Brandon Lewis said the Northern Ireland Protocol bill, due Monday, is based on “protecting the integrity” of the Good Friday peace deal. He insisted that when people saw the law they would understand that it did not violate international law. Labor, however, said the government was “setting a record for breaking the law” while Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the plan was against the wishes of the people of Northern Ireland and would do “huge, huge damage”. ” in economy. Lewis said ministers would only issue one specific piece of advice that would determine the legitimacy of the bill. Asked if the full advice would be published, he told Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday that the government would “describe our legal position”. Asked three times if Sir James Eadie, a senior lawyer whose role as first adviser to the Treasury includes providing independent legal advice to ministers, had been asked about the bill, Lewis declined to say. “I am not going to go inside government advice,” he said. Pressing on this, he added: “Government lawyers are very clear that we are working within the law. The Attorney General [Suella Braverman] “We will state the government’s position on this tomorrow.” The bill would unilaterally bypass elements of the post-Brexit protocol with the EU to try to facilitate trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, which Brussels has warned could provoke retaliation. The hardline Eurosceptic right wing of the Tories’s party has been pushing for ministers to take drastic action, with lawmakers meeting with Foreign Minister Liz Toussaint. Lewis argued that the bill was only intended to secure the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which brought peace to Northern Ireland: “What we are trying to do is fix the problems we have seen with the protocol. “It has to do with how the protocol was implemented, the lack of flexibility we have seen from the EU over the last year and a half.” But the shadow Labor’s chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told Ridge that she was worried the plan would violate international law. “We have not seen the legislation yet, but it seems that the government is planning to violate international law,” he said. “This government seems to be setting a record for breaking the law and it can not support the Labor Party. “We helped to reach the agreement on Good Friday. We are deeply, passionately committed to this. “ McDonald said on the same show that “a significant majority” of the Northern Ireland Assembly members elected in May supported the protocol and that it was clear that ministers in Westminster were aiming to break the law. “The protocol works,” he said. “The protocol is the mechanism that gives the North, uniquely, unlimited access to the European market. That is why we see in Northern Ireland, in contrast to Britain, with the exception of the City of London, the economy is strong. “What the Tory government is proposing to do in violation of international law is to cause enormous, enormous damage to the Northern economy, to the Irish economy.”
