Lord Empey warns British government not to tarnish its credibility by over-hyping the Windsor Framework

​The UUP grandee said that he has detected what seem to be discrepancies between the wording of documents about the Windsor Framework emanating from the UK and EU sides.

In common with the DUP, the UUP has been coy about which direction its members are leaning in when it comes to accepting or rejecting the deal.

Former party leader Tom Elliott would not be drawn on the matter when speaking to the News Letter, saying only that they are seeking clarity on some of the finer details, and “we’ll assess it for as long as it takes”.

Lord Empey was likewise tight-lipped, saying the UUP has "taken a vow we’re not going to be steering people to a position where they think our thinking is this way or that way”.

But he added that there is “one area where I can comprehensively say we have a concern”.

Namely, in “some of the early reading of the documents that are available we see this divergence between Brussels and London, and that’s a concern”.

"The Prime Minister has put a lot of work into this, we can see that,” added Sir Reg.

"He’d a very difficult huge mess to clear up that was left by some of his predecessors but the one thing we’d all urge government to do is not over-sell things.

"We are detecting a divergence between some of the written material we’ve been able to establish from Brussels and some of the material we’re getting from others.

”I think we have a concern there which is making us look even closer at things.

”I think that we’ve got to remember the history of this. It’s not that long ago the former secretary of state Brandon Lewis said there’s absolutely no border in the Irish Sea – and that was so patently nonsense, which he subsequently admitted.

"So we’re just anxious the government would be very careful what it says, because credibility, once lost, is very hard to regain.”

UUP leader Doug Beattie had earlier said: “There has been a rush of positivity in the aftermath of the Windsor Framework being published [but] we will take our time to drill into the detail.”