Northern Ireland needs protocol protection, says O’Toole

SDLP MLA Matthew O’Toole said Northern Ireland “should have the protections set out in the protocol”.

On Thursday NI Secretary Hilary Benn started the process to enable MLAs to vote on controversial post-Brexit trade agreements.

Unlike other votes at Stormont, support for this motion is not required. A simple majority will be enough.

MP and TUV leader Jim Allister says it is “the most significant vote in Northern Ireland’s history by a Stormont assembly”.

Hilary Benn has written to the Speaker of Stormont and the First and Deputy First Ministers, urging them to bring the proposal to the Assembly by the end of November.

The process, known as the Democratic Consent Movement, was first agreed between the UK and the EU in the 2020 Withdrawal Agreement to give local politicians a say in new post-Brexit trading rules.

This allows MLAs at Stormont to decide whether current arrangements, including the Northern Ireland Protocol, should continue.

Under the agreement, the process is to be launched two months before current arrangements expire at the end of the year.

If the First and Deputy First Minister are unable to move a motion for a vote, an individual MLA can trigger the mechanism.

O’Toole said that if the First or Deputy First Minister did not table a motion, he would be “more than happy to table one”.

Discussing the vote on BBC Radio Ulster’s Good Morning Ulster, O’Toole said the protocol needed to be improved as he believed “there are economic benefits to it”.

“I would like to enlist the support of the entire community, the entire community, for the protections in the protocol,” O’Toole added.

Allister said MLAs are being asked to “give up sovereignty over not one area of ​​law, but 300 areas of law”.

“Anyone who votes for this ballot measure is advocating for their constituents to have no say in the laws that govern them,” the lawmaker added.

Sinn Féin, the Alliance and the SDLP are expected to support the continuation of the agreements.

However, the DUP argues that the vote creates a democratic deficit because the concerns of unionists, who are in a minority at Stormont, can be ignored.

In a statement, DUP leader Gavin Robinson said it was “deliberately designed to drive coach and horse in line with the principle of community harmony that underpins all political progress in Northern Ireland.”

He also said he expected all pro-union parties to join him in voting against maintaining the Windsor Framework.

If the vote passes without community support, the government has committed to conducting an independent review of the post-Brexit arrangements and their consequences.

Analysis by BBC News NI political editor Enda McClafferty

This is a big vote for the assembly, although we know the result because we know how the numbers in the assembly are distributed.

We know that if all goes to plan, we will probably end up with somewhere in the region of 53 to 36 votes in favor of continuing the protocol in Northern Ireland for another four years.

We know it won’t have the support of the entire community, but we certainly also know what was involved beyond that.

For example, if it is passed by a simple majority vote, the Secretary of State must carry out an independent review within one month.

In six months that review is due, and then in another six months the government is due to respond.