The protocol is not best way to help Ireland protect its interests

The NIO minister Steve Baker is correct in stating that the UK should recognise the legitimate interests of the Irish Republic and the EU, but in turn they should recognise that their legitimate interests do not extend to controlling what goods may be permitted in any part of the UK, any more than they can expect to exercise such control in the territory of any other “third country”.

Moreover he is wrong if he believes that the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is the correct way to recognise their legitimate interests.

Firstly in its Clause 15 “safeguarding the integrity of the EU single market” is only the seventh of nine “permitted purposes” for which a minister may make regulations to disapply the protocol.

And secondly while this parliamentary approval is needed to allow the government to disapply unacceptable provisions of the protocol it is not needed for the protection of the EU single market.

Given that something like half of the goods crossing the land border from Northern Ireland into the Irish Republic have actually been produced in Northern Ireland checks and controls on imports into the province are not just an inefficient means to prevent non-compliant goods entering EU territory but an ineffective means; for that purpose the checks and controls should be applied to exports, not imports.

There is nothing in the protocol to prevent the UK introducing a rational system of export controls to supplement and then replace the irrational system of import controls, as foreshadowed in the Command Paper of July 2021; it is hard to see how anybody could reasonably object to that, and the necessary law could have been passed long ago if the Tory government had sincerely wished to ‘fix’ the problem.

Dr DR Cooper, Maidenhead, Berkshire