Draft Official Controls (Amendment) Regulations 2024
(2 days, 4 hours ago)
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The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Official Controls (Amendment) Regulations 2024.
It is always a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. I wish you and all Members and officials present a happy new year. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 19 November. As I am sure Members will have noticed, there is a lot of detail to them; the Committee will be relieved to hear that I do not intend to go through the statutory instrument line by line, but I shall try to cover the most significant elements.
Building on the work introduced by the previous Government, we are implementing a global risk-based import model for sanitary and phytosanitary goods known as the border target operating model. That aims to deliver a streamlined approach to imports that protects public plant and animal health, and minimises friction at the border. The draft instrument uses powers conferred by the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023, known as the REUL Act.
The changes implemented by the draft instrument fall into three main categories. The first category of measures provides a long-term legislative framework for sanitary and phytosanitary controls already introduced, but beyond the reliance on temporary powers, such as the transitional staging period—for example, by amending the definition of “official certificate” to include digital documents, facilitating fully electronic and digital import documentation, and by expanding the definition of “documentary check” to include remote examination or examination by automated means.
We are therefore making it possible to remove the requirement to carry out documentary checks on all imports, allowing the frequency of checks to be based on risk and providing the power to allow for inland border control posts for reasons other than geographical constraints, in addition to giving Government the power to determine whether to designate allowing greater control to align border control facilities and resources with biosecurity, trade and food security priorities.
The second category of measures allows for conditions governing the import of animals and animal products to be updated administratively in response to risk, to uphold our obligations to protect biosecurity and public health while facilitating trade. Competent authorities, devolved Governments, the Food Standards Authority and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs together will be able to amend and manage biosecurity controls in response to changing risks. Additionally, animals and animal products can be categorised based on risk, with the ability to exempt low-risk categories from unnecessary checks, aligning our animal control measures with those for plants and plant products.
The third category of measures allows policies that reduce burdens to be delivered in future, and allows extension of policies to non-EU goods. Those future policies would require further legislative change to implement, but we propose to have the powers in place now to provide for flexibility in the future and to ensure that the border can be adapted over time in response to risk.
Two policies, however, have impact from the date when the draft instrument comes into force. First, diagnostic testing of plants and plant products can be undertaken at a border control post, instead of such tests needing to take place at official laboratories. That is a positive development, which will significantly reduce the release time of certain perishable goods. The second policy is the use of enhanced enforcement powers to require and pursue full cost recovery of the common user charge for goods entering through Government-run border control posts. That is vital to ensure full cost recovery of the operating costs and to ensure that businesses pay charges for their import activity. The changes will have no impact on the Windsor framework and do not bring in additional checks on the west coast of Great Britain. The Scottish and Welsh Governments have consented to the amendments.
Upon laying the draft instrument, we received a submission from Friends of the Earth, which expressed concerns about checks being made away from border control points, the frequency of checks being based on risk, how misdeclaration would be handled and performance monitoring. It also queried whether we were acting within our powers under the REUL Act. We responded by explaining that the instrument allows provision to be made only for documentary, identity and physical controls to be undertaken at places other than border control posts or control points, and that we have robust, evidence-based risk-modelling measures to categorise SPS into categories based on the inherent risk that the product poses to animals, food, biosecurity and public health.
For animals and animal products, the default documentary rate remains at 100%, and while low-risk goods do not require certification or routine checks under the new approach, we are able to detain such goods for checks, based on intelligence. By next year we will have review cycles of risk categorisation in place and we have existing surveillance programmes to ensure that emerging risks are detected and dealt with in a timely manner. Finally, the REUL Act is being used, under its powers, to replace provisions under assimilated law inherited from the European Union to create new provisions that achieve the same or similar objectives.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee asked about the use of administrative, rather than legislative, powers in other areas of import controls. We explained that while powers exist to control imports through statutory instruments, administrative powers are required to ensure that changes to import conditions can be made rapidly in response to emerging biosecurity and food safety risks in trading partners approved to export to Great Britain. That is a really important point.
The amendments reflect and build on changes already made since the United Kingdom left the European Union, to refine our listing procedures for imports of animals and animal products in ways that provide the flexibility and responsiveness needed to protect biosecurity, but also to facilitate trade. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee noted DEFRA’s explanation and was reassured about the use of administrative, rather than legislative, powers in that specific policy area.
The Government are committed to removing trade barriers, including through seeking to negotiate an SPS agreement with the EU, but that will take time. The draft instrument is a necessary step to implement the policy that the industry has been preparing for, and to ensure that biosecurity is maintained between now and any new agreement’s taking effect. The draft regulations will ensure that controls already in place endure, implement a responsive, risk-based approach to the border, and protect the United Kingdom from emerging pests and disease, while supporting businesses with processes that are as simple and effective as possible.
Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris.
The Minister made reference to the fact that this delegated legislation follows on from the work of the previous Conservative Administration, which is why the official Opposition will support the regulatory changes proposed by the Government today. It is right that we continue to review and update the regulations surrounding our customs and border enforcement, and I welcome some of the reductions in the red tape that this legislation represents.
This legislation protects biosecurity and trade between Great Britain and third countries by making sure that SPS controls can be applied to goods entering Great Britain. The control gained from our withdrawal from the European Union gives us a powerful tool, and it is right that we utilise it in full. We must be careful to ensure in future that it is used for the benefit of British farmers, horticulturalists and the wider public. This delegated legislation will do that significantly, while reducing the risks to do with plant health and biosecurity. That is why I and other colleagues in the official Opposition will continue to hold the Government to account on delivering on our food-security targets and our biosecurity obligations. We support the draft regulations.
Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)
Regulation 2017/625 goes to the very heart of the territorial integrity of this United Kingdom. Under the protocol and the Windsor framework, Northern Ireland is subject to all that regulation’s controls. Our High Court in Belfast, as endorsed by the Court of Appeal, has said that the effect of the regulation is to make Northern Ireland the entry point to the EU.
The constitutional significance of that is immense, because it means that when you leave Great Britain and go to the other part of the United Kingdom—Northern Ireland—you are in effect entering the EU, when it comes to all the laws pertaining to goods. You are entering the single market—the EU’s regime and customs code—hence the EU’s insistence on the Irish sea border to distinguish and to give effect to the fact that, under this regulation, when you move from GB to Northern Ireland, you are entering EU territory.
Regulation 2017/625 is fundamental to the people who I represent in Northern Ireland, because it puts in lights the fact that we are no longer a full, proper part of the United Kingdom. What the Minister outlined today partly illustrates that. If Committee members look at regulation 14(b), which we are considering today, they will see that it expressly talks about consignments entering not the United Kingdom, but Great Britain. Why is that? It is because, as I have said, Northern Ireland is now deemed to be EU territory in those terms.
Under the Windsor framework, therefore, this Government and their predecessor, having surrendered those powers to the EU under regulation 2017/625, cannot provide for the entry of consignments of goods to the United Kingdom; they can provide for the entry of consignments of goods only to Great Britain. Where are those entry points? One of them, of course, is that which divides—the crossing of the Irish sea from Northern Ireland.
Regulation 14(b) underscores the fact that we have partitioned our United Kingdom with a foreign regulatory border. It reflects the fact that all this Parliament can now do, under the Windsor framework, is make regulations for consignments of goods entering GB. Consignments of goods entering GB, because they are coming from EU territory, have to be subject to documentary checks or an inspection.
When the Windsor framework was first sold to the people of Northern Ireland, it was presented as affecting the flow of goods only from GB to Northern Ireland. Now we see that, in effect, it will equally apply to the flow of goods from Northern Ireland to GB. I would like to hear from the Minister where those checks are going to be on consignments coming from a part of the United Kingdom to the mainland of the United Kingdom. Can the Minister tell us that? That comes on top of the quite audacious suggestion that there should be checks at all on goods being brought from one part of the United Kingdom to another.
Once again, this is a regulation that puts the spotlight on how far my part of the United Kingdom has been pushed out of the United Kingdom and into and under EU control. In consequence, the Parliament of the United Kingdom is now unable or unwilling to legislate for the passage of goods from one part of the United Kingdom to another. That is what you are being asked to do here today. I, for one, do not think that that is in any sense constitutionally, politically or economically acceptable.
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful for the contributions made by Members and for the support of the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley, whose positive response I welcome. This is important work, and a sensible approach is being taken.
I also hear the points made by the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim. I reassure him that essentially what we propose in the draft regulations is absolutely consistent with all the commitments already set out in the Windsor framework, including continuing to guarantee that qualifying Northern Ireland goods will have unfettered access to the Great British market.
Jim Allister
How can there be unfettered access from Northern Ireland to Great Britain, as is assured in the words of the Windsor framework, if, at the same time, regulation 14 provides for checks on goods coming into Great Britain, which must include goods coming from Northern Ireland? How can there be unfettered access if goods are subject to checks?
Daniel Zeichner
I am grateful for the points made by the hon. and learned Member. He will appreciate that we are trying to resolve a complicated set of circumstances and make them work. These measures are a genuine attempt to make the system work for everybody’s benefit. I appreciate the complex issues that he raises, but I do not believe that these measures make any substantial difference to them.
The draft regulations remove the reliance on temporary measures, implementing a responsive, risk-based imports approach to protect the United Kingdom from emerging pests and diseases while supporting businesses with processes that are as simple and effective as possible. I commend them to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.