Labour to unite with Tory rebels to block Protocol Bill
SIR KEIR STARMER has said Labour will vote against a new law allowing the Government to override parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol when it appears in Parliament on Monday.
The Labour leader said his MPS would join Tory rebels in rejecting the plan, which opponents have said risks breaching international law and creating a trade war with the EU.
Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary, will lay the Bill in front of MPS next week and will tell Parliament it is to be used in the event a negotiated agreement with the European Commission on the Protocol cannot be reached.
The Protocol was agreed as part of the Brexit deal in an attempt to maintain the integrity of the EU single market while preventing a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
But it requires checks on goods travelling between the UK and Northern Ireland, which has angered unionists in the province who see it as akin to a border down the Irish Sea.
Speaking on a visit to Belfast yesterday, Sir Keir said: “We would scrap the legislation and I think there has been an impasse in the negotiations because we haven’t seen the high levels of trust that we need for negotiations like this, not least from our Prime Minister.
“But also we need give and take on both sides.”
His comments came as government sources said a band of Conservative rebels in the House of Lords risk collapsing power-sharing talks if they force a delay on the Bill.
Lord Clarke of Nottingham, the former Conservative chancellor, has said he believes the “vast majority” of his colleagues in the House of Lords will vote against the Bill. If the rebels succeed in blocking the legislation, it may not be in place until after October, which is the statutory deadline for the end of talks between the DUP and Sinn Fein to enter a power-sharing agreement.
The DUP has said it will refuse to nominate a deputy first minister and join the Executive until after issues with the Protocol have been resolved.
A Government source said: “One of the primary motivations for the legislation itself is supporting the restoration of the Executive and thereby the protection and integrity of the Good Friday Agreement. Should people seek to delay the legislation or try to time it out in some way, then they would fundamentally undermine one of the key points of the legislation and, in doing so, hold up the formation of an executive.
“I would have thought that our friends in the Lords wouldn’t want to be responsible for holding that up, because it is clearly the best thing for the people and businesses of Northern Ireland.”
A second source added that the Government hoped to pass the legislation into law “as soon as possible” and wished to avoid delays in the Lords from the “usual suspects”.