Northern Ireland Protocol: What did Boris Johnson say?

Boris Johnson has said he will find it "very difficult" to vote for Rishi Sunak's new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland (NI).

Rishi Sunak has announced changes to the protocol - the agreement which Mr Johnson negotiated with the EU and which came into force in NI at the start of 2021.

It introduced checks on goods arriving in NI from the rest of the UK and became a source of political tensions.

Mr Johnson, in a speech in Westminster, said "I thought those checks would not be onerous" and went on to say "it's all my fault, I fully accept responsibility".

This is in marked contrast to what he said about his deal before it came into force.

In August 2020, Mr Johnson made this pledge - one he repeated several times.

But Northern Ireland has been treated differently to the rest of the UK for the trade in goods, as the protocol said it would be. So, there has indeed been a trade border in the Irish Sea.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has been deeply unhappy about this, using the slogan: "No border in the Irish Sea".

Mr Johnson said this on Sky News in response to a question about a leaked internal Treasury document.

On the impact of the protocol, the document warned "customs declarations and documentary and physical checks... will be highly disruptive to the NI economy".

It highlighted potential constitutional implications, saying Northern Ireland (NI) could be "symbolically separated" from Great Britain (GB).

Mr Johnson's dismissal of the document's main findings ran counter to the facts of his own deal.

Parts of the Treasury document are now out of date (the possibility that tariffs or taxes could be charged on many goods crossing from GB to NI, for example, was removed by the signing of the new EU-UK free trade agreement in December 2020).

But it set out clearly that there would be a range of bureaucratic measures affecting GB-NI trade, including customs declarations, food safety checks, security checks, and regulatory checks on product standards.

The NI Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) says that SPS checks (controls to protect animal, plant or public health) were carried out between 1 January 2021 and 19 February 2023 at NI ports on:

And this was despite grace periods being in place during which the full implementation of EU rules was suspended.

Mr Johnson was asked by an NI businessman whether he could tell his staff that they wouldn't have to complete customs declarations for goods going from NI to GB. Mr Johnson said he could.

At the time, the terms of the protocol suggested export declarations would have to be filled in - a point acknowledged by then Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay.

In subsequent negotiations, though, the need for formal NI-GB customs forms was waived - so this part of the prime minister's promise was met.

However, in 2021 there were more than a million full customs declarations for goods coming the other way - from GB-NI - with each declaration comprising multiple forms and steps.

Boris Johnson asserted this in response to a question in Parliament from Nigel Dodds of the DUP who said the protocol "drives a coach and horses through the Belfast Agreement" and urged Mr Johnson to reconsider the plan.

He reminded the prime minister that he had told the DUP conference in 2018 that "no British Conservative government could or should sign up" to an arrangement with regulatory checks and customs controls between GB and NI.

On 11 May 2022, at a press conference in Sweden, Mr Johnson said that the Good Friday Agreement meant that "things have got to command cross-community support. Plainly the Northern Ireland Protocol fails to do that and we need to sort it out."

The protocol has a consent mechanism that means assembly members are asked to vote on it. The first consent vote is due in 2024.

Mr Johnson gave this assessment in the House of Commons shortly after agreeing the terms of the deal, urging MPs to back it.

But annexes to the protocol set out a long list of EU laws that would apply to NI, including laws dealing with products of animal origin and the EU customs code.

In addition to the leaked Treasury document, the government's own impact assessment, published at the time, was clear. "Goods arriving in Northern Ireland, including from Great Britain," it said, "would undergo regulatory checks in accordance with EU rules."

One year on from the changes coming into effect, the NI Chambers of Commerce found that a very high proportion of members had experienced increases in prices of goods and services and the amount of time taken to transport goods.

This piece was first published in June 2022.

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