Writing for Belfast Live, North Antrim MP Jim Allister has said that a foreign criminal convicted in London or Glasgow could face automatic deportation as a result of the Government’s latest Bill, while one convicted in Belfast might not.
When Parliament passes a law, the public assumes that it applies equally across the United Kingdom. That is, after all, what it means to be part of one sovereign state. But in 2025, that assumption can no longer be safely made — at least not for those of us who live in Northern Ireland.
The latest example comes with the Government’s new Bill dealing with the deportation of foreign criminals. On the face of it, this is a UK-wide measure, and the Bill’s own extent clause explicitly says that the relevant section — Part 4 — applies to Northern Ireland. Yet recent history tells us that what Westminster decides and what actually happens in Northern Ireland are not always the same thing.
Three times in recent years, Parliament has passed legislation it said would apply across the United Kingdom. Three times the courts have overruled it in Northern Ireland. The Rwanda Act. The Illegal Migration Act. The Legacy Act. In each case, judges have said that parts of those laws cannot operate in Northern Ireland because of Article 2 of the Windsor Framework.
That provision means that certain EU “rights” continue to apply in Northern Ireland rather than UK rights. This has created a constitutional loophole so large that entire Acts of Parliament can be disapplied to Northern Ireland, even when those Acts were expressly intended to be UK-wide.
The Windsor Framework, which replaced the original Northern Ireland Protocol, entrenched this problem. It states that where rights under EU law are engaged in Northern Ireland, those rights take precedence over domestic legislation passed by Westminster. This is not hypothetical—it has already happened. In the Dillon case, the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal disapplied parts of the Government’s Legacy Act because it was said to breach rights contained in EU law. Similar reasoning was used to stop the full implementation of the Illegal Migration Act in Northern Ireland.
That is not a theoretical debate about sovereignty. It has real and immediate consequences for public safety. The new deportation Bill is designed to ensure that those convicted of serious offences are removed from the UK after serving their sentence. Yet under Article 2 of the Windsor Framework, EU nationals in Northern Ireland may enjoy enhanced protection from deportation under the EU Citizens’ Rights Directive. Article 19 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which still applies in Northern Ireland through this arrangement, prevents collective deportations and requires case-by-case examinations. In short, EU citizens convicted of crimes in Northern Ireland may be shielded from deportation in ways that do not apply elsewhere in the UK.
This means that a foreign criminal convicted in London or Glasgow could face automatic deportation under the will of Parliament, while one convicted in Belfast might not. The same crime, the same conviction — but two entirely different legal outcomes within what is supposed to be one country.
That is not just unjust; it is dangerous. It risks making Northern Ireland a legal safe haven for those seeking to evade deportation. It undermines the integrity of the UK’s borders and the principle of equal citizenship. And it reinforces a growing sense among many in Northern Ireland that, despite being part of the United Kingdom, they live under a different set of laws, written not in Westminster but in Brussels.
Parliament cannot continue to ignore this reality. The Windsor Framework represent a sustained erosion of the UK’s constitutional integrity. They divide the country into two systems of law: one governed by Westminster, and another—Northern Ireland’s—governed by a mix of EU law and UK judicial interpretation of foreign treaties.
When the Government negotiated the Windsor Framework, they promised it would restore Northern Ireland’s place in the UK internal market and end the constitutional anomalies created by the Protocol. Instead, it has institutionalised those anomalies and extended them into areas as fundamental as criminal justice and public safety.
If the deportation provisions in this Bill cannot apply to Northern Ireland because of EU law, then Parliament must confront that reality head-on. It cannot keep passing UK-wide legislation only to discover later that it stops at the Irish Sea. To allow that to continue is to accept the permanent disapplication of sovereignty in one part of the country — and to normalise second-class citizenship for the people of Northern Ireland and leaving them without protections against criminals which apply elsewhere in the UK.
The issue before Parliament is not only about deportation or migration policy – serious as that is. It is about whether the laws made by our sovereign Parliament still govern all parts of the United Kingdom equally. If they do not (and experience to date shows they don’t) then it is time for Parliament to act — to restore the constitutional balance, to reassert the principle of one law for all, and to ensure that Northern Ireland is once again fully under the sovereignty of the country it belongs to: the United Kingdom.
Including when it comes to protecting citizens from foreign criminals.
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