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Parliament will on Wednesday debate the so-called "Stormont
brake", a key part of an agreement that enables Britain to stop
new European Union laws from applying to goods in Northern
Ireland if so requested by a third of lawmakers in the
province's devolved legislature.
"I am categorically voting against and I would be surprised if
my colleagues do not join me," Ian Paisley Jr. told the Belfast
News Letter newspaper on Monday.
While a vote on measures to implement the brake is likely to
pass as the opposition Labour Party supports the overall
agreement, the backing of the DUP is seen as crucial in British
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's efforts to sell the deal to
sceptical members of his own Conservative Party.
DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson last week voiced his strongest
concerns to date over the deal, saying his party was seeking
changes from the British government, but he stopped short of
promising to vote against the deal.
A spokesman for the DUP declined to comment on how the party
planned to vote after the debate, which he said was being framed
by the government as an overall endorsement of the deal, known
as the Windsor Framework.
The framework, he said, "does not deal with some of the
fundamental problems at the heart of our current difficulties".
"It is our current assessment that there remain key areas of
concern which require further clarification, re-working and
change as well as seeing further legal text," the spokesman
said.
The BBC reported the party was due to meet on Monday to agree a
position ahead of the vote. The DUP did not immediately respond
to a request to confirm the meeting.
(Reporting by Conor Humphries and Amanda Ferguson, Editing by
Kylie MacLellan)
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