Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements Debate
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Pat McFadden
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Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements
Pat McFadden Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Lidington
It is the Government’s hope that the political parties in Northern Ireland can agree to reconstitute the Executive and the Assembly as soon as possible. I think there is agreement across the political parties in Northern Ireland that that is what they would want to do, and I hope that the remaining differences can be overcome.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
Why does the Minister for the Cabinet Office think that the Foreign Secretary wrote this letter? Was it because he did not know that the Government had committed in paragraph 49 of the December agreement to
“its guarantee of avoiding a hard border”
or was it because any commitment can be set aside in the service of the cause that the Foreign Secretary really cares about: the furtherance of his own career? Or was it something more sinister than Boris’s self-love, which is that faced with the incompatibility of red lines around the customs union and the single market and the commitment to no hard border, there is a concerted ideological attack on that commitment and, indeed, on the Good Friday agreement itself?
Mr Lidington
I do not think that I could be clearer than I have been so far. The Government are absolutely resolved to stand by both the Belfast agreement and all parts of the joint report of last December.