In his press conference Rishi Sunak was not asked about the Northern Ireland protocol bill. But in its document on the \u201cWindsor framework\u201d, the government says it is shelving the bill for good. It says the EU has also agreed to drop its legal action against the UK for non-compliance with the protocol. The document says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nOverall the agreement delivers on the core objectives that the government set out previously in the command paper of July 2021 and the Northern Ireland protocol bill in June 2022, such that it is no longer necessary to proceed with the bill. In tandem, the EU will no longer proceed with the seven separate legal challenges it had brought against the UK in relation to the protocol.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This is not a surprise, because it was widely expected that the government would formally drop the bill (which has been stalled in the House of Lords since Rishi Sunak became prime minister) once an agreement was reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it is a direct snub to Boris Johnson, who last week was not only saying that the bill should not be shelved, but that it would provide a better solution to the problems caused by the protocol than a deal with the EU would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill would allow the UK to unilaterally ignore parts of the protocol. But yesterday the Sunday Times published extracts from the legal advice provided to Johnson when he was PM saying the bill would not work. In their report Tim Shipman <\/strong>and Caroline Wheeler<\/strong> wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, a leaked summary of the legal advice given to Johnson when he was PM suggests even that if the bill became law, it may not be worth the paper it is written on, and would not give the UK a sustainable alternative to Sunak\u2019s deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The summary, circulating in Whitehall, states that \u201cthe auspices of necessity\u201d under which the government proclaimed the bill lawful \u201conly provides a temporary justification\u201d for ignoring the treaty with the EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Furthermore, it says \u201cthere would be a high likelihood the EU would challenge this argument in international arbitration\u201d and that \u201cthe UK would have to pay reparations to the EU, even in arbitration\u201d should Brussels take out infraction proceedings against the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The killer line is a direct quote in the full legal advice. It says that, in these circumstances, \u201cthe UK would have an international law obligation under the WA to comply with any ruling of the CJEU\u201d, the Whitehall acronym for court of justice of the European Union.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his press conference Rishi Sunak was not asked about the Northern Ireland protocol bill. But in its document on the \u201cWindsor framework\u201d, the government says it is shelving the bill for good. It says the EU has also agreed to drop its legal action against the UK for non-compliance with the protocol. The document […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[11941,5090,157,1904,10507,159,9505,1195,2264,1091,10954,6449,5205,10419,10342,9765,2695,9570,2627,3174,5266,8302,12605,7231,1101,3954,5436,10415,594],"class_list":["post-29866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-bill","tag-boris","tag-boris-johnson","tag-brussels","tag-court","tag-eu","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-government","tag-house-of-lords","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-july","tag-justice","tag-law","tag-leaked","tag-northern-ireland","tag-northern-ireland-protocol","tag-pm","tag-prime-minister","tag-rishi-sunak","tag-sunak","tag-uk","tag-union","tag-wa","tag-will","tag-windsor","tag-work","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}