2 Monday January 3 2022 | the times
News
Unionists have warned Liz Truss that
there will be “major implications” if she
fails to set a swift deadline to end nego-
tiations with Brussels over the North-
ern Ireland protocol.
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP
leader, said the foreign secretary had to
provide a “clear date” for concluding
the talks. The warning comes after Ma-
ros Sefcovic, the EU’s chief negotiator,
said last week that London had
“breached a great deal of trust” with
Europe over the protocol.
Donaldson said: “We need a clear
date now. We need a clear timeline in
which there is an expectation of real
progress or the government takes the
action that is necessary.
“It is crucial that Liz Truss moves this
process forward quickly and that we get
real and meaningful progress on a
range of issues, not least of which is re-
moving the checks on the movement of
goods within the UK internal market.”
Donaldson would not specify a reason-Truss must set deadline for
new EU deal, say unionists
Nadeem Badshah able deadline for progress but added:
“January is going to be an absolutely
crucial month. If we don’t get rapid and
decisive progress, and one side or the
other is kicking the can down the road,
this will have major implications for the
stability of the political institutions in
Northern Ireland.”
Sefcovic told Der Spiegel, the German
news website, that problems with the
protocol, which maintains a free-
flowing land border on Ireland, meant
the UK “broke international law” in
trying to circumvent the arrangement.
He said he was “pragmatic” after the
foreign secretary took on responsibility
for negotiations with the EU following
Lord Frost’s resignation as Brexit min-
ister last month.
Sefcovic warned that if Truss were to
trigger Article 16, effectively suspend-
ing the treaty agreed between the UK
and the EU, it would throw into jeopar-
dy “the foundation of the entire deal”.
Truss has said that she remains pre-
pared to invoke Article 16 if issues are
not resolved. In a sign of further unrest,one of the architects of the Northern
Ireland peace deal, Jonathan Powell,
claimed that neither Boris Johnson nor
Frost understood the fragility of the
Good Friday agreement.
Powell accused them of jeopardising
“all the work” the previous generation
of politicians put into the 1998 deal that
ended the Troubles.
He also questioned why Frost was
“posturing” on the issue of the Euro-
pean Court of Justice (ECJ) during ne-
gotiations on the protocol.
“What worries me is the casual polit-
ical vandalism,” Powell said. “They
don’t seem to care. I mean the damage
they are doing to the very fragile polit-
ical settlements in Northern Ireland by
posturing on things like the European
Court of Justice, which do not matter to
voters in Northern Ireland.
“Is it really worth sacrificing all the
work that previous generations of poli-
ticians put into the... peace process on
the ideological altar of the ECJ?”
Support for government’s EU policy
at a low ebb, leading article, page 25Small businesses ‘need Brexit support’
Louisa Clarence-SmithSmall British businesses could abandon
trade with the European Union without
additional government support to cope
with Brexit rules, firms have warned.
New regulations came into force on
January 1 that will see most imports
from the EU checked at the UK border
for the right documentation, including
paying taxes such as import VAT,
before products can clear customs.
The red tape was introduced a year
after the EU imposed customs require-
ments on UK exports to the EU, which
caused some businesses to abandon
selling products to the continent
because of the administrative burden.
From July 1 this year, even more reg-
ulations and checks will be introduced,including export certificates for animal
food products.
The Federation of Small Businesses
warned last month that only a quarter
of small importers were ready for the
new border controls. Delicatessens and
independent grocers are among busi-
nesses expected to be worst impacted.
Mike Cherry, national chairman of
the group, said: “We don’t have any in-
dication that the level of preparedness
has improved. Unless the government
steps in with more support, the situa-
tion is set to worsen.”
He would like to see the government
launch a new support fund to help small
businesses with the cost burden.
Philip Rycroft, who was permanent
secretary at the Department for Exit-
ing the European Union between 2017and 2019, told BBC Radio 4 that “a lot of
businesses won’t be ready” and there
will be “teething problems”.
Larger businesses are thought to be
better prepared. A spokeswoman for
the CBI business group said: “Most
larger businesses have already embed-
ded practices around managing decla-
rations or ensuring their paperwork is
correct by now.”
The government said: “Overall trader
readiness for the introduction of import
controls is strong, and there is plenty of
support available to ensure [small busi-
nesses] are well positioned to comply
with UK border processes from 1 Janu-
ary 2022, including one-to-one advice
through the Export Support Service.”
Fortnum & Mason is no longer
delivering to France, letters, page 24stop it coming into the UK,” a source
said. “Now that Omicron is dominant
in the UK and everywhere it reduces
the argument for having it. We have
other ways of slowing the spread
through domestic testing.”
The requirement that people take a
PCR test within two days of arriving in
England is set to remain.
Patchier reporting and incomplete
data over the two bank holiday week-
ends means that caution must be taken
when calculating trends. However, the
government dashboard shows that
cases are 43 per cent higher than last
week, and deaths 50 per cent higher.
NHS England data shows that 13,
hospital beds were occupied by Covid
patients yesterday, up from 12,615 a day
earlier and almost double the 7,536 a
week earlier. Chris Hopson, chief exec-
utive of NHS Providers, which repre-
sents health service trusts, said the gov-
ernment should be ready to bring in
tighter restrictions “at real pace” if the
data showed they were needed. He said,
though, that “the pattern for hospital
admissions over the next fortnight has
already been set” and that NHS ser-
vices were “coming under real pres-
sure”.
Ministers have been encouraged by
data from South Africa, where some
restrictions have been lifted after al-
most two years as the Omicron wave
recedes there. Dr Michelle Groome, of
the South African National Institute forCommunicable Diseases, said: “I think
we have been a little bit more confident
that things will settle.” Hopes have also
been lifted by half a dozen studies
which have suggested that Omicron
does less damage to the lungs than pre-
vious variants, meaning it may causeless severe disease. Professor Francois
Balloux, director of the UCL Genetics
Institute, said that new restrictions
would “definitely have no effect on the
peak of infections”, which Sage models
suggest could be reached this week.
Coronavirus latest, pages 8-Analysis
B
oris Johnson
starts the
year in a
position of
acute
political pain, so it
can’t hurt that when it
comes to coronavirus
he is at least on the
same side as his
backbenchers for now
(Henry Zeffman
writes).
Last month 101
Conservative MPs
defied him over “plan
B” restrictions, a sign
of the rapidly
deepening discontent
with the performance
of the man who won a
Commons landslide
two years ago.
The bullish tone
yesterday of Steve
Barclay, chancellor of
the Duchy of
Lancaster, andEdward Argar, a
health minister, will
have been just the
tonic for some of
them. Argar’s
assessment, that in
refusing to impose
further restrictions
over Christmas
Johnson’s view was
that “we’ve got to
learn to live with this
virus”, is what many
Tory MPs wanted to
hear.
That does not mean
Johnson’s Covid
policy is oriented
solely around his
noisiest MPs. It was
the insistence of
several cabinet
ministers that they
needed more data on
the spread of
Omicron that dashed
any prospect of pre-
Christmas curbs.There is also cautious
backing for Johnson’s
approach among the
health sector and
scientists. Some
believe that only the
tough lockdowns of
the first wave could
have stopped the
spread of Omicron,
while others think it
is possible that
infections in London
have already started
falling.
Most crucially,
some scientists think
the UK is so close to
the Omicron peak
that it is hard to see
how new measures
could have much of
an impact. Put
another way, Johnson
has already made his
bet — it is just a
matter of waiting to
see the result.continued from page 1
Extra Covid measures ‘unlikely’GOLDEN ERA
Big-budget dramas
provide a lifeline
for stately homes
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e-mail [email protected]Sunny spells across the country,
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THETIMES.CO.UK/SUBSCRIBEMinister met big
oil after Cop
Kwasi Kwarteng, the
energy secretary, met
oil industry bosses for
a private dinner days
after the Cop
climate conference to
encourage them to
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North Sea. Page 31Pagan police to
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Counterterrorism
agencies are calling in
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growing number of
far-right extremists
who are co-opting
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iconography. Page 17
Democrats plot
Biden challenge
Joe Biden faces the
prospect of a challenge
from the left wing of
the Democratic Party
amid unrest over his
age, poll ratings and
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agenda. Page 27NEWS
TOUGH RETURN
Emma Raducanu
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Betty White, the
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