Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will publish the Government’s response to the statement from the EU Commission dated 30 June 2021 entitled EU-UK relations: solutions found to help implementation of the Protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The Government has been clear that it welcomes Vice President Sefcovic’s indications that the EU is looking at further solutions.

However, the issues raised are only a smaller subset of a much larger set of problems created by the way the Protocol is being implemented – we need engagement on these fundamental barriers that we have identified during discussions.

In addition, where solutions were flagged, discussions are generally not advanced enough to determine whether they sufficiently address even the narrow issues with which they are concerned. We would need to see the full details of the proposals and discuss further to ensure any of these will work in practice.

We are considering our next steps and discussing with all those with an interest. We will set out our approach to Parliament in a considered way before the summer recess.