Mr Allister’s Bill, entitled, ‘European Union (Withdrawal Amendments) Bill’, seeks to address the constitutional and practical detriment of the Windsor Framework/Protocol arrangements as they affect Northern Ireland.
This detriment includes the diminution of NI’s position within the UK, by virtue of being subject in much of its economy to EU, not UK laws, and the resulting imposition of a partitioning goods border in the Irish Sea.
The Bill seeks to reverse this detriment and enables practical solutions to govern the movement of goods from NI to the EU’s territory of the Republic of Ireland.
Clause 1 will set out constitutional imperatives governing all future arrangements. These will require respect for the territorial integrity of the UK and the avoidance of any part of the UK being subject to foreign made laws.
Clause 2 will then temper the effect of section 7A of the EU Withdrawal Act 2018, which is the conduit by which EU law flows into effect in NI, by circumscribing it with the statutory requirement to respect both the territorial integrity of the UK and the common rights of the Acts of Union.
Clause 3 and an associated Schedule will then address how goods should move from NI to ROI and vice versa by making provision for Statutory Instruments enabling both alternative arrangements and mutual enforcement, such as was anticipated under the NI Protocol Bill 2022, which passed the Commons before being ‘pulled’ by Rishi Sunak.
The Windsor Framework/Protocol is wreaking constitutional havoc in respect of NI and its governance, with new impositions evolving all the time. This Bill is designed to reverse that and put relations back on the internationally accepted framework of the EU and the UK each respecting the territorial integrity of the other. Only such can provide the foundation for a neighbourly and successful relationship.
In addition to Jim Allister being the primary sponsor of this Bill, he is pleased that all NI unionist MPs have assented to be co-sponsors, along with the former Conservative leader, Ian Duncan Smith, Labour MP, Graham Stringer, and Reform UK MPs, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice.
This is a coalition agreed on the unworkability and unacceptability of the present arrangements and determined to offer a better way forward.