by Jamie Bryson
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Legacy Act (and the DUP oppose it) and/or immigration policy in the Rwanda Bill is irrelevant for the purposes of this point.
In their joint command paper (see para 46, page 19), the DUP and NIO (contrary to the DUP’s own position set out in Parliament) claimed that Article 2 of the Protocol Framework did not mean the continued application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and that claims it did and that also impacted immigration and asylum policy were “inaccurate”.
Unionist Voice Policy Studies was first to raise this issue, and has done so repeatedly. The NIO and Home Office said this was “nonsense”.
Last week in an asylum case judgment issued by Mr Justice Humphreys, it was made clear that the EU Charter does continue to apply in NI because of Article 2 of the Protocol Framework.
But today, a fatal blow was struck to the DUP-NIO claims.
Mr Justice Colton has now ruled today that the Legacy Act- a primary Act of the sovereign UK Parliament- is to be disapplied, because it conflicts with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which not only continues to apply, but has supremacy (to such force as to nullify an Act of Parliament) in NI.
There are now serious questions for the DUP who had not only endorsed these claims that the EU Charter no longer applied, but who had also claimed to have “cut the pipleline of EU law”. They must have been trying to cut it with a plastic knife, because the EU Charter has burst down the pipeline and struck down an Act of Parliament.
The media, who have been incredibly compliant in playing along with the DUP-NIO claims for political purposes, ought not to allow the DUP to confuse the distinct issues as to what one thinks of the Legacy Act, and the effect of the Protocol.
It is the Legacy Act this time that EU law has slayed, what next?