Jim Allister: It turns out that the DUP agreed to Northern Ireland being able to be governed by foreign EU laws we don’t even know about

Not only, because of the Union-dismantling Protocol, is Northern Ireland subject to EU laws we don’t make, but now also laws we don’t even know about!

The debacle at the Windsor Framework Committee, when it emerged two new EU laws of which we hadn’t even been told were being imposed, drives home two points.

First, the total inadequacy of the ‘Democratic Scrutiny’ Regulations 2023 in that they do not impose a duty on Westminster to inform Stormont of new European laws. Reg 6 merely says they ‘may’ so inform Stormont, it does not say ‘shall’.

Yet this was the flawed arrangement the DUP accepted in the Donaldson Deal at the same time as they accepted the scrutiny powers of the committee should be trashed by removing the right to call for persons and papers.

Second, the democratic obscenity of being able to be governed by foreign EU we don’t even know about! It doesn’t get much more undemocratic and colonial than that! It’s not even about the content of the laws, it’s about basic democratic principles.Yet, this is what passes as ‘democratic’ under the protocol – a protocol now in the ownership of the DUP since they meekly rolled over in the Donaldson Deal.

Jim Allister KC MLA, Stormont