Labour slam ‘deeply troubling’ Northern Ireland plans

Labour’s shadow Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty has slammed Liz Truss’ plans to unilaterally suspend parts of the Northern Ireland Protocol as “deeply troubling”.

“The right response to these challenges cannot simply be to breach our commitments. It is deeply troubling for the Foreign Secretary to be proposing a Bill to apparently break the treaty that the government itself signed just two years ago,” he said in response to Truss’ address to MPs earlier today.

“That will not resolve issues in Northern Ireland in the long term and rather it will undermine trust and make a breakthrough more difficult.

“It would drive a downward spiral in our relationship with the EU that will have damaging consequences for British businesses and consumers.”

Doughty admitted that the Protocol while has prompted “new tensions that do need to be addressed… both the UK government and the EU need to show willing and good faith”.

“This is not a time for political posturing or high stakes brinkmanship.

“Everyone recognises that the situation in Northern Ireland is unique and we want checks to be reduced to their absolute necessary minimum and for them to properly reflect trade related risks.”

He said that “either they [the government] did not understand their own agreement, they were not up front about the reality of it or they intended to break it all along”.

“The prime minister negotiated this deal, signed it, ran an election campaign on it, he must take responsibility for it and make it work,” he went on.

In a legal statement released this afternoon, Maros Sefcovic, vice president of the European Commission, seemed to imply a trade war could unravel if the UK were to plough ahead with the plans.