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George Peretz QC 🇺🇦 Profile picture
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May 26 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Great move by #bbcqt to smuggle @hayward_katy into the Belfast audience. Sudden outbreak of expertise and balance on the NI Protocol.
As to @RobertBuckland’s point about the relationship between the Protocol and the Good Friday Agreement …
@peterkyle absolutely right: the Protocol (for better or worse) is law; the way to change it is patient negotiation.
Also worth noting that @little_pengelly’s concerns about medicines have been resolved by EU measures *within the terms of the Protocol*.

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More from @GeorgePeretzQC

George Peretz QC 🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 24
The point made here is a useful illustration of why the word “mislead” is important here.
A response to a question can be correct if read in a particular way, but misleading because, in context, that is not the sense in which it was, or was likely to be, understood.
An example. X and Y are talking about Massachusetts. Y claims that X doesn’t know the state. X says “But I grew up in Boston!”
Read 6 tweets
George Peretz QC 🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 18
Some thoughts, in no particular order, on this.
1. @SuellaBraverman is right that AG advice is very rarely published (though Lord Goldsmith’s advice on the Iraq war was published at some point before or during the Chilcott inquiry, which discusses it in some detail).
Indeed, the courts have made it clear in the context of FOI that the balance of interests will only exceptionally be in favour of disclosing AG’s advice (and only years after the event) - or even disclosing whether the AG advised at all.
Read 20 tweets
George Peretz QC 🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 17
A brief legal commentary on Liz Truss’s statement today. hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-0…
“Clear” playing its usual role as a “tell” that the claim being made is not clear at all (in this case, a claim regarded with incredulity by every expert in the field of whom I am aware).
As to the claim that the action is in support of the GFA, the road block in its way is that the Protocol contains the binding acceptance by the U.K. that the Protocol is not just consistent with the GFA but “necessary to protect it” (Art 1.3)
Read 15 tweets
George Peretz QC 🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 14
Odd point given that the majority of votes in the Assembly elections went to parties broadly supportive of the Protocol (and would vote “keep it” in a “keep it or scrap it” referendum).
Given that position, the plausible “no consent” argument isn’t that the majority oppose it (a claim you would test in a referendum) but that a *minority* community opposes it (a claim to which a referendum is irrelevant).
We will never know whether that would have been different had we had a government that had been honest from the start about what it had agreed and concentrated on winning over support and making it work rather than egging on opposition and blowing hot & cold about reneging on it.
Read 4 tweets
George Peretz QC 🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 12
Have to admire how @SuellaBraverman can manage to keep a straight face while claiming on #bbcqt that it’s “the EU’s application” of the Protocol that leads to checks and barriers in the Irish Sea rather than the text of the Protocol itself.
It was pointed out by eg HM Treasury *at the time it was negotiated* that East-West checks were an inevitable consequence of the Protocol. See eg politico.eu/wp-content/upl…
Unfortunately, as Stephen Weatherill pointed out in March 2020 (well before any “application” of the Protocol), UK ministers misrepresenting what the Protocol actually says is something of an ingrained habit, and comes from the top.
Read 6 tweets
George Peretz QC 🇺🇦 Profile picture
May 12
As I said yesterday, the existence of “social unrest” (said here to be the basis of Braverman’s advice that the Protocol is not now binding on the UK) is not a basis for getting out of treaty obligations: it sounds more like an argument for invoking Art.16.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…
See
Could “social unrest” amount to a “fundamental change in circumstances” allowing the U.K. to say it was no longer bound? Unlikely, since the hurdle there is very high indeed, as I explained in a different context here. eurelationslaw.com/blog/does-covi…
Read 12 tweets

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