Following an overnight attack on his Portadown Constituency Office, Ulster Unionist leader, Doug Beattie MC, said:

“The attack on my office overnight is one of the inevitable consequences I have been warning about. My primary concern is for the welfare of my staff and this was a cowardly attack on their workplace which provides a service to the people of Upper Bann.

“What it will not do is deter me from carrying out my democratic work or speaking out when I have genuine concerns about the direction in which people are being led. Attacking offices and attempting to intimidate politicians demonstrates the weakness of your argument if that is what you have to resort to.

“We want to see the Protocol replaced and we have been expressing our consistent opposition to it since it was first mooted in October 2019, but where I differ with others is the way in which we approach that. I am a confident, positive unionist representing a party which will engage to bring about change. It is a political problem which will only be solved by finding a political solution.

“We respect the right of anyone to legally and peacefully protest. However tensions are rising, with some spokespeople at anti-Protocol rallies openly calling for people to get angry and to raise the temperature. Blood and thunder rhetoric from a lectern will not help nor solve the Protocol problem. This is exactly what we need to avoid. We need to learn the lessons of the past.

“If anyone thinks that they can intimidate me or the Ulster Unionist Party, they clearly don`t know me or understand the party I represent.”