Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hoey]

That an Humble Address be presented to His Majesty praying that the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/853), laid before the House on 9 August, be annulled.

Relevant document: 3rd Report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for kindly meeting me last week to discuss these regulations and for having a larger meeting with all the Peers from Northern Ireland on where aspects of the Irish Sea border are affected and where Defra has responsibility. I am very grateful for her time and consideration.

I am deeply concerned by these regulations which we are discussing tonight. Part of the reason for praying against this statutory instrument is to ensure that your Lordships genuinely understand just how important they are, not just to Northern Ireland but to the whole of the United Kingdom.

Ever since the broadcast of the recording of the private meeting where Michel Barnier said that the policy was to use Ireland in order to secure the broader Brexit purposes in relation to the United Kingdom, many of us have felt strongly that the people of Northern Ireland are being used as pawns in a bigger game. We have always worried that the European Union would use the imposition of EU standards on Northern Ireland—as a result of the protocol and the Windsor Framework—to pressurise the rest of the United Kingdom not to diverge from EU standards and so miss out on some of the benefits of having a competitive advantage from leaving the European Union.

The regulations before us tonight provide a very clear articulation of this strategy, but in a form of smoke and mirrors. They impose on Great Britain the same entry requirements for rest of the world goods as to the European Union. This is supposedly in order that those goods should be able to move freely from Great Britain to Northern Ireland without the interference of the Irish Sea border, because the whole of the United Kingdom—not just Northern Ireland—has, in this regard, submitted to EU standards for these areas. This is being presented as some kind of trade off: GB submits to EU standards and then the border, for that purpose at least, can disappear.

This is where the regulations before us are particularly telling. Your Lordships might have expected, given this so-called trade off, that the border that has been imposed, dividing our United Kingdom, would be removed to deal with the rest of the world goods, allowing their genuinely free, unfettered movement from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, but that is just not the case. Under the terms of these regulations, even with our negotiators agreeing to adopt EU standards, the goods still cannot move freely from Great Britain to Northern Ireland: they still have to cross an international customs border and an international sanitary and phytosanitary border.

Some of your Lordships may say, “But surely they can move now, within the UK Internal Market Scheme”—this new title for what used to be called the green lane. It is true that they can move via what the Government call the UK Internal Market Scheme but it is not what anyone else in the world would call an internal market system and it is certainly not what EU regulation 2023/1231, which defines what our Government have called the UK Internal Market Scheme, calls it either. In the real world, an internal market is defined, as we all know, as a market where goods can move freely without having the expense of having to cross an international customs border and an international SPS border. It is what we used to enjoy in this country until 2021, as goods moved freely from one part of the UK to another.

The process that the UK Government call the UK Internal Market Scheme is, frankly, a deceit because it is anything but an internal market system—rather, it is a means of managing its opposite: the international customs and SPS border that now divides our country into two. In essence, what the misnamed UKIMS—or green lane, as it used to be called—offers is a redistribution of the border burden, rather than its removal. On the one hand, the international customs and SPS border requirements are simplified; on the other hand, you have to submit to additional burdens, such as successfully applying for and keeping trusted trader status and submitting to “Not for EU” labelling requirements. In return for GB submitting to EU standards, the EU is not offering that the border be removed for the purpose of those goods, but rather that the border remains and those bringing the goods be subject to an alternative border experience, but a border experience it remains just the same.

First, you can cross the border only with an export number. Secondly, you are subject to customs and international SPS paperwork. Thirdly, you are subject to 100% documentary checks. Fourthly, you are subject to 5% to 10% identity checks at border control posts, which have already cost £190 million and they are not even half finished. Fifthly, you have to successfully apply to become a trusted trader and keep that status. Sixthly, you have to submit to “Not for EU” labelling.

Another striking thing about these regulations is that they put us in a position of complete dependence on the EU. The regulations make sense only because of a prior piece of legislation, which I have already mentioned: EU regulation 2023/1231. This is not a piece of UK legislation but an EU regulation. It is quite impossible to scrutinise these regulations without simultaneously scrutinising EU regulation 2023/1231, because without it the regulation before us would be null and void.

It is important to note some things about this EU regulation. First, it was passed in June last year, more than two years after we were supposed to have left the European Union, and yet its title makes it clear that it not only applies to the UK but to the UK and the movement of goods within it, as if we are some kind of EU colony. Secondly, in this regulation the EU makes it absolutely clear that it governs the border that divides our country in two, reserving to itself the right to pull the alternative border experience that the UK Government have ridiculously called the UK Internal Market Scheme, and default back to a 100% red lane, if it wishes. This means that while we can pass these regulations today, they could be rendered entirely null and void at any time, not because of a decision of this Parliament but because the EU uses its Article 14 powers.

At the end of the day, these regulations are about perpetuating a deep injustice: the division of our country into two by 27 other countries which have chosen to disrespect the territorial integrity of the UK, not just by claiming the right to make some of our laws but through the imposition of an international customs and SPS border. This disenfranchises 1.9 million United Kingdom citizens in relation to not just one area of law but to some 300 areas. I cannot understand how any Government, past or present, who supposedly support the union could have gone along with this.

--- Later in debate ---

I have focused very much on the statutory instrument that is in front of us. However, I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, has wider concerns. I thank her and other Peers for having had a very constructive and helpful discussion last week. To noble Lords who represent areas in Northern Ireland, I say that I want to continue to work, going forward, in the constructive manner that we had in the meeting last week. I would be very happy at those meetings to pick up the many wider concerns that have been mentioned tonight and which lie outside the scope of this SI.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. It has been a very wide-ranging debate, as these narrow debates on Northern Ireland tend to be. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. I also thank the two GB Lords, as I might call them, the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, and the noble Lord, Lord Frost. In most debates on Northern Ireland it is just Northern Ireland Peers who take part, so their contributions were encouraging and very welcome.

As well as general support, there was at least a recognition that there is an alternative. Mutual enforcement, which was mentioned by a number of Peers, is something that we are going to hear a lot more about because of the Private Member’s Bill in the other place. I welcome what the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, said about the importance of setting up again some kind of scrutiny committee for what is happening in Northern Ireland.

Also important, perhaps, is a wider debate. I am aware that many Members have been held back tonight, because I did say that I probably would not press this to a vote, so I welcome that there are so many here. As I said earlier, it is very useful for people to understand why many of us feel so strongly about the Windsor Framework and its effects, and not just on Northern Ireland—I reiterate that.

It would be helpful if those who think that the Windsor Framework has been a benefit, because of the dual access, listened to what Invest Northern Ireland said last week. There has been no benefit whatever from any of the so-called joint access because we have lost direct access from Great Britain. So many businesses are not sending things to Northern Ireland any more. But that is for another debate.

I hope that I will not have to have many more of these. However, the consent issue and the vote that is coming up are very controversial. I hope that noble Peers understand how people in Northern Ireland feel about the fact that, on this one crucially important issue, a reason has been found to make it majority voting and not cross-community. Many who support that are doing so for reasons that not many of us in this House would agree with. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.