The former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain has tabled an amendment to the Brexit bill to force the government to guarantee in law a frictionless Irish border, saying he fears Theresa May’s administration “has no real solution” to the problem.

Lord Hain said when asked why he tabled the amendment: “I’ve become increasingly concerned, as former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, that the government has no real solution to the border problem. There is an unwillingness at this very late stage to work out how to resolve this.”

The Labour peer said he no longer believed the Conservatives were an “honest broker” in the effort to keep the Good Friday agreement (GFA) afloat in the same way as the former prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair did.

The amendment says the Brexit bill should not “breach the obligations” of the GFA nor “create hard border arrangements” between the two states on the island of Ireland. It also seeks an assurance that nothing will “diminish the alignment” between the rules of the EU internal market and customs union as exercised in Ireland “so far as they support north-south cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the Belfast agreement”.

The amendment has been tabled by Hain and three others: the Conservative peer and former pensions minister Ros Altmann; the former head of the civil service Bob Kerslake; and the Lib Dem peer Alison Suttie.

The text forming the legally binding framework for an EU withdrawal agreement will be released to the Irish governments on Wednesday morning.

Cross-party peers are expressing support for the amendment, including Lord Kerr, the former diplomat who authored article 50.

“Inside government, I watched and admired as John Major, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern [the former taoiseach] helped bury the Troubles. We must not let Brexit, and ‘little Englander’ atavism turn back the clock,” said Kerr.

Altmann said she was passionate about Northern Ireland being in the union and that a hard Brexit could weaken its position.



“The British people did not vote to break up the UK; they did not vote to put Northern Ireland at risk. The leave campaign was committed to Northern Ireland,” she said.

Hain said the agreement in December that enough progress had been made by the government on the first phase of Brexit talks was “a manoeuvre to get them to the next stage of talks, rather than an iron commitment”.

May agreed to three potential outcomes on the Irish border issue: that it would be solved by the overall final deal; that it would be solved by a bespoke deal; or if neither of those happened, a backstop solution to ensure full regulatory alignment north and south of the border.

On Monday, the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, spoke with May and reminded her of her commitment. Sources close to the Irish government say there is ongoing concern that Britain is not delivering on its commitment to translate this into legally binding text.