Lord Frost urges Sunak to be tougher on Brexit talks

In an interview with GB News, the the former lead Brexit negotiator told Camilla Tominey he has had no visibility over current negotiations in Northern Ireland, but that he was concerned at how parts of the bill have been parked.

He said: “I don't expect to be involved myself and I'm not part of it, they've got a good team. What's made people nervous in the past is that we've not been quite sure what the government has been trying to achieve and when I was doing the negotiations back in 2019, and 2020, we set out very clearly what we were aiming to do and why.

“And I think there's been some nervousness that maybe the Government isn't seeking to achieve everything that's really important to people who care about stability in Northern Ireland and the sovereignty of the country.

“I think that the way the politics in Northern Ireland has been over the last two or three years means that the protocol can't survive in its current form. It was workable at the start, but I think the world has changed and it can't survive.

“The only question is, do we get there in one go with the protocol bill, or do we get there in stages by an agreed route, but I think there can no longer be any doubts about the correct destination for this -which is full sovereignty over the whole country.

“Now, for me a good deal if it's a negotiated deal is one which takes a significant step in that direction, and doesn't present itself as the final step, but it can continue to evolve and get us to that end point.

“What has worried me slightly is that we seem to parked the bill, the Northern Ireland protocol bill would have overwritten the protocol and I think if we were really tough, we would be pushing that through the Lords at the same time in parallel to make it clear that if there wasn't a good deal, there was another option.

Frost continued: “Theresa May and her team negotiated this terrible deal in 2018, which wouldn't go through Parliament and which would have kept the whole country in the Customs Union and bits of the single market forever with an EU lock.

“What we did was improve that, we put in place a deal and then we could negotiate a free trade agreement. We gave the NI Assembly in Stormont consent over the continuation of the protocol. And we changed a few other things, so it was an improvement.

"It ultimately goes back to the mistakes that were made in 2017 and 2018. We corrected some of them.

Focusing on the latest deal that is about to be struck in Northern Ireland, he added: “I have absolutely no idea what's in it. We've all read what's been in the media over the last week or so. So I guess we have some sense of it, but nobody can come up with a proper judgement. We'll have to see what's in it to know whether we're happy about someone else.”