Brexit news: Further delays to import checks announced as PM scrambles for Biden support over protocol

A senior official from the Northern Ireland office is being sent to the US in a bid to win support from the Biden administration amid a deepening row between the UK and the EK over the protocol.

Reports say the official will be tasked with forging stronger links with Irish Americans in particular, who have previously expressed concerns about the Good Friday peace deal post-Brexit.

President Biden has previously warned the UK that a breach of the accord could have consequences for any future trade deal between the two countries.

The EU is refusing to back down on its threat to launch legal proceedings against the UK after it unilaterally extended grace periods in Northern Ireland.

Joao Vale de Almeida, the EU’s ambassador to the UK, told ITV’s Peston programme last night the bloc would “move forward” in the coming days.

Brussels could initiate legal action against the UK this week over the government’s decision to unilaterally extend the grace period for fully implementing the Brexit agreement.

The action comes after Marcos Sefcovic, the vice president of the European Commission, said the UK’s move would be a “violation” of the Northern Ireland Protocol and he threatened to respond to the developments with “legal means”.

Politics correspondent Ashley Cowburn has the full story:

The government is giving private contractors profiting from the beleaguered test-and-trace programme and other areas of the pandemic tailored advice on how to win honours.

Serco, Capita, Deloitte, and Amazon are amongst firms that have been written to by civil servants urging them to apply for gongs like knighthoods and MBEs.

Sarah Munby, the permanent secretary at the government’s business department, wrote to the companies asking them “to submit honours nominations” on behalf of their organisations.

Policy correspondent Jon Stone has more details:

“Of course the UK media industry is racist,” writes race correspondent Nadine White. “This is well established and yet those of us who are cognisant of the problem were gaslighted this week by the Society of Editors, one of the most powerful organisations in the industry.”

Irish foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney has said politics is "very strained" in Northern Ireland as he called on the EU and the UK to find "collective" solutions to the protocol.

Mr Coveney criticised the UK's decision last week to "unilaterally" act on extending grace periods on post-Brexit trading checks.

He added that it is his job to "ensure that what has been agreed" in the Brexit divorce deal is fully implemented.

He told Irish broadcaster RTE: "The truth is that politics is very strained in Northern Ireland because of perceptions around the protocol and its implementation.

"Of course, the EU has been considering and will consider further if flexibilities need to be accommodated, if there are genuine problems in terms of implementation, how we solve them."

He added: "But that has got to be done collectively between the EU and the UK.

"We cannot move forward on the basis of one side just deciding unilaterally 'Well, this is what must be done and we can't wait for the other sides to agree with us', and that's essentially what the British government has done."

Boris Johnson was prepared to cut Northern Ireland loose over Brexit, a former Theresa May aide has claimed while accepting there was a “collective failure” within government to fully understand the implications leaving the EU had for the region.

Denzil Davidson, who advised Ms May on Europe from 2016-2019, said the government only began to fully grasp Brexit’s consequences for NI in 2017, months after the referendum had already taken place.

In an interview with the UK In a Changing Europe think tank, Mr Davidoson said: “We had a kind of collective failure in government at the time properly to understand the implications for Northern Ireland, for which I must share the guilt.”

When asked if he was surprised by what Mr Johnson eventually agreed to, he said: “Kind of yes and no.

“Because I personally am a patriotic unionist, I had wrongly hoped that genuine unionist commitments were held more widely in the Conservative Party than they now are.”

He added: “But no, because I knew that Northern Ireland was not a priority for him, and that he was willing to cut them loose. I was surprised that the Conservative Party accepted what he agreed to so readily.”

The Conservatives’ London mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey can “absolutely” still run for office despite a controversial tweet relating to the ongoing Sarah Everard case, a government minister has said.

The Tory candidate was accused of an “utterly grotesque” attempt to politicise her disappearance after he tweeted that “it doesn’t have to be this way” and vowed to “deliver for the safety of women” if he wins.

Adam Forrest has the story:

The government's unilateral move to extend grace periods in Northern Ireland "just kicks the can down the road", DUP agriculture Edwin Poots has said, as he called for a “reality check” on post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Mr Poots claimed checks on agri-foods entering NI from GB are unsustainable in the long-run, adding that moving vets from other food safety work would undermine Northern Ireland's reputation for food standards and providence.

Addressing the Committee for Agriculture, Enviornment and Rural Affairs, he said: "So we do need a reality check on all of this. I welcome the extension of the grace period. “

He added: “But that, to some extent, just kicks the can down the road. We need people to be realistic about this. You know you were told last week that Northern Ireland would have as many checks as the rest of the EU put together. How can that be a sensible or a rational place?"

Mr Poots also suggested political rivals who had called for the "full implementation" of the protocol should apologise to the people of Northern Ireland.

"The consequence of that rigorous implementation of the protocol is a massive number of people involved in checks, additional cost to the industry, additional cost to consumer, damage to trading relationships that exist and significant consequences for business and the consumer in Northern Ireland," he said.

"And perhaps those who were calling for the rigorous implementation would like to apologise to the Northern Ireland public and indeed send a message to the European Union that they no longer want rigorous implementation because they have seen what it's like and rigorous implementation is going to wreck our economy if we don't address this issue."

Keir Starmer is putting the row over nurses’ pay at the centre of his campaign for elections in May, declaring that Labour would “give our key workers a proper pay rise”.

The Labour leader clashed with Boris Johnson in the House of Commons on Wednesday over the government’s 1 per cent offer to nurses after a year in which they have been on the frontline in the battle with Covid-19.

Launching his party’s campaign for the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections on Thursday, he will contrast the offer with the 40 per cent increase given to Dominic Cummings shortly before he resigned as Mr Johnson’s chief Downing Street adviser.

Politics editor Andrew Woodcock has the full story: