chosen because it's the widest legal basis. But it also would be the one that's most suitable for an overarching governance framework. Of course that presupposes that there is an agreement on set overarching governance framework which is still one of the sticking points. Whether you call it an association agreement, as was the case with Ukraine, although in Georgia, or whether you call it something like a CETA comprehensive trade agreement or whether you call it an FDA. The legal isn't determinative that the fact is that you can see different legal basis in use for different types of agreement but far as we are aware, the Commission is talking about 217 for this agreement. In either case, it's subject to the procedure in article 218. And the reason why it's such a big problem is because the question of competence tells us whether it will be an EU only agreement, or it will be a mixed agreement. So the thought here is rather small, but I hope you can see that the treaty has done some of the heavy lifting and identifies those areas of exclusive competence for the EU, but also areas of shared competence and indeed all other areas of member state of shared competence. Why am I pushing on this? If it's an area of exclusive competence of the EU, then it can be an EU only agreement with the Council voting on it, possibly by, or probably by unanimity, some of the areas are areas which require unanimity. But if on the other hand, it touches upon any of those issues in the third three pillars, the pillars where there's an orange line underneath, then it will be a mixed agreement. And it's a mixed agreement that requires not just agreement of the Council and the Parliament, but it's also got to be ratified in accordance with the national ratification processes, which nobody seems to know the precise answer to this question, but it's somewhere between 34 and 38 National and Regional Parliaments will have to have their say. Now, I keep hearing rumors that the EU thinks even though it might be a mixed agreement, they will try to say that it requires only EU ratification. This was the case in EU Japan, even though even though EU Japan did involve areas of shared competence, because the Member States agreed to allow the EU to ratify it on its own. There is a wonderful irony here that the UK has been always at the forefront of arguing that all agreements are mixed agreements so that the Member States can keep tabs on the Commission and make sure that the Member States can ratify. You can see that in the case of the Canadian CETA, but I do hear rumors that the Commission has got agreement, the Council got agreement that it could be ratified only by the EU and treated as an EU only agreement. And then finally as to process, this is of the key stages in the process. The first two, first bullet point is already underway, the negotiations are taking place and hopefully there will be agreement on some sort of text. Then there are three more stages or at least that's what Article 218 tells us. The first stage is a decision on signing, so signature of the agreement. Then there should be consent, and then there should be agreement on adoption and ratification. The interesting thing is that Article 218.5 not only makes provision for signature of the agreement, but it also makes agreement for its provisional application. The Council can agree that the treaty be subject to provisional application pending ratification by all of those national and regional parliaments if that is indeed required. Now as you can see the signing and the adoption are different phases, but in fact, in practice and certainly I think since EU career, they have often been wrapped up into one document that there's a decision on signing, a decision on provisional application and a decision on adoption. And all of this is dependent on the European Parliament's consent. That brings us back to the question of provisional application of the agreement. Provisional application, just to remind you that's where you have parts of the agreement coming into play even before it's been ratified. The Vienna Convention allows it, the Article 218.5 of the TFEU allows it, and it is the Council that allows this to occur on the proposal from the negotiator, so from the commission from Michel Barnier. But as I've said, practice has been that the European Parliament can sense before there's any provisional application, which brings us to, is there time for the European Parliament to have it say, and that brings us to the much rumoured extraordinary session on the 28th of December. The provisional application of the agreement, what you see is it only applies in areas where the EU has competence, but as that quote from Chamon indicates, in fact, it's somewhat broader than that. All of this presupposes that there's a deal, that there is a proposal for provisional application, the European Parliament is in favour, and if it's a mixed agreement, it will give time or buy time before the, while the member states ratify. Remember, ratification can take about five years. What if a member state fails to ratify, then provisional application stops. And I will stop there. That's a whistle-top tour of what might happen next at the EU level. Thank you very much, Catherine. Thank you very much for that, Catherine. And next, we have Jerry Fasena, who's going to be talking about you to us, Jerry, approving and implementing the new relationship in domestic law. Yes. Well, several months ago, when these talks were planned, it seemed a reasonable bet that by the second of December, we might have some idea both of the substance of any new trading relationship with the EU and the shape of that might take in terms of its implementation in domestic law. But anyway, here we are. And even giving a 10-minute talk on the domestic implementation of the new relationship is currently quite a challenging brief. Now, I know that Alex is going to say something about parliamentary scrutiny and the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. All I'll say on that point is that at least for this agreement, if there is one, it clearly won't be possible in practice to meet the default 21 sitting date procedure under that act. Although, as we already know from the 2020 withdrawal act, there are various ways around that, including primary legislation that simply dispenses with the 2010 Act requirements. Given where things stand or don't stand, all we can really do at the moment is look at the little that we do know about the government's plans for domestic implementation of any agreement, and some of the arrangements that would have to be made in domestic law to give effect to an agreement if there is one in the coming days. So first of all, what are the options? And there are a limited number of ways, of course, in which the government can change the law or introduce into domestic law the necessary provisions to give effect to any deal. In practice, I think in this case, it's pretty clear that implementation of any deal will involve some combination of those options. And if you want to explore them an option in further detail, I should say there's a useful summary in any paper published by the Institute for Government on the 18th of November, which you can find on their website, which goes through a number of options for UK ratification. But as I see it, there are broadly three. The first, which is in a sense the simplest but most controversial and I think unlikely to be used, would be to give the agreement direct effect in domestic law. One can see that that might be quick, quick and dirty, but it raises all sorts of difficulties, and it seems to me is very unlikely. First of all, aside from the EU treaties themselves and certain parts of the withdrawal agreement, it's more or less unheard of for international agreements to be given direct effect in domestic law in the United Kingdom. Direct implementation is certainly not what the UK seems to be considering in relation to any other free trade agreements, and particularly for any EU agreement, one can see why it would be likely to be extremely controversial with at least some sections of parliament. And in any event, even if you could do it for some aspects, simply giving direct effect to the agreement in domestic law wouldn't be sufficient because there are obviously going to be all sorts of technical regulatory requirements, detailed arrangements that would have to be set out anyway in other parts of domestic law. So direct effect in the way that we've seen, for example, the citizens rights and withdrawal agreement seems to me not very likely. The second option is that you pass a bill which implements the relevant clauses of the agreement, so clause by clause section by section. A new piece of primary legislation implementing the various bits and pieces of the agreement on trade and security and state aid, for example. It would obviously be the most comprehensive and sensible way of doing it because you could ensure that the entire agreement is properly implemented. You can tailor the act appropriately, and you don't have to rely on a range of existing or new secondary legislation powers. There are, however, very obvious difficulties with timing. I mean, frankly, there are obvious difficulties with timing what whatever form implementation might take. Given that you'd have to draft that legislation in a way that correctly reflects the details of the agreement, and you'd need time for Parliament to consider and enact what would undoubtedly be a relatively complex piece of legislation. There are obvious problems there, and at least from the government's point of view, at least in theory, you also have the danger of unwanted amendments to such a piece of legislation. And by way of comparison, the Institute for Government notes in its paper that the Canadian government had two years to draft the CETA implementation bill, and the Parliament of Canada spent six months considering it. Now, obviously, nothing like that is going to be feasible here, at least before the end of this year. And not at all, unless there's some sort of implementation period or some other kind of extension or fudge of the sort that Catherine has mentioned. Now, the third option, aside from primary legislation, and which is quite likely to be used alongside any primary legislation, is obviously to use either existing secondary powers under existing enabling provisions, or to include some new wider enabling provisions, which allow statutory instruments to be made to give effect to the agreement. Now, there are some areas where there are probably existing enabling provisions that could be used immediately, and would allow some regulations to be made to give effect to certain aspects of the agreement. So consumer protection, food safety, those kind of things, you can reduce tariffs already using existing statutory powers. But there will still be other areas which might be capable of implementation using secondary legislation, but where there's no, there aren't currently wide enough enabling provisions. So for example, if the government had to set up a new state aid regulator, or some new regulatory environment for state aid, seems to me that would be primary legislation, but in any event there's no secondary legislation at the moment which would enable it to do so. So you would need at least a bill which gives ministers the additional powers to implement other aspects of the agreement. And that of course is the approach that the government has taken to much of the Brexit legislation to date. It's also clear from the trade bill, which is currently before Parliament, that it's an approach that the government intends to use in the future. If you haven't looked at that, section two of the trade bill includes a time limited enabling power, which allows regulations to be made for the purpose of implementing an international trade agreement, provided as one that's with the party and within the EU already has a trade agreement. So it's very likely, given the shape of that, that you can see something similar for aspects of any EU-UK agreement. And it also has difficulties, I mean, leaving aside the amount of work for civil servants to identify the relevant powers or gaps in the relevant powers and draft the necessary regulations. There is of course, as many of us will know, considerable disquiet, particularly in the House of Lords about the very extensive use of statutory instruments to change the law post Brexit, even where they've been subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. There will probably be resistance in Parliament to an overambitious use of statutory instruments. Now, as to what we actually know, the truth is very little at this stage, so the government has not set out any proposals for a ratification process or a timetable, or given any indication of whether there will be a parliamentary debate or a vote on a deal. In oral evidence given to the House of Lords EU Select Committee on the 7th of October, the chief negotiator David Frost spoke briefly about what he referred to as the process at our end. And he confirmed that there is an assumption on the government's part, that's his words, that there will have to be primary legislation for at least some elements of an agreement as wide ranging as this. There's an indication there, and in any event it's clear from what we do know about the agreement, that at least some significant parts of it would have to be implemented in domestic law by statute. And given the timing and where we are, there must be a real question mark over whether and how Parliament will be able to pass that legislation in time. And for any civil servants tuning in you have my sympathy. I dare say, many of you face an even more miserable Christmas period than most of us were already facing this year. Now, aside from how they're going to implement any agreement, there are of course extensive changes and additions that have already been made to domestic legal framework. And a set of the new post Brexit legal framework is already in place. So we already have the Fisheries Act 2020, the Agriculture Act 2020, the New Immigration Act, the the Extradition Act, which at least in part replaces the European arrest warrant. And before Parliament, there's still at least half a dozen or more pretty significant pieces of primary legislation. So we need to plug some of the gaps and which will also potentially also be used to implement some aspects of the agreement and indeed include some fairly wide enabling provisions. So you still got the Environment Bill, which is before Parliament, the Trade Bill, the now notorious internal market bill, and apparently in the pipeline, a finance bill which which may also include some provisions which on their face specifically limited breaches of international law. So there is a huge amount of primary legislation already on the statute books to absorb and coming shortly. And some of that is quite likely will be used to give effect to aspects of any agreement. What this means is that it isn't just going to be a case of spending Christmas reading the reportedly 800 plus pages of the agreement and 1000 plus pages of the annexes of the draft agreement. But of all of us probably spending many months and eight years getting our heads around a raft of new primary legislation that plugs the gaps left by withdrawal and builds these new external trading relationships into our domestic legal framework. So it's largely speculation at this stage we know very little. Maybe we can run the seminar again January and see where we are. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jerry. Union again for part two. Now third we have Alexander Hall, and you're going to tell us about parliamentary scrutiny of trade agreement. Thank you for it. Well, yes, I'm here today to talk about parliamentary treaty scrutiny, particularly scrutiny of trade agreements. Before I start, I'd like to thank Kenneth and Jack for inviting me to be on the panel today, and the Cambridge Law Faculty and Moncton chambers for supporting this event and helping get me online. Briefly, just a couple of words about me I've worked as an employee barrister in Parliament since 2003. I was appointed legal advisor to the House of Lords European Union Committee in 2017 and legal advisor to the House of Lords International Agreements Committee in April this year. And I was one of the lead officials responsible for establishing the mechanisms for treaty scrutiny provisions in the House of Lords last year. I should make clear at the outside I'm speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of either of the two committees. But the scrutiny of international agreements is very much a new task for Parliament and this may come as something of a surprise. And therefore before I discuss Parliament's current scrutiny role, it might be helpful to provide some historical context. Concerns are expressed about Parliament's scrutiny of international agreements as far back as the 19th century. In the introduction to his rarely seen second edition of the seminal work the English Constitution from 1872 water barge had observed. Treaties are quite as important as most laws and to require the elaborate a sense of representative assemblies to every word of the law and not to consult them, even as to the essence of the treaty is prima facie ludicrous. I would argue that it would be advantageous to require that in some form the essence of Parliament should be given to treaties, and that we should have a real discussion prior to the making of such treaties. Over 100 years later that's only really beginning to happen now. Many of you will be familiar with the Ponson Bureau of 1924, a convention which operated for almost a century. That a treaty will be laid before the House of Parliament for 21 sitting days that important treaties will be submitted to the House for discussion. And thirdly and often overlooked that Parliament should also exercise supervision over agreements commitments and undertakings by which the nation may be bound in certain circumstances and which may involve international obligations of a serious character, although no signed and sealed document may exist. Two further changes happened in recent years. First, the commitment by the government in 1996 in response to a private members bill to produce explanatory memoranda alongside treaties. And this is the first time that the provisions of international agreements were described in plain English and allowed for stakeholders to see the sorts of things that we were signing up to. The second was the passage of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, which codified some aspects of the Ponson Bureau into statute. And that was the situation we found ourselves in in 2016 at the time of the Brexit vote. And it's important because it highlights the inherent limitations of Parliament's powers in respect of all international agreements, including trade agreements. In 2016, the only committee of Parliament which routinely conducted any scrutiny of international agreements was the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Committee. It only commenced this work in the 2014-15 session, and by 2019 have not reported any agreements for the special attention of the House of Lords, and it only provided short information paragraphs on several other agreements. The limitations of the Crag Act have proved to be quite profound. The Crag Act does not provide Parliament with a specific treaty scrutiny role. It merely provides that the government may not ratify an agreement unless it's first laid a copy before Parliament, and neither House has passed a resolution that it should not be ratified. Negotiating mandates do not have to be shared. There's no requirement for the government to notify Parliament before an agreement is signed. Any resolution against ratification passed in the House of Lords is merely advisory and can be ignored if the government provides reasons. The Commons can prevent the government from proceeding for another 21 sitting days and can pass further such resolutions indefinitely postponing ratification. But there's no specific up-down vote on agreements. And if the government has a majority in the Commons, it's not clear whether they would have to find time for a vote at all. Moreover, the Crag Act provides that in undefined exceptional circumstances, the government may dis-apply Crag. While the UK's dualist system means that Parliament has to approve any domestic legislation implementing a new agreement. This occurs after an agreement has been signed and not all agreements require new legislation. During our membership of the European Union, the EU exercised primary competence over trade agreements. International trade agreements were scrutinised by the European Parliament which provided democratic oversight. And Parliament's two European Committees in the UK scrutinised ministers' activities in the Council. This combination meant that any lack of oversight was glossed over to some extent. However, when it became apparent that Britain was leaving the EU, the Financial Times reported that Britain might have to renegotiate hundreds of international agreements as the competence to negotiate and conclude international agreements in a range of policy areas was restored to the UK, and the UK fell out of the original EU agreements. This included large-scale trade deals with a number of significant economic powers, including Japan, South Korea, Canada and South Africa, as well as a vast wave of smaller agreements and some significant multilateral agreements such as the WTO government procurement agreement. So what did we do? Well, in 2016 the House of Commons established the International Trade Committee, which scrutinises the work of the Department for International Trade and also takes an interest in scrutinising some of these arrangements. But much of the work in scrutinising the government's trade continuity programme was picked up by the House of Lords. In 2019, the House of Lords Procedure Committee tasked the European Union Committee with scrutinising all Brexit-related international agreements, including the rollover agreements intended to replace the agreements previously concluded between the EU and third countries. In April 2020, the International Agreement Subcommittee was established as part of the EU Committee family. It's chaired by Lord Goldsmith QC, and after the end of the transition period, it's expected to be established as a full committee in its own right. As at the end of November 2020, the government announced that it had concluded 53 rollover agreements, accounting for 164 billion of UK bilateral trade. Each of these agreements has been scrutinised and reported on by the EU Committee or the International Agreements Committee, and a number have also been debated. The IAC has proved a busy committee. It's also launched four trade-focused enquiries into the UK's trade negotiations with the United States, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, respectively. The substantial report on the UK-Japan deal, which is now awaiting ratification, was published when it was debated last Thursday. While it's still in early days, parliaments identified a number of common issues that have arisen in relation to these sorts of agreements. First, it will come as no surprise to the trade experts in the audience, but a number of issues are commonly of interest to the committee. The provision of rules of origin, accumulation, tariffs, agricultural standards, geographical indications, state aid, dispute resolution and enforcement. None of these came as a shock. However, there have been other issues that are not entirely trade related and that have proved to cause difficulties in respect of both trade and non-trade agreements. These include consulting with the devolved governments and parliaments, impacts on the overseas territories, the procedures for amending agreements and whether such amendments would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny at all, the scrutiny of treaty-like documents such as memoranda of understanding that are not routinely deposited. However, the biggest issue is probably time, an issue addressed by the earlier speakers. To take one example as a case study, the recent comprehensive economic partnership agreement with Japan was more than a simple rollover agreement. It contained additional provisions on geographical indications, different rules on tariff rate quotas and new commitments on e-commerce, for example. Both the IAC and the Commons International Trade Committee negotiated early sites of the draft agreement, but we still only received it 10 working days before the start of the statutory period under CRAG and only on a confidential basis. That meant that stakeholders were unable to communicate with us on the document. The IAC Committee was able to produce a comprehensive report to be debated within the 21 sitting-day CRAG time table. Had a lot to do with the fact that the text of the EU-Japan agreement was available and stakeholders were able to indicate in advance where issues might arise. The challenge going forward will be to scrutinize new potentially contentious agreements with countries such as the US, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the UK's potential accession to regional trade agreements, such as the comprehensive and progressive agreement for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Some of these will be wholly new agreements with provisions on agriculture, data and tariffs, which may have profound domestic effects. It's hard to imagine that either stakeholders or parliament would have adequate time to examine such agreements on the current CRAG time table. This brings us back to the trade bill, which was mentioned by some of the earlier speakers. This may provide opportunities for parliament to increase transparency and seek more time to scrutinize agreements. It reaches its final stages in the House of Lords next week. It will be for the politicians to decide what lessons they've drawn from our experiences of the last two years of treaty scrutinizing. I'll leave things there and pick up any questions as they come. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And our next speaker is Brendan McGurkin. Brendan is going to speak about Ireland and Northern Ireland. Brendan, please. Thanks very much, Philip. Yes, today I want to look at a particular aspect of the relationship between the Northern Ireland protocol and the UK internal market bill. Insofar as each relates to the question of what can be put on the market in Northern Ireland following the end of the implementation period. Now, to frame the discussion, I will start with what's now familiar in relation to the protocol. In general terms, it's obviously designed to keep Northern Ireland within the European single market and the customs union in relation to the trade of goods, both internally with other states and externally with third countries. However, there are, of course, tensions within the protocol itself and tensions that arise from the need to provide for the fact that Northern Ireland will not only remain within the EU single market and customs union for the purposes I've just described, but will also continue to be treated as part of the UK customs and the UK internal market. Now, maintaining Northern Ireland within the EU single market and customs union is the function of article five of the protocol. And thus it's article five that creates the internal. When set against article four of the protocol, which guarantees that Northern Ireland is at the same time part of the UK customs union. And it is again article five that creates the further tension when set against article six the protocol, which guarantees that Northern Ireland is at the same time part of the UK internal market. Now, the key provisions of the purposes of my talk today is article five for the protocol which provides the provisions of union law listed in X to the protocol. That shall also apply under the condition set out in that annex to and in the United Kingdom in respect to Northern Ireland. Now, the list of regulations, directors and decisions set out in X to is very lengthy and included in that list are a large number of you regulations and directors imposing high standards for a range of goods products. A good example, and one I'm going to use throughout the talk to frame the points I'm going to make the regulation 443 2009, which has since been repealed and replaced by regulations six through one of 2019 on co2 emissions from passenger cars. Now the question is what happens if and when the EU passes legislation that modifies any of the measures listed in annex to the protocol. And in particular, insofar as they raise the standards that were otherwise applicable on 31st December 2020. For example, what if regulation 2019 six through one on co2 emissions is amended in 2022 to impose operations performance standards for new passenger cars than those that maintain in the rest of the United Kingdom. Now, in that regard, it turns to the interpretive provisions of the withdrawal agreement in the protocol respectively. In the withdrawal agreement article 61 provides that subject certain exceptions references in the agreement to union law shall be understood as references to union law, including as an end or replaced as applicable on the last day of the transition period. So, evidently, article 61 of the withdrawal agreement makes clear that references to union law will not include updating or see the EU enactment passed after the end of the implementation period. The position over necessarily different under the protocol and the equivalent in interpretive provision is article 13 three, which provides that not with standing article 61 withdrawal agreement. That where the protocol makes reference to you in a unit that reference shall be read as referring to the union act as amended or replaced. Now, indeed, the protocol could not sense to be work unless the enactments included annex to include in enactments that the men to replace those that are listed including such an act that's passed after 31st December 2020. At what extent can any UK statutory instrument imposing a product requirement that govern in Northern Ireland. And in particular what happens if the EU amends an annex to regulation, as I say to entire standards for such products and which pursuant to articles five four and 13 three of the protocol will apply in Northern Ireland. But which is six one of the withdrawal agreement will not similarly apply to GB. And therein lies the potential issue articles five four and 13 three of protocol are liable to lead to regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Now, in my hypothetical car emissions example, a UK statutory instrument will of course permit cars that meet its standards to be put on the market throughout the UK. But an amended EU car emissions regulation, imposing tougher standards applicable in Northern Ireland would appear to dictate that cars imported into or produced in Craig written may not be capable of being put on a market in North in Northern Ireland. So the question is to what extent, whether or to what extent indeed that type of tension is either regulated or alleviated by the internal market bill. So let's out the order known as the UK internal market access principles, which are first the mutual recognition principle for goods and second the non discrimination principle. I don't need time to deal with the former today. The second three of the bill defines the mutual recognition principles the principle in which goods which have been produced in or imported into one part of the United Kingdom, known as the originating part. And the rest of GB is the originating part for these purposes, and we can be sold there without contributing any relevant requirements that would apply to the sale should be able to be sold in any other part of the United Kingdom. Free from any relevant requirements that would otherwise apply to the sale. So take by way of example cars manufactured in Sondland and can be put on the market and sold the great three with all relevant requirements, including the domestic requirements pertaining to CO2 emissions. The recognition principle in the bill when a face he requires that those same cars can be in Northern Ireland quote free from any relevant requirements that would otherwise apply to the sale. And my example any enhanced CO2 standards applicable in Northern Ireland. That will we will assume extend above and beyond those set out in the statute instruments applicable to the rest of GB will amount to relevant requirements that would otherwise apply to the sale of cars in Northern Ireland. But if the mutual recognition principle does apply to cars manufacturing to require the hypothetical higher emission standards applicable in Northern Ireland to be to supply. However, before reaching the conclusion that the UK. Permits indeed requires domestic law to discipline national standards. And not even in a specific and limited way, there are potentially two ways out of this conundrum. At first section 12, one of the bill indicates that market access principles apply in Northern Ireland, albeit with modifications and. Importantly says 12 and three provide that the mutual recognition principle will apply to all Northern Irish qualifying goods, but not goods produced in or imported into Northern Ireland that are not qualifying Northern Irish goods. Just two points on that. At first, the concept of qualifying Northern Irish Irish goods is now defined in EU exit regulations to mean goods processed in Northern Ireland. Whether those goods do not compromise comprised products which come into Northern Ireland subject to any customs supervision or control. Genuine Northern Irish produced and processed goods and components. And secondly, the whole purpose behind defining and delimiting a concept of qualifying Northern Irish goods arises from the imperative in article 6 of the protocol to introduce of access of Northern Irish goods to the UK internal market. And in addition to avoid good originating from the EU. Since failure to do so risks allowing Northern Ireland to be used as a backdoor for goods entering the UK market from the EU without the requisite checks. So genuine Northern Irish goods as opposed to EU goods will benefit from the mutual recognition principle but the cars imported into Northern Ireland for sale in Northern Ireland from the EU don't and will fall outside the mutual recognition principle. But my principle concern today is not with the fact that the EU with is not with EU imported cars in Northern Ireland. It is with the cars built in Sunderland, for example, and meeting X hypothesize only the lower domestic emissions standards, and which will yet seek to avail of the mutual recognition principle in order to be capable of being put on the market in Northern Ireland. Even though that might at first blush mean non complies with higher EU emissions standards, does that still therefore leave us with another clash between domestic and international law. Not necessarily and the other way to potentially reconcile the protocol and mutual recognition principles in the bill is through section 11 of the bill, which deals with exclusions from the market access principles on the grounds of public interest derogations. Now it effectively states that mutual recognition principle will be disapplied in the event that required in question to use a legitimate aim is proportionate and is not a desired restriction on trade. For the purposes of my continuing missions example, a requirement will pursue a legitimate aim if it makes a contribution to the achievement of environmental standards and protection, which plainly any height in the EU emissions standards embodied in a future regulation will do. Now a key question then will be whether those height in the EU requirements might be said to be proportionate. And about the second 11, we provide the requirement will be considered disproportionate. If the legitimate aim being pursued in the destination part of the UK, which for our purposes is Northern Ireland is already achieved to the same higher extent by requirements in the originating part of the UK, i.e. the rest of GB. That seems to me very difficult to say, in relation to park standards, that by definition lower regulatory standards to exercise may be applicable in Great Britain pursues the legitimate aim of reducing CO2 emissions to the same extent as the EU regulation. The argument may be much less obvious for standards that are not imposed numerically, but on basis of more evaluative considerations where one can envisage more argument that EU standards applicable are said to be disproportionate such that the market recognition principle should apply and enable GB goods to be put on market in Northern Ireland. But section 11 at least gives a route out of any inevitable or insoluble crash between article 5, 4 and Alex to the protocol on the one hand, and the market recognition principle in the UK internal market on the other. But where does that leave us. The consequence of the application of section 11 of the bill is that, in my example cars manufactured in Sunderland to the standards of applicable to that instrument but not to the hypothetically higher EU emissions standards. But we'll mean that those cars cannot avail of the mutual recognition principle and will not be able to put it on the market in Northern Ireland. As far as they fail to meet the higher EU standards. In summary, assuming heightened EU standards imposed in Northern Ireland under annex to to the protocol can avail of the public interest derogation on section 11 of the bill. So that British manufacturers and importers may not be able to place goods in the market in Northern Ireland. Unless the UK regulates in a lockstep with the EU, or unless manufacturers end up manufacturing to the highest standards in the event, be left with a somewhat bifurcated market for goods within the UK as between Northern Ireland on the hand and Great Britain on the other. My guess, however, is that mutual regular regulatory tracking will occur, and that manufacturers will often opt to level up in the manufacturing choices they make, which between them will by large constantly political and economic mitigating response. To the problem of an otherwise bifurcated market. So that's what I wanted to say on that particular set of tensions. I think I will pass back to you. Thank you very much. We now have some time for questions.