Stormont MLAs to vote on extending Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading deal

The democratic consent process is a key element of the UK and EU’s Windsor Framework deal and is designed to give local elected representatives a say on the contentious trade rules that now operate in the region.

The debate and vote will happen a day after a judge dismissed an emergency legal action by a loyalist activist who had challenged the lawfulness of triggering of the vote.

The framework, and its predecessor the NI Protocol, require checks and customs paperwork on goods moving from Great Britain into Northern Ireland.

Under the arrangements, which were designed to ensure no hardening of the Irish land border post-Brexit, Northern Ireland continues to follow many EU trade and customs rules.

This has proved highly controversial, with unionists arguing the system threatens Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

Advocates of the arrangements say they help insulate the region from negative economic consequences of Brexit.

A dispute over the so-called Irish Sea border led to the collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2022, when the DUP withdrew then-first minister Paul Givan from the coalition executive.

The impasse lasted two years and ended in February when devolution returned.

Under the terms of the framework, a Stormont vote must be held on articles five to 10 of the Windsor Framework, which underpin the EU trade laws in force in Northern Ireland, before they expire.

The vote must take place before December 17.

Based on the numbers in the Assembly, MLAs are set to back the continuation of the measures for another four years, even though unionists are likely to oppose the move.

DUP leader Gavin Robinson has already made clear his party will be voting against continuing the operation of the Windsor Framework.

MLAs from Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Alliance Party, which all favour continuation, submitted the required motion to table the vote after Stormont’s first and deputy first ministers failed to reach an agreement to do it jointly themselves.

The process to trigger the vote began at the end of October when Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn sent a letter to the Speaker Edwin Poots asking First Minister Michelle O’Neill and deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly to table a motion by the end of November.

Given the DUP is opposed to a continuation of arrangements that have brought added red tape on trade with the rest of the UK, it was not expected that a motion calling for their extension would be forthcoming from the joint office of a Sinn Féin First Minister and a DUP deputy First Minister.

Once the one-month time period for Ms O’Neill and Ms Little-Pengelly to table the motion expired at the end of November, it was open for other MLAs in Stormont to do it – prompting Sinn Féin’s Philip McGuigan, the Alliance Party’s Eoin Tennyson and the SDLP’s Matthew O’Toole to table it together.

Unlike other votes on contentious issues at Stormont, the motion does not require cross-community support to pass.

If it is voted through with a simple majority, the arrangements are extended for four years.

In that event, the Government is obliged to hold an independent review of how the framework is working.

If it wins cross-community support, which is a majority of unionists and a majority of nationalists, then it is extended for eight years.

The chances of it securing such cross-community backing are highly unlikely.

On Monday night, Belfast High Court judge Mr Justice McAlinden rejected loyalist activist Jamie Bryson’s application for leave for a full judicial review hearing against Mr Benn’s move to trigger the vote.

Mr Bryson had initially asked the court to grant interim relief in his challenge to prevent Tuesday’s vote taking place, pending the hearing of a full judicial review.

However, he abandoned that element of his leave application during proceedings on Monday, after the judge made clear he would be “very reluctant” to do anything that would be “trespassing into the realms” of a democratically elected Assembly.

Mr Bryson had challenged Mr Benn’s move to initiate the democratic consent process but all three grounds of his application for leave were dismissed.

After the ruling, Mr Bryson told the court he intended to appeal to the Court of Appeal.