UK vows ‘cast-iron commitment’ to Northern Ireland after Nancy Pelosi sounds trade alarm
- Britain’s top diplomat Liz Truss made the remarks about the Good Friday Agreement during a meeting with US politicians
- Earlier, the US house speaker warned that London’s ‘deeply concerning’ post-Brexit plans for the region imperilled a US-UK free trade agreement
Liz Truss said it was “great” welcoming a bipartisan US congressional delegation led by top Democrat Richard Neal, with topics of conversation ranging from the peace treaty to “the importance of free trade” and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Neal, the head of the powerful ways and means committee in the US house of representatives, also spoke with International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan and Labour leader Keir Starmer on Saturday.
Accounts of the talks with the Cabinet ministers have been thin on detail, with only tweets as a guide to their discussions. The visit from the delegation follows a warning from US house speaker Nancy Pelosi that Congress will not support a free-trade agreement with the UK if the government persists with “deeply concerning” plans to “unilaterally discard” the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Truss said on Twitter it was “great welcoming” the US members of Congress, adding that as well as the Good Friday Agreement they had also discussed “the importance of free trade and our condemnation of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine”.
Trevelyan said she was “delighted” to welcome the delegation to her department to discuss UK-US trade matters, as well as the situation in Ukraine, but made no explicit mention of post-Brexit tensions.