Willie Hay accuses British Government of ‘Alice in Wonderland politics’ over Windsor Framework

The cross-bench peer criticised regulations to make provision for the enforcement of Great Britain standards rather than European Unions ones in the North with respect to public health, marketing and organic products.

"It is completely wrong to seek to protect people in NI to standards designated as GB standards instead of UK standards.

"The idea that people within the UK need to be protected by standards existing within the UK through border control posts between one part of this UK and another is as absurd an application in the UK as it would be in any other state that had not embraced Alice in Wonderland politics.

“How could the UK so lack self-belief that it readily turns itself into Alice in Wonderland at the behest of the EU? The humiliation of our body politic to the EU is surely now more pronounced than it ever was between 1973 and 2020, such is the Brexit deal humiliation to which the Government have subjected us,” he told the British House of Lords.

He said the regulations insulted people’s intelligence.

“All this talk of enforcing GB standards in the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023 really amounts to is an attempt to dress up the implication of what is actually being effected – a border that insults the intelligence not only of the people of NI but of the people of the wider UK. If ever there were a Government to be weighed in the balance and found wanting, this is surely it,” he said.

Gregory Campbell responds to Windsor Framework - ‘Unionist representatives need to be content with governance arrangements in NI’