Statement By Jim Allister KC MP After the Second Reading Debate: The Next Stage of the Campaign
I would like to thank everyone from across our United Kingdom who wrote to their MPs asking them to support my Mutual Enforcement Private Members Bill in Parliament on 6 December. I am pleased that we had the opportunity to lay out very clearly all the arguments for the Bill at length. I am also very pleased that the debate provided the basis for the publication of a number of articles in the press making the case for Mutual Enforcement that are set out below. I would particularly to put on the record my thanks to Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Gavin Robinson for their speeches and to Robin Swann, Richard Tice, Sammy Wilson, Carla Lockhart, Jim Shannon, Gregory Campbell, Sir Christopher Chope and Danny Kruger for their interventions.
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It is clear to me that we won the argument and the Government did not want to have to ask MPs to vote against something that is so transparently right and so chose to talk out the Bill so it did not receive its Second Reading. Second Reading has now been rescheduled to continue in July and, unless the Government has a change of heart, is unlikely to happen. The Bill, however, remains live before Parliament and the campaign goes on.
Please do keep checking this site for updates on the next stage of the campaign over the next few days.
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In the mean time if you did not see the debate you can watch it from 14 minutes in from here:
​‘The EU has not just humiliated Northern Ireland by imposing the Irish Sea border: It has humiliated the United Kingdom as a whole by cutting our country into two making everything the Northern Ireland side of the border an EU colony. This is not only completely degrading but it is also completely unnecessary because , as Jim Allister’s Mutual Enforcement Bill demonstrates , there is a way of protecting the integrity of both the EU Single Market and UK Single Market that does not discriminate against either. Everyone who cares about the future of our country in England, Wales and Scotland (as well as in Northern Ireland) must now write to their MPs and ask them to attend Parliament on 6th December to vote for this Bill. This website provides an easy way to do so. Please do not rest today until you have emailed your MP and asked your friends and family to do the same. This is really important.’
Rt. Hon Ann Widdecombe
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