Government avoids vote on Jim Allister's protocol bill - meaning vote stalled until July 11
Jim Allister’s bill to bring an end to the Irish Sea border arrangements has ended without a vote, after it was ‘talked out’ – with a Labour MP accused of filibustering.
The bizarre approach by the government now means that there will be no test of support for the anti-protocol legislation – which would have likely suffered a heavy defeat. However, given the low numbers of Labour MPs in attendance, it perhaps wouldn’t have been the landslide anticipated.
Observers would have been keen to see where prominent Tories stood on the issue, had a vote taken place. The Conservative shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel was one prominent figure who would have been expected to vote with the TUV and other unionist parties.
It will now be July 11 before the matter comes back before MPs, with Mr Allister now aiming for an eleventh night bonfire of EU regulations.
The North Antrim MP said he was disappointed but not surprised that the Labour Government talked out the Bill “rather than engage with the unfinished business of the Union-dismantling post Brexit arrangements to which my Bill supplied solutions”.
He expressed gratitude for the cross-unionist support from both NI parties and some prominent Conservatives. “Whatever of the outcome, I feel we won the argument. It is not a sustainable position to keep NI under EU colonial control and our trading links with GB fettered”, he said.
During Friday’s debate in the House of Commons, Mr Allister said his bill would “fix the foundations” of Northern Ireland’s position in the UK.
He told MPs: “Since I came to this House in July, I have lost count of the number of times I’ve heard from the Government benches affirmations about “fixing the foundations”. Well, there’s one foundation that most assuredly needs fixed, and that’s the foundation which flows from the inequitable post-Brexit arrangement, as they affect my part of the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland.
“Because the foundations of this United Kingdom have been disturbed and dislodged by these arrangements. So the primary purpose of this Bill is yes, to fix those foundations, to restore equilibrium to Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom.”
DUP leader Gavin Robinson questioned what had been achieved by successive UK governments over the last five years.
He described the protocol as “A game – not a very enjoyable game – of whack-a-mole. It is as strategic as whack-a-mole. An issue comes up about the VAT margin for second-hand car sales, we find a solution.
“Then another issue pops up, and another, and another: whack-a-mole. That’s the best strategic approach this Government and the previous government have for dealing with issues that are affecting us because of the decision taken back in 2019 (Brexit negotiations).”
Ulster Unionist MP Robin Swann has said the Windsor Framework was a political betrayal. Speaking after
Claire Hanna, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) later said: “Northern Ireland in general wants to move on.
“And I think people at home’s hearts are sinking at the prospect of going back in time like a demented moth towards the hard Brexit flame and reopening a time that was so destructive to our public services and to our economy, when our economy, our jobs, our crumbling health service were put on the back burner while we indulged years of discussion about sausages, about smoky bacon crisps, and the menacing rallies that accompanied those discussions, and the holding down of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
“People who I represent don’t recognise the Mad Max scenario that the members continue to paint about a lack of availability of food and of products on our shelves – it’s not the reality that people are living in.”
The TUV leader accused the SDLP leader of valuing the “nationalist reach” of the protocol over the “democratic detriment”.
Reform deputy leader Richard Tice intervened during Mr Allister’s speech to describe the Stormont brake mechanism, which allows members of the Northern Ireland Assembly to refer elements of EU law to the UK Government, as “rusty and not attached to anything”.
Mr Allister responded: “When you pull the brake if you could, nothing happens, so that’s the value of it.
“The most limp excuse that I hear for this plundering of the Northern Ireland statute book by the EU is ‘oh, international law requires this’, Sorry? What sort of international law says a state must self-harm by disenfranchising its own borders? There is no such international law.”