'How can the government claim the Windsor Framework is all about trade when it has just wrecked the Troubles amnesty?'

Lord Dodds has lodged the question with Parliament, alongside a handful of others, following the landmark ruling of the High Court in Belfast that the Tories’ truth-and-reconciliation-style amnesty for Troubles killers is unlawful.

On Wednesday, Mr Justice Colton had handed down a judgement saying that the widely-hated law (which is opposed by everyone from Sinn Fein to the TUV) had violated Articles 2, 3 and 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK remains bound despite Brexit.

These articles deal with: the right to life, and to have killings properly investigated; the right not to be tortured; and the right to a fair trial.

The judge also said the Windsor Framework had been breached.

The Windsor Framework had been bolted on to the Northern Ireland Protocol in February 2023 in a failed effort to appease the DUP.

The government had promised that, in doing so, it had “fundamentally recast” the Protocol, dismantling the Irish Sea border that had sprung up since Brexit.

Then on January 31 this year, in a further effort to placate the DUP and get it back into Stormont, the government drew up another new deal – officially known as Command Paper 1021 – which sought to clarify the Windsor Framework and to add assurances that NI remained firmly within the UK.

Among the things the deal said was that “the Windsor Framework applies only in respect of the trade in goods – the vast majority of public policy is entirely untouched by it” (News Letter’s emphasis).

However, judge Colton ruled on Wednesday that the Troubles amnesty represented a breach of the NI Protocol / Windsor Framework, and was therefore invalid.

Since the amnesty is clearly not a trade issue, Lord Dodds is now demanding that the government explain “how the statement in paragraph 46 of Command Paper 1021 that ‘the Windsor Framework applies only in respect of the trade in goods’ is compatible with the court’s judgment”.

Lord Dodds has also asked the government “what assessment it has made of the application of all the provisions of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill to Northern Ireland in light of this judgment,” and what it makes of the idea that the judgement revealed “the supremacy of EU law in NI”.

It is expected that the government will respond to his questions within a week or so.