Emphasis needed on the single market

As we reach the sixth anniversary of the EU referendum I find that I care less and less about what stuff unscrupulous folk may take across the open Irish land border to contaminate the EU Single Market.

The EU and the Irish government have been offered collaborative solutions, not least by a former EU Commission DirectorGeneral and two professors of law, but they have rejected them out of hand.

So when I examine the UK government’s Bill to unilaterally disapply parts of the Irish protocol, and find that it only gives a nod towards protection of the EU Single Market, how much do I care about that?

In its Clause 15 ‘safeguarding the integrity of the EU single market’ is the seventh of nine ‘permitted purposes’ for which a minister may make regulations to disapply the protocol or withdrawal agreement.

While the first four specifically relate to Northern Ireland – its stability, its trade, its constitutional position within the UK – and are clearly intended to persuade the DUP to restore devolved government.

But little as I may care about the integrity of the EU Single Market, now that Dublin and Brussels have worn down my neighbourly goodwill, the UK Parliament has many members who do care about it.

Indeed it may be the case that taken across both houses a majority of parliamentarians feel greater loyalty to the EU than to the UK, and of course this bill will have to get past them to come into effect.

Therefore I am forced to hope that during its passage the bill will be amended to place greater and more obvious emphasis of protecting the EU Single Market, to help win over those EU sympathisers.

Dr D R COOPER Belmont Park Avenue

Maidenhead