I thank the hon. Member for his point. If I may, I will just return briefly to the point he made prior to that. At no stage has this Government or my party ever called for a hard border on the island of Ireland. That is why we support this solution, but is he aware that, by threatening retaliation, the only people who are now talking about a hard border on the island of Ireland are the EU? If it is a trade war, the EU will not leave the border unsupervised on the island of Ireland, and it has threatened to remove the right of Northern Ireland companies to trade across the border in those circumstances—that cannot be policed in any other way than on the border itself—so it is the EU that is threatening a hard border on the island of Ireland through retaliation and, by extension, it is threatening the Good Friday agreement.
Northern Ireland Protocol Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Jeffrey M Donaldson
(Democratic Unionist Party)
in the House of Commons on Monday, 27 June 2022.
It occurred during Debate on bills on Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
717 c105 
Session
2022-23
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2022-06-29 21:03:08 +0100
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