Farage has no right to ‘tear up’ Good Friday Agreement – Hanna

By Jonathan McCambridge, PA

Nigel Farage does not have the right to “tear up” the Good Friday Agreement, SDLP leader Claire Hanna has insisted.

However, DUP MP Sammy Wilson has backed the Reform UK leader’s plans to renegotiate the peace deal so it removes reference to the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) should his party come to power.

Mr Farage has long supported leaving the ECHR, and he said on Tuesday the Good Friday Agreement could be “renegotiated” to remove references to the convention.

The 1998 Agreement largely ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland and led to the establishment of the Stormont powersharing Assembly. It was backed by referendums on both sides of the Irish border.

Mr Farage made his comments as he unveiled his party’s plans to tackle illegal migration.

The plans include leaving the ECHR and replacing the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights, which would only apply to British citizens and those who have a legal right to live in the UK.

When asked whether he is concerned leaving the ECHR could jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement, Mr Farage said: “(former PM) Blair, of course, wrote the ECHR into everything.

“He wrote it into everything to try and embed it deeply in British law.

“Can we renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement to get the ECHR out of it? Yes. Is that something that can happen very, very quickly? No, it will take longer.

“Unfortunately and for a variety of reasons, previous governments have placed Northern Ireland, I’m afraid, in a different position to the rest of the United Kingdom, something that we vigorously opposed.

“It will take a little bit longer with Northern Ireland.”

Ms Hanna said the ECHR underpins the Good Friday Agreement.

She told the BBC Good Morning Ulster programme that Mr Farage is a populist who is “trying to sell people a very simplistic solution to a very complex public policy problem”.

She said: “I also think the DUP, as before, are going to get their fingers burnt, because I can’t imagine Nigel Farage, if he gets into Downing Street, having much interest spending his first few years carefully negotiating with Dublin.

“I dare say he would drop Northern Ireland in a heartbeat when it starts to get complicated.

“It is our agreement, it is not Nigel Farage’s agreement. It is a protection endorsed by the people across this island.

“It is not for him to tear up and it will not be happening.”

Mr Wilson said what the Reform UK leader is suggesting over the ECHR is “essential” for the UK.

He also claimed the previous Conservative government had already “tossed aside” elements of the Good Friday Agreement in agreeing to post-Brexit trading arrangements with the EU.

Mr Wilson said: “He (Mr Farage) has indicated one of the problems, in so much of domestic law, not just the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, the ECHR is embedded and he is going to have to untangle that.

“But if the government has a sufficient majority it can do whatever it wants.

“I think he over-estimates the problems with the Belfast Agreement because it was torn up by a government which did have a majority and the key principles of the Belfast Agreement, namely the consent principle when it comes to controversial legislation in the Assembly, was simply tossed aside and the assurance that there would be no constitutional change for Northern Ireland without cross-community agreement was tossed aside as well.

Mr Wilson said Mr Farage is someone who “gets it” over problems caused by immigration.

He said: “We can’t continue to ignore the facts and the facts are that right across Europe, countries are closing their borders because they’re finding that illegal immigration is overwhelming their economies and causing societal problems.”

Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn has said any plans to change the Good Friday Agreement are “dangerously irresponsible”.

Reform UK describes its “operation restoring justice” as a five-year emergency programme to detain and deport illegal migrants and deter future arrivals that the party would enact if elected to government.

As well as leaving the ECHR, the party also pledged to scale up detention capacity for asylum seekers to 24,000 and secure migrant returns deals with countries like Afghanistan, Eritrea and Iran.

The party said it would seek to deport 600,000 asylum seekers in its first parliament.