Unionists should feel "comfortable" about a new deal to restore power-sharing to Northern Ireland, the Cabinet minister who helped to broker the deal has said
Unionists should feel "comfortable" about a new deal to restore power-sharing to Northern Ireland, the Cabinet minister who helped to broker the deal has said.
However, Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris insisted that the new arrangement was not the end of talks about Brexit and how it affects the UK.
Heaton-Harris was speaking to GB News in Belfast as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived to hail the start of the work by the Northern Ireland Executive on Monday.
He brushed off concerns that the deal from unionists in Northern Ireland, which are concerned about remaining checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
He said: " I think Unionists should be both happy and comfortable with this deal because it does come, it's as I say it's part of a package that strengthens our union. And it's I think it's unfair and incorrect to say anything else.”
He added: “This deal is actually about the future of the union as well. We want to strengthen the union as much as we possibly can.
"I'm a Conservative and Unionist politician in a Conservative and Unionist government. So, there's a financial package that goes alongside this and a whole host of other union strengthening measures so we think builds this whole package into something special."
He added: "It does solve a number of the practical issues about getting goods across into Northern Ireland.
“One of the reasons the DUP left, being in the executive before or just after before the Windsor framework two years ago... was because lots of their supporters unionists, people around Northern Ireland could see goods disappearing from their shelves because the paperwork to get goods across from Great Britain."
Heaton-Harris said that Belfast was now seen "as British as Daventry, my constituency", adding: "This border between the European single market and Northern Ireland is an important issue because we've always said we want to be better neighbours than tenants with our European Union neighbours.
"We are comfortable to protect the European single market as we do other markets when goods come through the UK in transit.
"So we want to be a good partner in this, but we don't want it to affect the trade between Northern Ireland -Great Britain, Great Britain-Northern Ireland."
Heaton-Harris - a former chairman of the European Research Group of Tory MPs - said he did not think that the Stormont deal meant the settlement of the Brexit debate.
He said: "I don't think it is to be quite honest, because we've only just introduced our border Target Operating Model so how goods come in from the European Union into the United Kingdom.
"There's a whole host of conversations to be had about how that works and indeed what our relationships with Europe is in the future.
"So no, I don't think it's the end of it. But I think the conversation has moved on to a slightly different level."
