Northern Ireland Protocol

Antony Higginbotham Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement today, which is balanced and pragmatic. The Northern Ireland protocol was always a difficult compromise but it was made in good faith to protect the Good Friday agreement, while respecting the EU’s single market and our own single market and Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom. As this Command Paper makes clear, it has not managed to do that, so what conversations has my right hon. Friend had with the European Union, do they accept that premise and if they do not accept it and will not engage meaningfully, as the Command Paper and negotiators want, does article 16 remain on the table?

[Brandon Lewis]

We have always said that we cannot take any options off the table, but we want to work through this in a negotiated way to get a realistic solution that delivers for the people in Northern Ireland. We have been speaking consistently over this year, both Lord Frost and myself, with the Cabinet Office lead on the negotiation on the protocol and with European Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič directly. I think the European Commission does recognise that there are issues that need to be resolved. The challenge we have had is getting agreement on the resolutions.

One of the reasons we took the action we took in March to extend the grace period was that we got to a point where we needed an agreement to be able to ensure we were able to keep food products on the shelves. It was interesting at the time that the EU was complaining not about the process and the issues we were dealing with, but about the fact we had not done it by agreement. That comes back to the point the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) made: to work by agreement, ultimately, we need the EU, our partner, to also come to agree things in the first place. We have not managed to achieve that yet, but I am hopeful that, given where we are now and the proposal we are putting forward, there is a realistic way to do that in the months ahead.