Liz Truss to announce plan to unilaterally abandon parts of Northern Ireland protocol – UK politics live

Good morning. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, will make a statement to MPs later about government plans for legislation that would allow it to ignore parts of the Northern Ireland protocol – the agreement signed with the EU imposing checks on some goods going from Britain to Northern Ireland, to ensure that Northern Ireland can remain in the EU’s single market and to prevent checks having to be imposed at its border with Ireland.

The proposal is potentially inflammatory – because it would involve the UK unilaterally abandoning a deal it agreed with the EU less than three years ago.

But there are signs that it might not be quite as provocative as originally envisaged. Truss is not going to publish an actual bill today, and government sources have been indicating that MPs won’t start debating the legislation until later this year. That, of course, fuels suspicions that No 10 is not particularly serious about this anyway, and that it may be no more than an empty threat. In our overnight story Rowena Mason, Lisa O’Carroll and Rory Carroll write:

No 10 has not appeared to be as keen as Truss on the option of legislation to undermine the protocol in recent days.

One diplomatic source said one of the prime minister’s top aides had been privately telling people that the government was very committed to negotiations and no decision had been taken on pressing ahead with the legislation.

The full story is here.

Related: Plan to scrap parts of Northern Ireland protocol is only an ‘insurance policy’, says Boris Johnson

In the light of these briefings, it will be interesting to see quite what tone Truss adopts. At the weekend the Sunday Times carried a report by Tim Shipman suggesting that some of Boris Johnson’s allies view her as a “knucklehead” on this. Shipman wrote:

There is ill-disguised fury in some parts of No 10 that Truss and David Canzini, the deputy chief of staff, are so privately gung-ho about confrontation with the EU. One senior official said: “The object of the exercise with some people seems to be to have a fight. The object of the exercise for the prime minister is to restore democratic processes to Northern Ireland. We want a weapon on the table, we don’t want to use it. It’s like the nuclear deterrent. The PM does not want to use nuclear weapons, whatever the knuckleheads tell him.”

Truss briefed Simon Coveney, her Irish opposite number, on the plan last night, and this morning he says he told her that “breaking international law” is not the solution.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Boris Johnson chairs cabinet.

11.30am: Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, takes questions in the Commons.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

After 12.30pm: Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, makes a Commons statement about proposed legislation allowing the government to ignore parts of the Northern Ireland protocol.

After 1.30pm: MPs resume their debate on the Queen’s speech. At 7pm there will be a vote on a Labour amendment calling for a windfall tax on energy companies.

2.30pm: Alistair Burt, the former foreign minister, gives evidence to the Commons foreign affairs committee on how the government responds when people like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe are taken hostage by foreign states; at 3.30pm Jeremy Hunt, the former foreign secretary, will give evidence.

3pm: Greg Dyke, the former BBC director general, and Andrew Neil, the broadcaster, give evidence to a Lords committee about the future of BBC funding.

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