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Written Question
UK Trade with EU: Northern Ireland
Wednesday 23rd September 2020

Asked by: Viscount Waverley (Crossbench - Excepted Hereditary)

Question to the Attorney General:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the statement by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on 8 September that provisions of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill do "break international law in a very specific and limited way” (HC Deb, col 509), whether that statement reflects their position; and if so, what assessment they have made of the impact of such an approach on international relations.

Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)

The government’s legal position on the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill and Northern Ireland Protocol was set out in a statement published on 10 September, and remains unchanged. That statement makes clear that clauses 42 and 43 of the Bill may be exercised in a way which is incompatible with the provisions of the Withdrawal Agreement, and that the ‘notwithstanding provision’ in clause 45 partially disapplies Article 4 of the Withdrawal Agreement, regardless of whether any regulations made under clause 42 or 43 of the Bill are in fact compatible with the Withdrawal Agreement. The statement of 10 September also makes clear that it is an established principle of international law that a State is obliged to discharge its treaty obligations in good faith, and that this is, and will remain, the key principle in informing the UK’s approach to international relations. However, in the difficult and highly exceptional circumstances in which we find ourselves it is important to remember the fundamental principle of Parliamentary sovereignty.