BELFAST (Reuters) – The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will only move to restore Northern Ireland’s regional parliament if it is sure British government plans to override some post-Brexit trade rules for the region will become law, a senior lawmaker said on Monday.
The DUP blocked the restoration of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing administration after an election last month, saying it would not facilitate the regional assembly sitting until all checks or planned post-Brexit checks on goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland are removed.
Britain will set out plans on Monday to override parts of the Northern Ireland protocol that governs post-Brexit trade, in a bid to ease unionist concerns over the deal it signed with the European Union and convince the DUP, the region’s largest pro-British party, to go back into government.
“We’d be a very foolish party if at this stage we’d give commitments about specific times. It’s not the time that is important, it’s the content that’s important,” Sammy Wilson, a DUP member of the British parliament, told BBC Northern Ireland.
“If this bill has a tempestuous process through the House of Commons, amendment after amendment, attempts to weaken it, it’s likely it will face the same in the House of Lords, our assessment would be it would be very foolish to make any commitment to go back into the Assembly.”
It could take many months or longer for the legislation to pass through both houses of parliament in London.
“I think the unionist population want us to make sure that is a trap we don’t fall into, namely that we’re given promises that are broken,” Wilson said.
The election to the Northern Irish parliament reaffirmed that a majority of lawmakers favour retaining the protocol and that trade frictions should be smoothed through negotiations with the EU. Those parties have criticised London’s approach.
(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson, Writing by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Gareth Jones)
