Mr. Mark Durkan:

Yes, I would, and it goes back to Senator Ó Donnghaile's earlier point around rigorous impartiality. It becomes harder to see how those ministers are going to show rigorous impartiality given the sensitivities of some of these issues. As Brexit champions, they were singularly insensitive to any of the considerations around the Good Friday Agreement. That would be an issue. I think it is wider than that in the sense that the ministers appointed to the Northern Ireland Office, NIO, do not have many levers at their disposal.

Chris Heaton-Harris might be given more of a role in EU-UK negotiations than was the case for previous Secretaries of State. I do not know but there is some speculation about that. The real issue is going to be when one looks at all of the ministers she has appointed. In a way it is similar to what Borris Johnson announced when he first took over from Theresa May that every minister was appointed on the grounds that they had promised to deliver Brexit in absolute terms. I would imagine Liz Truss would probably say that, similarly, she appointed all the ministers of the Crown in all of the various departments. Remember the protocol Bill means that a minister in any department in London can have the power to change the law and change the legislation to supply part of the protocol partially or totally, then reapply it in bits, reinterpret it, and even rewrite legislation.

In the UK Parliament everybody calls these Henry VIII powers. Out of mischief, I would actually call them James II powers because it is giving overweening powers to the Crown and completely negating the powers of Parliament. The Democratic Unionist Party, DUP, and others would claim that the glorious revolution and the Williamite cause was all about challenging that overweening power of the Crown and establishing rights of Parliament. In supporting the protocol Bill, they have changed sides on the Williamite revolution.