I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for introducing this Bill, and I acknowledge his recognition of the strengths of those protections in the Belfast agreement, which were built in by my party and especially by Lord Trimble, the former leader of the Ulster Unionist party and the crafter and political deliverer of unionism in support of the Belfast agreement at that time. He said:
“I feel betrayed personally by the Northern Ireland Protocol, and it is also why the unionist population is so incensed at its imposition.
The protocol rips the very heart out of the agreement, which I and they believed safeguarded Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom and ensured that democracy not violence, threat of violence or outside interference, would or could ever change that.
Make no mistake about it, the protocol does not safeguard the Good Friday Agreement. It demolishes its central premise by removing the assurance that democratic consent is needed to make any change to the status of Northern Ireland. It embodies a number of constitutional changes that relate to Northern Ireland.”