The Northern Ireland protocol agreed between the UK and the EU is a “mess”, according to former British prime minister John Major.
Major said he was “baffled” as to how the protocol, which was signed in 2021 as a way to move past gridlocked Brexit talks, could have been negotiated in its existing form.
The former Conservative party leader made the remarks as he appeared before Westminster’s Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
The deal, designed to keep goods free-flowing across the island of Ireland by moving customs checks to the Irish Sea was “poorly negotiated”, Major said.
“Some of the promises made immediately after the protocol that there would be no checks on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland” were ”patently wrong,” he told the committee.
The protocol has been heavily criticised by Unionists, who have claimed the deal has placed added trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
It keeps Northern Ireland in the EU’s single market for goods so as to avoid a hard border between the two island of Ireland nations post-Brexit, which the UK and EU agreed to honour in line with the Good Friday peace agreement.
Major, who was prime minister from 1990 to 1997, was involved in the talks that preceded the Good Friday deal.
He told the committee that the NI protocol needed changing, but warned London-Brussels negotiations would not lead to a “perfect” solution.
He said that compromise on all parts was needed to reach an agreement.
“Nobody can expect to get all of what they’re asking for in a negotiation,” he said, adding that ”to reach an accommodation requires unionists and nationalists to be prepared to get a great deal of what they’re asking for but not all of it”.
“We need them to accept that any agreement may not be perfect – you have to find somewhere in the middle where everyone accedes to something they don’t wholly like.”
His comments come the day before the UK Supreme Court was due to rule on a challenge to the validity of the controversial protocol, which was brought forward by Brexit activists and leaders of some of NI’s largest pro-British groups.
The challenge was previously rejected by Belfast’s High Court in 2021 and by the Court of Appeal last year.
Recent reports have claimed that EU and UK negotiators have made a “breakthrough” as part of the protocol talks to reduce checks on goods moving between GB and NI.
An agreement on food and animal health checks was “close to being done” as part of an agreement to set up different lanes at Northern Irish ports for goods staying in the region and moving south of the border to the republic of Ireland, a senior EU source told The Guardian.
The proposal would see goods meant to stay in Northern Ireland go through a “green lane” with lighter checks, while goods destined to the EU’s single market would be subjected to the bloc’s stricter checks. However, it is still unclear exactly how these checks will take place.
Last month, the UK agreed to give EU officials access to its IT systems for trade across the Irish Sea, with foreign secretary James Cleverly calling the deal a “critical prerequisite to building trust and providing assurance” between Brussels and London.
The move is meant to help the EU track any food and animal goods destined for Northern Ireland accidentally slipping into its internal markets via the Irish land border, where it operates strict food safety and animal welfare standards.
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