BELFAST (Reuters) – British Foreign Minister Liz Truss said on Wednesday she was determined to deliver the Northern Ireland Protocol bill in full, even if it faced a time-consuming parliamentary challenge be opposed to. .
The bill takes unilateral action – effectively ripping up parts of the Brexit deal – to address customs arrangements with the EU over how goods are transported between the UK and Northern Ireland differences.
Truss admits the bill faces strong criticism from political opponents in the UK and EU and will take time to pass in the upper house of parliament, while The government does not have a majority in the upper house.
She added that resolving the dispute with the EU was crucial to restoring Northern Ireland’s political power-sharing arrangements.
“This is exactly the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill that I’ve been dealing with because we’re not going to get Stormont back up and running until we fix the issues with the Northern Ireland Protocol,” she said at a hustings event .
Asked what assurances she could offer the prime minister if elected, that she would not bow to those who oppose the plan in the EU or US, Truss said:
“I took on the responsibility of negotiating the Northern Ireland protocol and opposed a lot of the proposals in Whitehall against the wishes of some of the people you mentioned – I’ve been very much like (U.S. House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi People like that make it clear what I think about it and what we need to do – and I’ve set out to make it happen.”
(Reporting by Amanda Ferguson in Belfast, William James and Farouk Suleiman in London, edited by Elizabeth Piper)
