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According to a letter seen by the Financial Times, one of Northern Ireland’s leading Unionist politicians lobbied the British government to dilute the law that gives UK ministers the power to manage a post-Brexit deal in Northern Ireland.
The Democratic Unionist Party has expressed support for the law, which threatens to unilaterally scrap the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol that has distorted relations between London and Brussels since Brexit.
However, despite unionist condemnation of the protocol, former DUP leader Edwin Poots, serving as Northern Ireland’s agriculture minister, wrote to the UK government last July to argue that the region’s farmers would be better off under the protocol.
The DUP has vetoed Northern Ireland’s political institutions since May to block its demands for sweeping changes to the post-Brexit trading regime.
Poots defended his move on Friday, arguing that while the protocol was “totally unacceptable”, it was “totally reasonable” to be able to support farmers.
“There’s nothing wrong with cherry picking,” he told the FT, adding that Northern Ireland “needs to have the ability to respond in certain circumstances if necessary.”
Under a protocol agreed in 2019 between the EU and the UK, Northern Ireland continued to comply with EU rules on trade in goods to avoid the return of a trade border to the island of Ireland.
Article 10 of the deal left Northern Irish goods and agricultural aid subject to the EU state aid regime – but exempted the region from £382mn a year in farm subsidies.
In a letter to UK Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary George Eustice, Poots said it was “unacceptable” that the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, if enacted, would force farmers in the region to accept the same agricultural subsidy regime as the rest of the country. UK
While noting his “deep-seated” concerns over the Protocol, Poots argued that “as far as agriculture is concerned, the state aid regime . . . the Protocol provides considerable policy flexibility for Northern Ireland.”
Since Brexit, EU state aid rules no longer apply to Great Britain, which has created a bespoke British subsidy regime, through the Subsidy Control Act, which will come into force on 4 January.
The new UK regime, Puts argued, would be less generous to farmers in Northern Ireland than the existing arrangement with the Protocol.
He said the UK subsidy control regime, when applied to agriculture, would “create significant difficulties” for farmers across the country and “the proposed Northern Ireland Protocol Bill will now extend these difficulties directly to Northern Ireland”.
Poots concluded: “The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill proposes to reject the approach to subsidy controls that we currently have (which works) and [UK’s Subsidy Control Act] (which doesn’t work) in Northern Ireland. This is unacceptable and we need a solution.
Poots said he “can’t recall” receiving a response from London. Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture said: “The Agricultural Policy Framework is consistent with the Northern Ireland Protocol and was designed with that in mind.
“If the NI Protocol Bill were to go ahead as currently drafted, it would remove the EU state aid framework and bring NI agriculture under the UK’s domestic subsidy control regime. It imposes a different set of requirements and requires the agricultural policy framework to be assessed in light of this different regime. will be required.”
The UK government said on Friday that the Protocol Bill would “resolve practical problems” in the event that the protocol’s implementation cannot be resolved through negotiations.
“The Bill will fix unacceptable tax-and-spend disparities between Northern Ireland and the rest of the country – ensuring businesses can benefit from the same support and subsidies across the UK,” added a spokesman.
Poots had to step down as Agriculture Minister at the end of October after the legal deadline to restore the Northern Ireland Executive passed. Civil servants are now in charge of running the region and London has said new elections will be called early next year until the executive is restored.
A senior industry figure said the protocol allowed Poots to provide £50 million in support to beef and other farmers to produce sustainably.
“With the protocol, he could take advantage of the option to put £50mn into those measures,” the person said, adding that farmers in other parts of the UK were the envy of him. If the bill passes, he added, “we would have absolutely no idea what the future policy is”.
A DUP spokesman said: “There are some people in London who question the DUP’s determination to violently ditch the NI Protocol. Their strategy will fail.
“The DUP, including Mr Poots, are in full support of the NI Protocol Bill. At no time did the party consider introducing amendments to the bill to reflect anything contained in the letter which was sent to his ministerial rather than party capacity and which was never discussed by the party.
Talks between London and Brussels on the protocol have resumed on a more upbeat note, but Foreign Secretary James Chaturai insisted this month that the two sides had not yet resolved any difficult issues and that it was “yet [to] See the way through”.
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