The UK government will soon “clarify exactly” how politicians at Stormont can block the application of future European Union laws in Northern Ireland, the Northern secretary has said.
Chris Heaton-Harris said detail would be given in the coming days on how the so-called ‘Stormont Brake’ can be used by Assembly members to request a UK government veto on new EU laws that would apply in the North.
“Just to make sure we get this exactly right, in the next few days we are going to codify this,” he said on Friday of his government’s plans for setting out how the emergency measure will work.
The brake was introduced in this week’s Windsor Framework - a new EU-UK deal changing post-Brexit trade rules in Northern Ireland - to address the “democratic deficit” criticised by the unionists in the original Brexit deal that gave them no say over EU laws applying in the North.
RM Block
The Windsor deal aims to reduce checks between Northern Ireland and Britain after businesses in the North were left following EU rules on goods to avoid a hard trade border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, an EU member, after the UK’s departure from the bloc.
Confusion
There has been confusion around how the brake would operate as the UK government said in the text of the Windsor deal that it would function “on the same basis” as the petition of concern, an existing mechanism that allows politicians to raise concerns about a law.
The latest agreement says that 30 MLAs, a third of Assembly members, from at least two parties, not necessarily cross-community, can ask the UK government to block an EU law applying in Northern Ireland if it has a “significant impact specific to everyday life”.
Unlike the petition of concern, the brake does not to go a vote of the overall Assembly where it would require a majority of nationalists and a majority of unionists for the veto request to pass.
The 30 MLAs must have sought “substantive discussion” with the UK government and within the North’s political system and society before the British government could proceed with a veto.
Mr Heaton-Harris said the brake was essentially “going to act similar to the petition of concern mechanism”. Asked if the request of the 30 MLAs for the brake to be applied would then be put to a full vote of the Assembly, he said: “Not in the system that we are suggesting.”
‘Indicative vote’
“But if the Assembly wanted to have an indicative vote, I am sure it could but, as I said, it is going to be codified in the next few days so everyone will get the clarity that they want,” he said.
He said that it would “not simply” be a case of 30 MLAs requesting the brake and then the UK government deciding to veto an EU law applying in Northern Ireland.
Mr Heaton-Harris said there would be a “whole bunch of consultations beforehand” and “tests” to ensure the mechanism was only applied on “things that are significant” and “things that are really causing concern to the people of Northern Ireland”.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has boycotted the Assembly for more than a year in protest at the North’s original Brexit deal and has said that it will take time to study the latest agreement and reach a “collective decision.”
Mr Heaton-Harris said the UK government is giving “time and space” to the DUP to “digest” what is in the Windsor deal and believed that most of the issues the party was objecting to revolved around protecting the Act of Union.
“We are clear that Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom is secure,” he told BBC’s Good Morning Ulster programme on Friday, adding that his government planned to bring forward legal reassurances in the Northern Ireland Act of 1998 that Northern Ireland remained an integral part of the UK.
