Former U.K. Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab | Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP via Getty Images EU ‘not right’ to use Northern Ireland as Brexit leverage, says Dominic Raab Former Brexit secretary says considering a delay to Brexit sends the ‘wrong message’ to Brussels.

Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab accused the European Union of using "sensitivities" over Northern Ireland to try and lock the U.K. into keeping EU laws and undermining British competitiveness.

Speaking on the BBC's Today program, Raab also said that the substance of changes to Theresa May's Brexit deal are more important than the means of how they are achieved. That is significant because Brexiteer MPs had previously stated that only reopening the Withdrawal Agreement would be acceptable.

"The reality is, the substance rather than the vehicle or the means or the labels is what matters, and we need to see substantial, substantive, legally binding changes to the Withdrawal Agreement," he said.

He and other Brexiteers want changes to the Northern Ireland backstop mechanism to prevent the return of a hard border in all circumstances.

"The most obvious, specific change is the ability to exit the backstop, whether through a sunset or a timeframe or a mechanism, that allows us to be confident that we go into the end of 2021 knowing we're free of the backstop, we've taken back control of our laws and we go into a general election able to show the voters that 'we promised to deliver for Brexit, and look, we've done it'," Raab said, adding Brexiteers are not being "dogmatic" over this.

"What matters is we can exit the backstop so that we do not ... as a democratic country, sign up to a whole regime of laws over which we have no control and no means of exit. That clearly would be bad for the country and devastate trust in our democracy."

Raab said that voting for May's deal as it is would be "the worst of all options, because of the impact it would have on our economy, [and] the democratic cliff edge that it would lead to." He was a key architect of the deal as Brexit secretary but resigned when Theresa May presented it to the country.

Echoing comments made by George Eustice, who quit Thursday as farming and fisheries minister, Raab said the EU had been "dishonorable" in the way it has used the sensitive Northern Ireland issue to box Britain into keeping a raft of EU laws.

"It's very clear they've used the Northern Ireland protocol and backstop as a means of trying to press on the sensitive issue of Northern Ireland, and all the sensitivities around that, in order effectively to try and lock us into a range of their laws really just to undercut our competitiveness. I think trying to use Northern Ireland, given the history of that conflict, given the secessionist tendencies in other European countries, in order to put pressure on us in the way that they have, I don't think that's right," he said.

"If we sign this deal as it is, with no change, the problems will get worse, and we'll go into the next election potentially stuck in the backstop, begging the EU to let us out of it, and not having delivered on our promises to voters. That would be devastating for public trust in our democracy," Raab said.

The former minister said it would be wrong to delay Brexit by anything more than a couple of weeks, as this would weaken the U.K's leverage in negotiations. "I think all of our problems get more difficult, so I'm strongly against any delay, and it signals to the EU that their intransigence pays off and that's the wrong message for the U.K. to be sending to Brussels at this time," Raab said.