UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Chris Heaton-Harris briefed British MPs on Wednesday (31 January) on the details of a deal to restore the Northern Irish Assembly after two years of deadlock.
“With this package, it’s now time for Northern Ireland leaders to come together,” Heaton-Harris said while addressing the UK’s House of Commons.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) was unhappy with the terms of the Windsor Framework: a post-Brexit deal the UK struck with the EU to adjust the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol. The DUP argued that its system of customs checks placed on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland did not put Northern Ireland on equal footing with the rest of the United Kingdom.
The DUP had subsequently blocked the Assembly from forming a government at Stormont – until early Tuesday morning, when a deal was struck with Westminster to remove checks on goods moving within the UK, altering the Windsor Framework by removing the concept of a “green lane”. There will still be a red lane for goods moving to the EU.
“(The deal) will strengthen Northern Ireland’s place in the union and guarantee the free flow of goods across the entire United Kingdom,” Heaton-Harris said in a statement released on the UK government’s website.
The deal will be brought forth at the next EU-UK Joint Committee.
“I will be able to hold this up as our achievement,” Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, DUP leader said today, speaking with the BBC. “We have delivered change people said wasn’t possible.”
Heaton-Harris said the deal will not affect the UK’s ability to craft laws diverging from those of the EU, maintaining “freedoms and powers” established during Brexit. The deal is also not expected to flout the Good Friday Agreement.
“We are confident and we have been assured there is nothing in these papers that could undermine the Good Friday Agreement. I think it’s a reasonable compromise,” said Micheál Martin, deputy prime minister of Ireland, at a press conference today.
Other key elements of the deal
The deal protects Northern Ireland’s place in the UK by legislating a symbolic commitment to restoring power sharing (a Good Friday Agreement measure to split power between Irish Nationalists and Unionists), reaffirming Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, and reaffirming the Stormont Brake — a mechanism that means Northern Ireland does not automatically and permanently have to agree to EU laws that can apply in Northern Ireland.
The deal also guarantees and future-proofs Northern Ireland goods’ “unfettered” access to the UK internal market.
The measures also establish a new UK East-West economic council to bring businesses and ministers together. They will also establish an entity called InterTrade UK, promoting and facilitating trade within the UK.
Lastly, the deal will provide Northern Ireland with £3 billion to spend on public services.
“I welcome the significant steps the DUP have taken to make restoration of the executive possible,” said UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the UK’s House of Commons today. “I also thank the other political parties in Northern Ireland for the patience they have shown.”
Others have been critical of the circumstances that have led to the deal. The Social Democratic and Labour Party of Northern Ireland’s Leader of the Opposition, Matthew O’Toole, posted on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday that it is “not a time for self-congratulation, but delivery for the ordinary citizens who have been failed by politics here.”
The measures of the deal are subject to the approval of a vote in Westminster on Thursday (1 February).
[Edited by Alice Taylor]
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