Northern Ireland Protocol: UUP’s Doug Beattie and TUV’s Jim Allister defend UK unilaterally extending grace periods on EU customs checks

UK ministers are understood to have responded to Brussels’ seven infringement proceedings by saying they will unilaterally continue with the grace periods on checks currently in place.

Britain’s mission to the EU formally replied by the end-of-Thursday deadline, despite politics as normal being paused during the mourning period for the Queen.

The PA news agency was told the UK response was that it would still not force its retailers and exporters to adhere to all the agreed checks.

The response with unilateral action is liable to anger the bloc, which has stressed the need to find joint solutions to the trade barrier created in the Irish Sea by the protocol. But Britain hopes that delaying the checks will help create the space for solutions to be found.

UUP leader Doug Beattie responded that the UK Government was “perfectly correct and within its rights” in acting in the interest of the people of Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

He said it was crucial to preserve the UK’s internal market and ensure the requirement for unionist consent in the Belfast Agreement is respected.

“Put simply, the UK Government must ensure the grace periods stay in place and indeed business organisations across Northern Ireland are in full agreement with this stance,” he said.

“The EU cannot seriously expect the UK Government to rigorously implement the Protocol and the very fact that the EU has acquiesced in the grace periods to the Protocol remaining in place for so long, is evidence that the EU itself recognises the very real and serious damage that would be done to Northern Ireland if they were not in place.”

Considering the legal threats from Brussels, TUV leader Jim Allister responded that “the impudence of the EU knows no bounds”.

He added: “Here is the UK government doing the minimum to protect traders and consumers from the worse excesses of the iniquitous Protocol, by extending the grace periods, and the EU says ‘How dare you’.

“Like everything involving the Protocol this centres on the vital issue of sovereignty. Who rules Northern Ireland? The EU asserts it does through its powergrab in the Protocol and when the UK dares to take the most modest of steps to protect its citizens, Brussels throws a tantrum.” The DUP is issuing only limited political comment until after the Queen’s funeral.

Meanwhile, the UK government view is that if a Stormont Executive is not formed by 28 October, its ministers will lose office and the Secretary of State would come under a duty to hold an election within 12 weeks. It is reported the Electoral Office is preparing for a potential election on 8 or 15 December.

However Mr Beattie said a snap election “will not change the outcome” of the last election in May. “And we will be going to the polls spending millions of pounds on an election while our people are going cold and hungry,” he told the Nolan Show. He added that there is a need to “fix” the Protocol.