Northern Ireland Protocol

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have been very clear in my statement that we are bringing forward legislation to sort this issue out and to deal with the bureaucracy that we are seeing—the requirement for customs declarations and customs codes from businesses that are simply operating within the United Kingdom. That is why we want to create the green lane that allows properly protected goods to move freely within the United Kingdom, and we are committed to that legislation. In the meantime, if the EU is prepared, in parallel, to move to a negotiated settlement to resolve the very issues that the hon. Gentleman raises, we are of course open to those talks, but we will not allow it to delay our taking the action we need to take to restore the primacy of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

In the last Parliament, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, under my chairmanship, produced a comprehensive set of alternative arrangements that were workable and high-tech and that would erase the need for the current perniciously applied checks that most in this House agree are unnecessary. Given that they would satisfy the EU’s stated objections, why does she think that the EU have stonewalled them?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am not going to speculate as to why the EU has not changed its negotiating mandate, but it is very clear that there is a solution—my right hon. Friend worked very hard on that—that satisfies the requirement to protect the EU single market and, at the same time, restores the primacy of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. We need to make sure that we move forward as fast as we can to that solution.