Breakthrough on the NI Protocol
In last week’s edition of the newsletter I wrote about how the government was on the verge of agreeing a deal with the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol. It has taken longer than expected but Rishi Sunak has got the deal done in what should prove to be a major political coup.
We are yet to see full details but the prime minister outlined the key details in three main points:
To encourage more fluid trade within the UK there will be a ‘green lane’ for goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and a ‘red lane’ for goods that are at risk of moving to the EU.
A number of heavily regulated goods such as medicines and plant life will now, once again, be easier to access in Northern Ireland.
The Northern Ireland Assembly will be able to operate a ‘brake’ mechanism so that they will not only have a say over EU laws but also whether they apply as well. It is important to note that the government in Westminster will hold a veto over any brake that is applied.
In practical terms this surely has to be an improvement over the current arrangement. The Protocol was an awkward compromise when it was agreed and has been the bane of prime ministers ever since. The new agreement does not solve those fundamental problems but will ease the burden somewhat.
When we do see the details it will be interesting to see if there is, as expected, more use of technology when it comes to establishing the red lane/green lane system. Furthermore it would make sense to have certain large-scale producers enjoy a ‘trusted’ status and therefore be subject to less red tape as well.
Giving Northern Ireland better access to more restricted goods is another important breakthrough but the EU will also want the option to put its own brake on things if the regulatory framework of the UK diverges too far from the EU norm.
Examining the full extent of the protections negotiated by the EU will also be an essential part of deciding if the new deal is a success.
In a political and legal sense, Sunak still has a long way to go.
The deal seeks to preserve the Good Friday Agreement and reduce the border in the Irish Sea. The Democratic Unionist Party leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, is waiting to see the details of the agreement before taking a view but hardliners within his own party as well as others in the Conservative ranks still want to see the Protocol scrapped entirely.
One good thing that the prime minister will probably be thinking about behind closed doors is that he does not really need the support of either group. It is likely that Labour will support the revised agreement, opposition from Boris Johnson and his allies will look more like sour grapes from the backbenches and the nature of the deal for Stormont actively encourages participation from the DUP.
The ‘brake’ mechanism only works when there is a Northern Ireland Executive in place to operate it. If the unionists continue to refuse to share power then they will simply not have any say about how the law operates in the North. That might suit some in the party just fine but there comes a point when the electorate will tire of intransigence and it will be the DUP that undermines the union.
Whatever the fallout from the deal is, there is one outcome that we can already see for sure: a new era of better relations between the UK and the EU.
It is hard to imagine a Johnson government negotiating a deal like this because its stance in relation to the EU was always so combative. As a reminder, it was his government that introduced the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill that threatened to scrap the agreement altogether. Surely that doomed proposal will now fall by the wayside.
That sabre-rattling approach might have been of some use when hammering out the original Brexit deal but the aim now has to be to improve relations so that Brexit can work as best as it can for both sides.
Today marks the first major step along that journey.
This week in the podcast we return to the world of landlord and tenant law for the second time in 2023. This time the Supreme Court examined a residential agreement and was asked about the extent to which the landlord could vary service charges under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.
Episode link: https://uklawweekly.com/2023-uksc-6/
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Marcus