Letters: Nothing to prevent UK establishing system of export controls

So now we are stuck with EU compliance checks being applied to the wrong flow of goods, the flow of imports into Northern Ireland from Great Britain - a flow of goods in which the EU has no legitimate interest – rather than to the correct flow of goods, the flow of exports from Northern Ireland across the land border into the Irish Republic - a small flow or trickle in which the EU does have a legitimate interest.

And we have got into this fix through Theresa May thinking that it would be clever to use the largely fabricated problem of the Irish land border as a pretext to keep the whole of the UK under the economic thumb of the EU.

This was then followed by the Great Charlatan Boris Johnson caring far more about his pathetic little "Canada style" free trade deal than about Northern Ireland and the unity of the United Kingdom.

Still, as my last word, I repeat that there is nothing in the protocol to prevent the UK establishing a system of UK export controls for goods which are to be taken across the open land border into the Irish Republic and so the EU Single Market, initially alongside the ill-conceived EU import controls, and that would only need secondary legislation to expand the remit of the existing Export Control Joint Unit.

Dr D R Cooper, Maidenhead