Mr Brett, who is also Chairman of the Stormont Economy Committee, said,
“The latest story about hotel shampoo bottles and whether they will be phased out in Northern Ireland and not in Great Britain demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the new democratic safeguards that now form part of the new governance arrangements in the re-established Northern Ireland Assembly.
This inaccurate and incomplete story misrepresents the situation. Firstly, this is a proposal that has yet to be finally adopted by the EU. Secondly, under the new democratic scrutiny arrangements that replace a key element of the NI Protocol, automatic alignment with new and amended EU law in Northern Ireland has ended and Parliament has already changed U.K. law to reflect this reality.
Therefore, if such a proposal does in fact become EU law, the restored Northern Ireland Assembly now has the ability to scrutinise this, establish what, if any, detrimental impact it may have and if necessary activate the brake on it as appropriate in the circumstances when considering amended EU law.
Under the new arrangements, and following consideration by the Assembly the UK Government can determine to veto this amended EU measure applying to Northern Ireland.
With all Governments considering how to continue to reduce waste it is likely that measures across the whole of the U.K. will be adopted to phase out mini-bottles.
Our new arrangements and other commitments relating to protecting Northern Ireland’s place within the UK internal market are clearly set out in the ‘Safeguarding the Union’ Command Paper and are being implemented so that the people of Northern Ireland and their elected representatives do have a say in laws that apply here.
The hard and undeniable truth is that, if we had no Northern Ireland Assembly, then we would have no powers to democratically scrutinise or stop such laws where we determine that is in the best interests of Northern Ireland.”