Draft Radio Equipment (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2025
Debate between Jim Allister and Neil Coyle(1 week ago)
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Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard. Here we have another egregious example of how my constituents are disenfranchised when it comes to making laws that govern aspects of their lives. All of us in the United Kingdom were subject to the EU regulations on radio equipment through the Radio Equipment Regulations 2017. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark wish to intervene?
Jim Allister
It is only in Northern Ireland, however, that without any consent or consultation, additional laws under the 2022 legislation are going to be enforced.
The basic premise of this House and of a democratic society is that people get a say in the laws that govern them. That is not so for my constituents. These are laws being imposed courtesy of the Windsor framework, which simply decrees that the United Kingdom has abandoned all claim to make laws in over 300 areas, and has subjected itself to imposing whatever laws are made in those areas by a foreign Parliament and a collection of foreign Ministers. That is the absurdity of how my constituents are governed in those 300 areas of law, of which the draft regulations represent but one.
The draft regulations apply to everyday items: the baby alarm in the bedroom down to the living room—[Interruption.]
Draft Radio Equipment (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2024
Debate between Jim Allister and Neil Coyle(1 year ago)
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Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
Of itself, of course, there is nothing controversial about the type of USB charger that one might use, but there is something very controversial in Northern Ireland, quite appropriately, about the source of this legislation. Here we are in this Parliament of the United Kingdom and all it can do is to nod through someone else’s laws.
The decision that in Northern Ireland a person must have the EU-style USB charger flows from a decision by parliamentarians in a foreign power. It was the parliamentarians of 27 other countries who decided that this would be the common charger to be used. And, of course, it was the protocol now called the Windsor framework—which did not change one word of the protocol—that decreed that Northern Ireland, in 300 areas of law, of which this is one, would not be subject to the laws made in this place, or in its devolved Assembly.
Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)
Would the hon. and learned Member just remind us how Northern Ireland voted in the Brexit referendum?