Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will provide a list of commitments contained in the Safeguarding the Union command paper (CP1021), published on 31 January 2024, which have yet to be implemented in full.

The Government is committed to continuing to take forward the Safeguarding the Union command paper, and to protecting Northern Ireland’s place in the UK Internal Market.

We continue to make progress on delivering the commitments made in the command paper. For instance in 2025, three centuries of the News Letter were digitised and there remains no Border Control Post at Cairnryan. In January, the East-West Council met for the third time, where the Government announced there would be a pilot for the UK school twinning programme. This will focus on reading and is being developed between the UK Government’s Department for Education and the Northern Ireland Executive’s Department of Education.

Other recent steps include the allocation of £2.25 million for Intertrade UK over the next three years and the opening of round two of the Connect Fund to support community and voluntary groups. In line with commitments made in Safeguarding the Union, in December the Government published our response to Lord Murphy’s Independent Review of the Windsor Framework, and is now taking action on its recommendations.