The British minister for Northern Ireland ruled out renegotiations over the new post-Brexit trade deal between the United Kingdom and the European Union over Northern Ireland. The comments follow calls from the region’s largest political party for amendments to the deal.
Speaking to supporters in Belfast on Thursday, British Northern Ireland minister Chris Heaton-Harris ruled out renegotiating any part of the post-Brexit trade deal for the region following the meeting with the region’s main political parties.
“That deal is done. There is no renegotiating of that deal,” said Heaton-Harris. “I will always talk to every single member of Northern Irish political parties but the time for negotiation on the Windsor Framework is over.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak secured near-unanimous support for the key provision of the new deal known as the Windsor Framework, the Stormont Brake, despite opposition by the region’s Democratic Unionist Party’s lawmakers and some Conservatives. The DUP has previously said it will not drop its year-long boycott of the region’s assembly until “further clarification, re-working, and change” is made to the deal that was brokered in February.
The DUP is at odds based on an opinion poll that found 45 percent of Northern Irish voters supporting the Windsor Framework while only 17 percent were opposed. The DUP has raised concerns over the continued authority of EU law and the region’s place in the UK’s internal market. The deal, formerly known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, was established when the UK left the bloc to also avoid a hard border with EU-member Ireland.
Negotiators feared that a hard border would have put the 1998 peace deal at risk, but an internal trade border with the rest of the UK has drawn the ire of pro-British unionists.
On the same day, Sunak told reporters that he was pleased with the amount of support for the Windsor Framework following parliament’s vote to back the Stormont Brake provision of the new agreement with the bloc.
“I was really pleased yesterday that there was very strong support for the Windsor framework and that’s because it’s the right deal for Northern Ireland,” said Sunak.