EAST Derry MP Gregory Campbell has said Ministry of Defence figures showing a marked decline in the number of British army bomb disposal call-outs over the past two-and-a-half years demonstrate that claims by two former prime ministers about increased violence after Brexit were "totally inaccurate and inflammatory".
Ahead of the June 2016 EU referendum former Labour leader Tony Blair and his Conservative counterpart John Major warned that voting to break ties with Brussels could jeopardise the peace process and signal a return to violence.
Mr Campbell has received MoD figures showing the number of army call-outs dropped by more than a third – from 144 to 94 – in the two years from June 2016.
"There were quite a number of predictions made about what would happen after the vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union," the DUP MP said.
Amongst those was that claim that it could lead to a rise in violence in Northern Ireland – like so many other predictions the opposite has been the case."
He said the facts didn’t bear out any of the "doom-laden predictions" made ahead of the referendum.
However, SDLP East Derry MLA John Dallat said Mr Campbell missed the broader point.
"The implications of a hard border in Ireland are not simply about the potential of violence but rather how a hard border will undermine the progress we have made in Northern Ireland," he said.
"The economic implications of a hard border will be devastating, not to mention the disruption to people’s lives who commute back and forward over the border daily."
