UUP leader Doug Beattie: Windsor Framework will not be changed 'one sentence'

Speaking at Stormont, Mr Beattie said: “The best way, as a unionist, to secure the union is to make Northern Ireland work and to make it a working part of the United Kingdom.

“Everyone will look at this and make their own decisions, I will make it as honest as I possibly can.

“The Windsor Framework will not be changed one sentence, one dot of an ‘i’, not one cross of a ‘t’.

“The Windsor Framework will simply not be changed.

“The Irish Sea border is still going to be there. There will be still EU laws which are going to affect us here in Northern Ireland.

“All of these things are still going to be here. We said that we’re still going to be here. These are the challenges that we as a party have said that we need to be addressing inside a restored Executive.

“So, they haven’t gone away. None of these issues have gone away. They’re still there but that doesn’t mean we have to stop trying to challenge them and we can challenge them while at the same time maximising any opportunities which are laid in front of us.”

Mr Beattie said the DUP’s decision to boycott the Northern Ireland institutions was “never going to work”.

“Those people who thought it was going to work are absolutely wrong,” he added.

“I think we as a party have been vindicated in regards to that.

“As to what happens next, we have meetings today with the other party leaders, with the head of the civil service, we will look at what a restored executive is going to look like.

“We will look at what the programme for government is going to be in the long term. If that meets the Ulster Unionists’ aspirations, we will absolutely walk into the executive and play our part.

“If it looks like a carve-up between the two biggest parties, if it looks like we’re still going to be in a fragile executive, then maybe that’s not the place for us, but that’s going to happen over the next couple of days.”