Britain’s foreign secretary has warned against over-estimating how quickly a deal might be reached on the Northern Ireland protocol, and said there were still “big gaps” between the UK and EU.
“I don’t want people to be defeatist,” said James Cleverly, “but equally I don’t want people to run away with the idea that we are just on the cusp of some amazing breakthrough that was there all the time if only we’d kind of looked a little bit harder. There are some real challenges that need to be overcome.”
Mr Cleverly was answering questions on Tuesday from the European Scrutiny Committee of MPs at the House of Commons in London on the UK government’s policy regarding the protocol.
Technical discussions on the protocol are taking place between officials, said Mr Cleverly, adding that he had a “regular check-in” with the European Commission vice-president, Maros Sefcovic. He said there was a “better atmosphere” and he “genuinely” believed the EU was listening, but that this “shouldn’t be read” that he was “shy” in putting forward the UK’s “very real concerns” about the protocol.
He emphasised it remained the case that the UK’s preference was for a negotiated solution, but he said any resolution “has got to be acceptable to all communities in Northern Ireland”. Unless the unionist community was “happy” with the outcome, he said, “this isn’t going to work”.
Unionists in Northern Ireland are opposed to the protocol – the part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement which avoided a hard border on the island of Ireland by placing a customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea – because they argue it has caused economic difficulties and undermined its constitutional position within the UK.
Northern Ireland has been without a devolved Assembly or Executive since May because the DUP is boycotting the power-sharing government as part of its protest against the protocol.
Mr Cleverly said he had been “very strict with Maros [Sefcovic], I’ve said, ‘look, I’m not going to say yes to proposals that I don’t think would have cross-community support in Northern Ireland.’ There is literally no point in me saying yes to things that are unacceptable to all the communitles across NI because they just won’t stick.
“We’re in a good mood with each other, that’s lovely, we’re talking regularly, that’s also lovely,” he said, but emphasised he had a duty to ensure “whatever ideas that we come up with to address this problem actually address the concerns of all the communities, and obviously the unionist community are the ones that people think of”.
Regarding the list of challenges, he said: “I don’t think it’s necessarily a long list but they are tough challenges.”
He said discussions have been taking place “in more detail” in areas where there had previously been “deep disagreements up until this point”, such as around IT systems, but none had “come to a point of resolution, so we haven’t been able to tick things off yet, but we are speaking and that’s been an improvement on the past”.
Labour MP Geraint Davies said Northern Ireland had “enormous benefit from being in the single market in terms of inward investment” from both the EU and UK, and asked why the UK government in not doing more to promote those opportunities to all the communities in Northern Ireland. “Why don’t we make it work so the people in Northern Ireland can see the benefits of it rather than moaning about it all the time?” he asked.
Mr Cleverly said there were “some businesses in Northern Ireland which are very, very happy with the protocol, but there are some businesses which … their business functions are being made either impossible or unprofitable because of the functioning of the protocol”.
“I don’t think any of us in politics would be comfortable in saying … ‘I’m quite happy to watch your business go under because most of us are doing okay’.”
