Having spent two years at the Home Office working on the plans to implement the Northern Ireland protocol in full if it had been needed, there are some welcome aspects to this agreement, although there are of course other areas that will need to be studied in further detail. The green and red lanes are welcome. One thought that comes to mind is that there is an EU team based at Belfast port—in fact, that team is hosted in a Home Office facility, because it did not have anywhere of its own. What role does he see that team playing, because, as we are aware, there will inevitably be some attempts to abuse the green lane? Who would take the lead on the law enforcement approach to that, and decide whether that sort of action is taken, to ensure that this is about responding to genuine concerns and that it does not become a way, as we have seen at other borders with the EU, to put checks in place that we would feel were an undue burden?
Northern Ireland Protocol
Proceeding contribution from
Kevin Foster
(Conservative)
in the House of Commons on Monday, 27 February 2023.
It occurred during Ministerial statement on Northern Ireland Protocol.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
728 c601 
Session
2022-23
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-02-28 12:39:10 +0000
URI
http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Commons/2023-02-27/23022754000075
In Indexing
http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Commons/2023-02-27/23022754000075
In Solr
https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://hansard.intranet.data.parliament.uk/Commons/2023-02-27/23022754000075