N.Ireland and Republic must remain in the same customs union – Hain
NORTHERN Ireland should be part of the same customs union and single market as the Republic after Brexit, a former Secretary of State will say today.
Lord Hain is likely to warn against the risk of the Irish border becoming just another bargaining chip in the negotiations with Brussels during a major speech.
Former Neath MP Peter Hain was Northern Ireland Secretary under Labour from 2005-2007, helping steer the peace process when the IRA was decommissioning weapons and Stormont devolution was being restored.
He will say: “What is proposed is not a Brexit for the United Kingdom nor even for Britain.
“It is a Brexit for the ideological hard right and we go down that path at our great peril, especially for Northern Ireland and the hard-won peace and democratic process which, tragically, this Government seems so airily causal about and so ignorantly indifferent to.”
The UK’s only land border with an EU state after Brexit will be between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
Its future is one of the first issues for discussion during Brussels negotiations, with those living either side of the frontier fearing they could be particularly disadvantaged by the divorce settlement.
The House of Lord will debate the issue later today.
Lord Hain will claim the Government’s latest proposals that the vast majority of smaller cross-border businesses continue trading exempt from restrictions constitutes not so much a frictionless border as a telepathic one.
“This is less a solution to the problem than pie-in-the-sky fantasy.”
Lord Hain is expected to say: “In my view the only way of resolving the border conundrum is for Northern Ireland to be within the same customs union and single market as the Republic: either Northern Ireland alone or preferably with the whole of the UK.”