Senior peer Lord Rogan has challenged the UK Government to justify Boris Johnson’s decision to sign up to a regulatory border in the Irish Sea after problems emerged surrounding the supply of kosher food to Northern Ireland.

Last week the Prime Minister told MPs the Government had been approached by representatives of the Jewish community in Northern Ireland who raised fears over deliveries of kosher food from Great Britain because of post-Brexit trade rules. 

Addressing the House of Lords this afternoon, Lord Rogan said: “The diverse country that Northern Ireland has become over recent decades is a source of great local pride, but there is nothing new about the special place the Jewish community holds in Ulster which dates back to the mid-eighteenth century.”

The Ulster Unionist peer continued: “Speaking at a Policy Exchange event last week, the Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said a threat to the future of Province’s Jewish community because of the Protocol was something ‘none of us can tolerate or are willing to accept.’”

Lord Rogan asked Government Whip Viscount Younger: “If that was the case, can you tell us why the Prime Minister did indeed choose to sign up to it?”

Responding, Lord Younger described the decision to place a regulatory border in the Irish Sea as “a compromise.”  

He said: “We agreed something exceptional, it is fair to say, to control goods moving within our own country in the interests of peace.

“We agreed to apply EU law in our own country without any democratic say.”

Viscount Younger added: “No other country has agreed to such a thing, and if that is going to be sustainable, it must operate in a pragmatic and proportionate way, not just like any other external border of the Single Market.”