DUP attacks ‘buffer zone’ plan for Ireland

Unionists urge the Prime Minister to get tough with Brussels and stop coming up with ‘half-cooked’ ideas

THE DUP has told Theresa May to get tough over Brexit instead of coming up with “half-cooked ideas” to solve the Northern Ireland border problem.

In a sign that patience is wearing thin, Sammy Wilson, the party’s Brexit spokesman, said the Government had to “put down its foot” and threaten to walk away from negotiations rather than offer “convoluted” compromises.

Speaking after it emerged that ministers had discussed radical new plans that would give Northern Ireland joint EU and UK status and create a 10-mile “buffer zone” along its border with the Republic of Ireland, he accused the Government of failing to make it clear to the EU that Britain was leaving the customs union and single market.

Downing Street described reports of the new plan – dubbed Max Fac 2 – as “speculation” but senior sources confirmed it was an option, prompting the angry response from the DUP.

Mrs May has four weeks to come up with a plan that would allow Britain to leave the customs union while avoiding a hard border. She meets EU leaders at the end of this month.

She has appointed two Cabinet working groups to hone the plans already on the table – a customs partnership, which involves the UK collecting EU tariffs, and a maximum facilitation, or Max Fac plan, which would use technology and trusted trader schemes.

While the customs partnership committee has only met once, the Max Fac committee, headed by David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, has met three times and has been to the border between Northern Ireland and the republic.

It has examined a “two-hatted” status for Northern Ireland, which would be part of both a UK and an EU customs regime, with a “special economic zone” along the border, sharing the same rules as the Republic.

Critics said that idea would simply move the border along 10 miles and would set Northern Ireland apart from the rest of the UK, a clear red line for the DUP on whose votes Mrs May relies for her working majority in Parliament.

Mr Wilson said keeping Northern Ireland tied to both UK and EU regulations defeated the object of the UK “taking back control” and would sow confusion over who decides which regulations should apply and when.

A buffer zone would only move customs checks to the entrance of the zone rather than at the border, he added. “These convoluted arrangements only arise because of the Government’s failure to make it clear to the EU that regardless of Barnier and EU negotiators’ attempts to keep us in the customs union and the single market, we are leaving... Instead of moving from one set of half-cooked ideas to the other it is time for the Government to put down its foot and make it clear… that no deal is better than a bad deal,” he said.

A Government source said the buffer zone plan was “one of a number of interesting practical solutions, adding: “The EU has stated, like us, that they expect to see an innovative plan for the border – which also rules out a hard border – and this is it.”