‘A bureaucratic change’: Boris Johnson defends Northern Ireland protocol bill
Boris Johnson has defended a bill to unilaterally amend the Northern Ireland protocol as a straightforward “bureaucratic change”, as the Irish foreign minister said the plans would break international law and marked “a particular low point” in Brexit.
In a sign of a possible rupture in relations between the UK and EU nations due to the bill, being published later on Monday, Simon Coveney warned his British counterpart, Liz Truss, that it could prove “deeply damaging”.
Downing Street has insisted that the government has received advice on whether a one-sided attempt to change post-Brexit protocol risked breaching international law, although it plans to publish only a summary of this on Monday.
Johnson rejected the idea that the bill would break international law, telling LBC Radio: “I disagree with that. Why? Because I think our higher and prior legal commitment as a country is to the Belfast Good Friday agreement, and to the balance of stability of that agreement.”
The bill, reportedly toughened up in scope due to pressure from strongly pro-Brexit ministers and MPs, was “the right way forward”, Johnson argued.
“One community feel very, very estranged from the way things are operating, very alienated,” he said. “We’ve just got to fix that. It is relatively simple to do it. It’s a bureaucratic change that needs to be made. Frankly, it’s a relatively trivial set of adjustments in the grand scheme of things.”
The bill is expected to unilaterally change elements of the protocol, which set out post-Brexit trade rules connected to Ireland, Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
It is expected to set out a dual regulatory regime, allowing Northern Ireland businesses to keep to either UK or EU standards, and scrap checks on goods
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