Thread by @nickgutteridge

At European Scrutiny Committee Lord Frost says UK has 'internalised EU law and EU ways of thinking over the last 50 years' and should use Brexit to get 'back to arrangements consistent with the lighter touch common law...the ability to experiment and develop things as we go on'.

He adds: 'One of the advantages we will get from Brexit is the opportunity to do things differently. I don't think we should accept that we're in the EU's regulatory orbit...we do need to develop our own ways of doing things and our own philosophy behind it.'

On the NI Protocol he says 'there's the risk of gaps opening up in regulation between NI and rest of UK' and cites reports about cancer drugs - which EU denies - saying 'that sort of thing is going to be a problem if we can't find pragmatic ways through it that protect our NHS'.

Lord Frost tells MPs: 'The fundamental problem for us is if the way the Protocol is operating is undermining the GFA rather than supporting it then we obviously have a problem. That wasn't what the Protocol was meant to do and if it is doing it then it's not working right.'

Lord Frost says the EU has been 'pretty pragmatic' on customs checks on UK goods and 'the operational relationship between the agencies concerned is pretty good'. He says reports of customs officials 'complaining about the wrong stamp or the wrong coloured pen' are 'isolated'.

On French fishing complaints, Lord Frost says: 'It's possible too many of our friends in Europe thought we'd agreed 5-and-a-half years of no change and that's not the case. We have the right to regulate our own waters in a totally different way. I'm sure it will settle down.'

He adds: 'We don't choose gunboat diplomacy but we were reacting to a demonstration that could've caused severe practical problems for Jersey. It didn't cause any problems and I like to think our naval presence was part of that. We have to be able to stand up for our fishermen.'

Lord Frost says in EU 'there are people who see Brexit as a zero-sum game and want us to face difficulties' but the 'large current opinion...wants trade to continue in as free flowing way as possible'. He adds: 'I like to think things will settle down in a fairly pragmatic way.'

Lord Frost reveals (unsurprisingly) that the UK is making no headway in its attempts to secure a deal with the EU on asylum to replace Dublin. He says: 'Although some Member States probably do want to do bilateral agreements that's not necessarily how the Commission sees it.'

Back on the NI Protocol, Lord Frost says 'from the EU point of view the easiest solution to any border problem is we should just operate the same rules as they do. That doesn't work for us and isn't going to be the solution.' UK wants equivalence of SPS standards but EU says no.

He adds: 'The processes around the boundary between GB/NI are significant. They probably have a bigger chilling effect than we thought on GB businesses wanting to move goods into NI. That's one of the problems underlying some of the unrest & political developments we're seeing.'

Lord Frost says of talks with EU: 'Maros [Sefcovic] has to operate within a mandate set by the wider Commission and other Member States, not all of which understand NI as well as he now does, and I think that is one of the reasons we're finding difficulty in moving this forward.'

He adds: 'We want to see a bit more flexibility in the way this arrangement is implemented. There's certainly no evidence of goods going into the SM that we're aware of. We need a sensible discussion about the genuine risk and the genuine problems produced by excessive process.'

Lord Frost says: 'Businesses and a good proportion of society in NI feel anxious about the effect of the trade boundary between GB and NI. They are seeing effects from it they are having to divert supplies to some extent, and they are concerned about where this might take us.'

He adds: 'The level of checks in some cases is probably quite a lot lower than what the EU would like. But it's not just the checks, it's the process. It's the fact everyone has to interact with a process which can be cumbersome even if your goods never need to be checked.'

Rebecca Ellis, head of the NI Unit at the Cabinet Office, says the cancer drug Osimertinib couldn't be authorised in NI. 'The grace period does not and would not allow the MHRA to licence this particular drug for use in NI.' The EU denies that's the case. newsletter.co.uk/news/politics/…

Lord Frost says aligning with EU food standards to solve the NI problem isn't a goer as it would hit UK trade policy. Other countries 'want to know any agreement represents a genuine agreement with us and not by proxy with the EU. We have to have control, we can't subcontract.'