UK's new N.Ireland trade rules will not break law, minister says
Britain will bring forward legislation on Monday (13 June) that complies with the law to fix the Northern Ireland protocol that governs trade following Brexit, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said on Sunday (12 June).
"The legislation that we will outline tomorrow is within the law; what we are going to do is lawful and it is correct," he told Sky News.
Lewis said that the changes were necessary as the protocol was not working, adding the EU had been inflexible in trying to negotiate a solution.
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The president of Ireland's Sinn Fein party, Mary Lou McDonald said Britain would break international law by bringing forward legislation to unilaterally change the Northern Ireland protocol.
She said there were mechanisms to improve the application of the protocol involving Dublin and Brussels.
"There is a willingness here, there is a willingness to engage by the European Commission, but the British government has refused to engage," she told Sky News.
Britain agreed to the protocol in 2019 to allow Britain to leave the EU's single market and customs union without controls being re-imposed on the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, vital to the 1998 Good Friday peace deal that ended three decades of violence.
