During the debate, Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the DUP, said the vote “tears asunder” the cross-community principles of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.<\/p>\n
She said the Windsor Framework was “causing serious issues” which were “ideological, constitutional and in relation to the practical trade implications”.<\/p>\n
“What we are dealing with today leads directly from Boris’s botched Brexit deal – and it isn’t working,” she added.<\/p>\n
Criticising the lack of a cross-community vote, she said: “This is the first and only key decision that this house will be voting on that absolutely tears asunder the key values and principles that other parties in this chamber championed around the Belfast\/Good Friday Agreement.”<\/p>\n
She added: “It’s only consensus and inclusion if it is a matter that is important to you, but not if it’s a matter that’s important to unionism. It is absolutely appalling.<\/p>\n
“This quite frankly is a rigged vote.”<\/p>\n
Sinn F\u00e9in assembly member Philip McGuigan said the Northern Ireland Protocol and subsequent agreements protected businesses from “Brexit’s worst excesses”.<\/p>\n
“These are the hard-fought and hard-won protections that absolutely need to continue and that we are voting for today,” he said.<\/p>\n
McGuigan, chair of Stormont’s Windsor Framework democratic scrutiny committee, said the post-Brexit arrangements offered “certainty and stability”.<\/p>\n
“Are there issues? Of course there are – this isn’t perfect. However, the protocol at least mitigates against the worst excesses of Brexit,” he added.<\/p>\n
DUP assembly member Jonathan Buckley said the vote was “an illusion of democracy”.<\/p>\n
“A rigged vote, which the European Union already know the outcome of,” he told the assembly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During the debate, Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly, of the DUP, said the vote “tears asunder” the cross-community…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-189172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114693475126048464","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}