TUV says Gavin Robinson is taking the wrong approach to the UK's divided immigration policy

EU law – and its effect on Northern Ireland’s constitutional position – is at the core of the issue. For Jim Allister, it has always been at the core of the problem.

The DUP has had various positions on the issue – it wasn’t in the party’s seven tests for any trade deal. But its removal is now a key pledge from the party, which now sees it as the root of the Irish Sea border issue.

While the effect of the Protocol on trade has been obvious, it also has the potential to create a real or de facto immigration border – if the UK government attempts anything which EU law would prohibit. Some unionists worry that checks on people travelling from NI to GB are inevitable as a consequence.

That’s because the framework keeps Northern Ireland bound by certain EU rights provisions, while Great Britain is free to pursue its own path. If the UK is to have a uniform policy, it must be compliant with the EU rights enshrined in NI under the Protocol.

That situation became crystal clear when a court struck out key parts of the last government’s flagship Rwanda scheme in Northern Ireland. Tory ministers protested they would challenge the decision and win, but that never materialised.

Many unionists felt that an incoming Labour government would change policies and that would remove some of the problems created by the Windsor Framework. For example, a closer trading arrangement with the EU would reduce the need for Irish Sea border checks. Scrapping the Rwanda scheme would mean an immigration system which applied across the UK, at least for now.

Others believe that the fundamentals of the framework needed to be dealt with above all else – including the restoration of Stormont.

That divide has been at its starkest between the DUP and TUV, and the difference in emphasis from the two party leaders in Westminster this week appears to point to a differing approach from the two parties – who both want an end to EU law in Northern Ireland.

On the first day of the new parliamentary term, the DUP leader Gavin Robinson asked the government “to repair the damage of the last government through the Illegal Migration Act and the Safety of Rwanda Act, which specifically, for the first time, now do not apply in Northern Ireland, following court judgment, because of the Windsor Framework”.

“We no longer have a uniform immigration policy in this country, and can I ask her, as Home Secretary, what steps she will take to address that?”, he said.

In other words, the DUP leader was asking for the Rwanda policy to be scrapped instead of the Protocol. That is certainly more realistic – given that the new government is opposed to the Rwanda scheme and has pledged to implement the protocol “in good faith”. The party is pushing at an open door on Rwanda, but whatever replaces it will have to meet with the EU’s approval if it is to be implemented across the UK.

But the TUV says Gavin Robinson is taking the wrong approach. A party spokesperson said: “Mr Robinson is wrong to suggest that the Rwanda Act was to blame for disunity in immigration policy across the UK. In truth, the damage came from the Protocol, or as some have now renamed it the Windsor Framework.

“As correctly identified by Jim Allister during his question to the Home Secretary the core issue is that under the Windsor framework, any immigration policy that she devises must pass through the filter of EU law, and be subject to its requirements. As long as that prevails the Home Secretary cannot implement a national policy unless the whole of the UK is prepared to tolerate the EU setting the parameters.

“As Mr Allister made clear, to address this issue the Government must put aside what they inherited from the Tory Government: the loss of sovereignty over immigration—and so many other matters, as far as Northern Ireland is concerned.”

The government was non-committal in its response to the East Belfast MP. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Ms Cooper said she was happy “to talk to him directly further about this. It's important. There are a whole series of areas where reforms are going to be needed, and there is an important debate to take place around border security, around the asylum system, around the way immigration rules operate, and so on”.

The Labour government will be under the same pressure as its predecessor to deal with both controlled and uncontrolled immigration. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has declared the Rwanda scheme “dead”. But with the home secretary’s stated intention to reform border security, asylum and immigration – the question of how that’s achieved in relation to Northern Ireland isn’t going to go away while the Windsor Framework is in place.