Afternoon summary
Almost 70 Conservative MPs have voted in favour of the government going ahead with its plan to remove asylum seekers from the country even if doing so is against the European convention on human rights, or other international law. Some 67 Tory MPs voted for Jonathan Gullis’s motion, with another two acting as tellers. (See 3.26pm.) The government did not back the motion, and it was defeated. But experts like the UN refugee agency (see 10.03am) say the plans announced by Rishi Sunak yesterday would break international law, and Sunak has refused to say what he would do if the legislation he intends to pass next year gets rejected by judges saying that it is incompatible with the ECHR. Gullis and his supporters want the UK to leave the convention. Sunak did not order Tory MPs to vote against the Gullis motion, and the outcome of the division would not have mattered anyway (10-minute rule bills never become law), but it may be a sign of where the debate in the party is heading. In October 2011 81 Tory MPs voted for a referendum on EU membership (defying David Cameron’s orders). Less than five years later, the UK was out of the EU. In a statement on the small boat incident that led to four people dying in the Channel, Suella Braverman implied she would be happy to see the UK leave the ECHR. Braverman, who has called for this in the past, told MPs this afternoon:
One reason that I voted to leave the European Union was to take back control of our borders and our migration policy, to restore sovereignty and supremacy to this parliament on how our migration policy should be run.
It is for this parliament, and directly elected people running this country, to make the decision on how we should run our migration policy, who should come here and how we apply our humanitarian arrangements.
Updated
The value of goods from Great Britain sold in Northern Ireland shot up 7% to a record £14.4bn in 2021, the first year of operation of Brexit protocol checks, official government data shows.
The data, the first of its kind, was published by the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and also shows the value of goods and services purchased locally by companies in Northern Ireland rose by 11% to £26.5bn while purchases from Ireland increased to £3.1bn from £2.5bn in 2020.
The figures do not take account of inflation or comment on last year’s post-pandemic bounce in trade.
But they led to criticism of claims by unionists that Brexit had damaged trade between North Ireland and Great Britain because of the EU checks and customs controls on goods the protocol mandates.
“This data should finally put to bed the idea that the protocol is ruining the Northern Ireland economy, or even that it has severely dented trade between GB and NI,” said Matthew O’Toole, SDLP Stormont’s assembly group leader and Brexit spokesperson.
Updated
