UUP LEADER DOUG Beattie has said the goods being carried by Ukrainian refugees into the EU shows there is no need for the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Speaking on BBC’s The Nolan Show this morning, Beattie said it was “quite right” that refugees are not subject to checks but that it also shows the Protocol as it currently exists was “untenable”.
The Protocol is a post-Brexit mechanism agreed between the UK and EU that allows Northern Ireland to effectively remain part of the EU’s single market for goods while also being part of the UK’s customs territory.
To maintain EU standards within the single market, some checks are required on goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain, something which is strongly objected to by unionists politicians in Northern Ireland.
Speaking this morning, Beattie said there was “no basis” for checks on goods coming from Britain if those goods were remaining in Northern Ireland.
He compared it to the refugee situation across the EU:
This is not rocket science here, we have got a geopolitical situation in the world here where a country has been invaded in Ukraine, and five million of its people have left Ukraine and gone into the EU single market with all of their vehicles, all of their goods, all of their animals, all of their pets, none of the checks had been done on that and quite rightly so. So five million people have gone into the EU single market without checks, yet we’re going to argue about a bottle of olive oil coming from Great Britain to Northern Ireland that has to be checked? It’s untenable and people know it’s untenable.
Beattie acknowledged that there are some businesses that are “doing very well out of the Protocol” but that there are others “on their knees because of the checks”.
He argued that while the solution to the Protocol is an issue for the UK government and EU representatives to resolve, he thinks that Northern Irish politicians should be “in the room”.
The UUP leader said this is why the Executive should be “up and running again”.
As the largest nationalist and unionist parties, both Sinn Féin and the DUP must be part of the Executive as part of power-sharing rules. The DUP has said that the Protocol must be changed before they enter the Executive but Beattie has suggested that a stated intention of the British government may be sufficient.
Tomorrow, the UK government will announce its legislative plans as part of the Queen’s Speech and Beattie says he is hopeful that there would be “a form of words” relating to the Protocol.
There’s no basis for any checks, that Irish Sea border does not need to be there. The UK government know that, the EU realise that and if I’m really honest, I think all of the other political party leaders realise that, there is absolutely no basis for those checks.
“So that I think is going to come about pretty quickly from this moment onwards, I would suggest that there could be something maybe in the Queen’s Speech, I people have said that there won’t be but there will be a different form of words, a form of words which will say something like: ‘My ministers will legislate to protect the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and then we will move to stopping these checks which do not need to take place’.”
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