Northern Ireland to get new Brexit trade rules in deal to restore power sharing | Northern Ireland

New rules to smooth post-Brexit trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland have been unveiled by the government as part of a deal with the Democratic Unionist party that will restore the Stormont executive and install a Sinn Féin first minister.

A command paper titled Safeguarding the Union was published on Wednesday to allay DUP fears about Northern Ireland’s place in the UK and to end a two-year boycott of power sharing that has destabilised the country.

The measures remove routine checks on goods from Great Britain that are destined to remain in Northern Ireland and replaces them with a “UK internal market system” for goods that remain within the UK.

The government has promised to amend domestic law so that new EU laws will not automatically apply in Northern Ireland and must first be subject to democratic oversight by the Stormont assembly. The command paper also includes legislative measures – to be fast-tracked through Westminster on Thursday – to affirm Northern Ireland’s constitutional position in the UK.

Downing Street said the deal entailed significant changes to the “operation” of the post-Brexit Windsor framework without altering its “fundamentals”.

Rishi Sunak told the Commons the proposals would end Northern Ireland’s deadlock. “After two years without an executive, there is now a prospect of power-sharing back up and running, strengthening our union, giving people the local, accountable government that they need, and offering a brighter future for Northern Ireland,” he said.

Half a dozen Tory Brexiters, including Bill Cash and Theresa Villiers, stood up in the Commons to question whether the UK would still be able to diverge from EU laws under the terms of the agreement. The Tory MP Richard Drax described the application of EU laws in Northern Ireland as an “axe still very much grinding away, which we must get rid of”. But the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris, insisted that the new plan did not affect government’s ability to diverge from EU legislation.

The hardline Brexiters of the European Research Group (ERG) are expected to meet on Wednesday to discuss the details of the command paper. Privately, two Tory sources said that influential ERG MPs were minded to support the government’s plan, which is to be voted on by MPs on Thursday. If most of the ERG backs it, the legislation will sail through the Commons with little to no Tory opposition.

In any event, the plan looks sure to pass, as Labour has said it will vote in favour. The shadow Northern Ireland secretary, Hilary Benn, said it was “our chance to restore to the people of Northern Ireland that which they desperately need but have been without for almost two years: a functioning government”.

The DUP leader, Jeffrey Donaldson, said the package would restore Northern Ireland’s place in the UK and its internal market. “The border in the Irish Sea is removed,” he told the BBC.

He praised the prime minister for softening the Northern Ireland protocol in last year’s Windsor agreement, and then amending that agreement. “Credit to Rishi Sunak,” said Donaldson. “I know he wasn’t happy when I said: ‘I’m sorry, but this doesn’t go far enough.’ But in fairness to him, he worked with us through the secretary of state and a team of officials to make and deliver the further changes.”

The DUP leader criticised the prime minister’s predecessor for agreeing to a border in the Irish Sea in order to clinch a Brexit deal with the EU. “While Boris Johnson promised us a lot of things, he didn’t deliver them,” he said.

Other parties in Northern Ireland welcomed the deal and were preparing to return to Stormont as early as Saturday to elect an assembly speaker and appoint an executive led by Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill as first minister and a DUP member as deputy first minister – reflecting the 2022 election in which Sinn Féin overtook the DUP as the biggest party.

That will be a milestone – the first nationalist first minister in a political forum that was designed in 1921 to have a permanent unionist majority.

O’Neill said the partition of the island of Ireland had “failed” its people. “The very fact that for the first time someone from Sinn Féin, a nationalist, a republican woman from Tyrone, will be first minister – that speaks to the change that’s happening,” she said.