Ex-Labour MP says PM ‘knows’ Northern Ireland Protocol should not have been signed

Former Labour MP and independent peer Baroness Kate Hoey has said “the prime minister knows the protocol should never have been signed up to.”

The protocol was implemented to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the wake of Brexit, and by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods.

When asked whether the ongoing discussions between the UK and the EU on the Protocol were enough, the Baroness told BBC Two’s Politics Live programme she said she was “very clear” that she disagreed with the deal, saying: “I want to see Northern Ireland back into being an integral part of the United Kingdom… and I think that’s what pro union people in Northern Ireland want to see,” adding that the region “shouldn’t be left under a foreign jurisdiction“.

She went on to say that “the prime minister knows the protocol should never have been signed up to,” but that she agreed with the recommendations set out in the government’s command paper on the issue published in July, saying that the situation could be “quite easily changed with good will” on the part of the Irish and EU governments.

Earlier this month Brexit minister Lord Frost told the House of Lords that it would be a “significant mistake” to assume the UK would not trigger Article 16, the part of the Northern Ireland Protocol which permits elements of the deal being temporarily suspended if they are evidenced to be causing “serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade.”

The protocol was implemented to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in the wake of Brexit, and by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods.