Brexit: UK to warn of 'unilateral action' over NI Protocol

The UK is expected to tell the EU that it will take unilateral action if fresh agreement is not reached on Northern Ireland.

The two sides agreed the Northern Ireland Protocol in 2019, as part of the withdrawal agreement.

It prevents a hard border in Ireland by keeping Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods.

The UK says its implementation has been "unbalanced" and it is "unsustainable" in its current form.

UK Brexit Minister Lord Frost will lay out the UK's proposed way forward in a statement to the House of Lords later.

On Monday, he said ways needed to be found to "hugely reduce" or "eliminate" the new barriers to trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland which have emerged as a result of the protocol.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis will also make a statement to the House of Commons.

It comes as the chairman of Marks & Spencer called for a "common sense" solution to post-Brexit problems at its stores on the island of Ireland.

Archie Norman said the level of checks and controls are "very threatening" to its Irish business.

He suggests the easiest solution would be to "agree a time limited veterinary/food standards agreement".

Speaking on Radio 4 on Wednesday morning, Mr Norman said come the autumn the problems his company has faced exporting to the Republic of Ireland are likely to be replicated in Northern Ireland.

"At the moment only about 80% of our product is getting into [the Republic of] Ireland - so 20% doesn't arrive at all," he said.

"It's not the rules of the Customs Union that is the problem, it's the Byzantine and pointless and honestly pettifogging enforcement which means that wagons can't get through."

He said trucks had been turned away on the basis of the wrong colour of typeface used on documents.

"We're employing 13 full-time vets who are not looking after animals or welfare, they're simply ticking boxes and filling out forms.

"Sandwiches typically require about three vets' certificates to get through.

"Our error rate in this huge amount of documentation has been running at less than 0.00%, but 40% of our wagons have been delayed - it could be six hours, but often it's 24 to 48 hours, which means that most of the contents of that wagon have to be destroyed.

"Come October our experience in southern Ireland is probably, as it currently stands, set to be replicated in Northern Ireland."

He said the easiest solution would be to agree a time limited veterinary/food standards agreement.

The protocol was agreed by the UK and EU in October 2019 and was subject to further negotiation and agreement in 2020.

It keeps Northern Ireland in the EU single market for goods and means EU customs rules are enforced at its ports.

Food products are subject to the most onerous checks and controls.

The EU has suggested a temporary Swiss-style veterinary agreement as a way to reduce checks, which would require the UK to follow all EU agri-food rules.

The UK said it is unwilling to cede control to the EU on this issue and is instead pushing for an equivalence arrangement in which the EU would recognise UK food production standards as being equivalent to its own.

The EU has limited equivalence agreements with New Zealand and Canada.

The UK proposal is more far reaching than those other EU equivalence deals.

The two sides are supposed to agree any changes to the protocol through a body called the Joint Committee.

However, the UK has already acted unilaterally, extending "grace periods" and introducing other measures without EU approval.

That prompted the EU to launch legal proceedings which are ongoing.

Article 16 of the protocol also allows either side to unilaterally override parts of the deal if they are causing "serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade".

In recent weeks, Lord Frost has suggested that the UK is looking closely at the "diversion of trade" provision.

At the peak of a row over AstraZeneca vaccines, the European Commission proposed using Article 16 to prevent vaccines from the EU being exported to Great Britain via Northern Ireland.

However, it backed down within hours following furious criticism from the Irish government and politicians in Northern Ireland.