Statement by TUV leader Jim Allister:
“This week will see the most shameful attempt at barefaced blackmail ever indulged in by a Secretary of State.
“Chris Heatin-Harris accepts the depth of financial need, but is prepared to exploit that need in a blackmail and bribery spree. As many unions have rightly said the just pay claims must be met whether or not Stormont is implementing the Union-dismantling Protocol, which of course is the demand behind the NIO’s blackmail demand.
“Pay parity is an equal citizenship right and as such should be honoured in all parts of the U.K. It is not something to be sullied by making deserving workers the Secretary of State’s pawns.
“Of course, the Republican/Alliance axis is happy to hide behind the SOS’s blackmail, because above all they too want the Union subjugated through unionists themselves implementing the Protocol through Stormont. Sadly, the UUP is helping them on with such folly.
“Once more in the recall of the Assembly the focus will not be in addressing the cause of the Belfast Agreement institutions being in tatters, namely the Protocol, but rather on an anxiety to see unionism defeated and returning, with its tail between its legs, to Stormont to implement EU colonial rule.
“Whatever the pressures, unionism must continue to stand firm.”