UUP peer: The prime minster has created a great sense of betrayal over his Irish Sea border

Boris Johnson has betrayed the people of Northern Ireland by agreeing to the Irish Sea border and failing to acknowledge the problems it has generated.

In a House of Lords debate on the Queen’s Speech on Tuesday, I said that by breaking his cast iron promise not to place a post-Brexit regulatory border in the Irish Sea, the prime minister had made it more difficult for businesses in Northern Ireland to compete and denied local shoppers access to many goods.

You cannot overstate the sense of betrayal felt in the Province over the prime minister’s actions and the UK government’s refusal to fully acknowledge the ever-growing list of problems that the sea border has created, I told peers.

I also said that I regretted that Mr Johnson had also chosen to undermine British culture in Northern Ireland in the year of its centenary.

He has placed us in a position where we must follow rules set by the European Union over which the UK government, the Northern Ireland Assembly and local voters have no say.

It is the greatest diminution of British sovereignty since a previous Conservative Prime Minister signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement 36 years ago.

In my address I further said that the Covid pandemic has had a detrimental impact on the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda and by agreeing a border in the Irish Sea he has made a conscious decision to ‘level-down’ Northern Ireland.

Lord Rogan, Westminster SW1

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