A year on the DUP says its Protocol deal secured 'important gains' - but Jim Allister says 'scale of the lies' clearer than ever
The Safeguarding the Union deal which restored the Stormont institutions a year ago secured “important gains which were worthy of banking”, a DUP MLA says.
Phillip Brett was responding to a statement this week from the Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn. who said the government would “continue to make progress in delivering” the command paper and on “taking forward the basis on which devolution was restored”.
The North Belfast MLA said: “That paper did not secure all of our negotiating objectives and did not remedy a number of long-term problems born out of the Protocol. However, it did secure important gains which were worthy of banking.
“We will continue to fight to fully restore Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom, including removing the application of EU law in our country and the internal Irish Sea Border it creates.
“Since Stormont was restored, DUP Ministers have played a key role in providing leadership and taking decisions that have benefitted everyone, from childcare to grassroots football. These would not have been taken by direct rule Ministers either Conservative or Labour.
“Indeed, those within Unionism who criticise the Democratic Unionist Party have no plan other to hand all decisions over to a Government which failed to act recently to protect the UK Internal Market when it came to trade in chemicals between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
However TUV leader Jim Allister says “the scale of the lies” the DUP deployed as cover is clearer than ever.
The North Antrim MP said: “The supposed Stormont Brake is a sick joke and the Union, far from being safeguarded, is being daily dismantled, with colonial Stormont meekly handing away law-making powers in 300 areas to a foreign parliament, so that in these key economic areas Northern Ireland is ruled by the same laws as the Republic! The stepping stones are being cemented by the folly of unionist implementation”.
He said it had not brought good government through Stormont: “health waiting lists are as long as ever, public finances are in a mess, our roads are still in potholes, education is starved of funding, there is no legislation - just meaningless motions”.