Lord Dodds says government claim in DUP deal 'blown out of the water'

The government has said that EU laws and rights – applied only to Northern Ireland through the Windsor Framework – won’t stop it legislating on immigration and other policies for all of the United Kingdom.

However, the High Court in Belfast recently contradicted the claim in the Safeguarding the Union deal that the Windsor Framework applies only to trading goods. Jim Allister said the ruling confirmed the new “constitutional distinction” between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Speaking on the Rwanda Bill in the House of Lords, the peer said: "We have heard the reassertion of the original assertion, which might have been understandable before the first case, or maybe even after the first case, but after three court cases it is beginning to wear a little thin”.

Lord Dodds said: “The Government assert that Article 2 of the Northern Ireland protocol or Windsor Framework is not engaged in regard to immigration and therefore can have no application to the Bill before us. Their argument, however, has been blown out of the water on a number of occasions recently in the High Court of Northern Ireland. There should be little surprise at that, given the supremacy of Article 2 of the Windsor Framework and EU law over any domestic British law by virtue of Section 7A of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. A number of court cases in recent weeks have confirmed that in the High Court in Belfast.”

The DUP man tabled an amendment to ensure that the Rwanda Bill would have effect in Northern Ireland, regardless of the provisions of the post-Brexit deal .

He told Lords he submitted the amendment to explore how the High Court ruling fits with the Government’s claims – and how they sit with the claim in the Safeguarding the Union deal, which says: “The important starting point is that the Windsor Framework applies only in respect of the trade in goods—the vast majority of public policy is entirely untouched by it. This includes important areas like immigration”.

It is the latest in a series of interventions by the legislator which have highlighted weaknesses in the deal his party struck.