Windsor Framework (Non-Commercial Movement of Pet Animals) Regulations 2024

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

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[Baroness Hoey]

At end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations treat pets travelling to Northern Ireland differently from those travelling to any other part of the United Kingdom.”

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

I will not be quite as short as the Minister, because it is important that noble Lords understand this in a great deal more detail. Sometimes the words that sound very positive are not nearly as positive when you go into the detail. These regulations are in effect about a new aspect of the Irish Sea border that has not had expression until this point because of the grace periods.

As we are an animal-loving nation, I am sure that this statutory instrument will resonate with the British public, perhaps more than the other ones that I and other Members have prayed against in the past. The draft Windsor Framework (Non-Commercial Movement of Pet Animals) Regulations 2024 will impact the everyday lives of people seeking to move for non-trading purposes from one part of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, to another, Northern Ireland, when they travel with a pet under the terms of the regulations.

The experience of visiting Northern Ireland with your pet dog or cat, or even a ferret, will be made to feel like a visit to a foreign country. It will be possible for you to travel from GB to NI with pets, including guide dogs—despite what we were told in the past—only if you have ensured that, first, your pet is fitted with a microchip; and, secondly, you have successfully applied to join the Northern Ireland pet travel scheme and have a pet travel document, which amounts to a pet passport. Meeting the requirements for that document remain obscure, because their definition, and indeed the potential for their definition to be changed, rests not with this Parliament but with the EU Commission—in regulation 4(1). Thirdly, as you travel with your pets, you must submit to full documentary and identity Irish Sea border checks, subject to sanctions. Fourthly, and very importantly, you must sign a form saying you will not attempt to enter the Republic of Ireland.

Of course, if your pet is found wanting in any way during the border checks, you will then suffer the inconvenience of being sent immediately to an SPS inspection facility, where you must remain with your animal unless and until you are permitted to leave. You could have your membership of the UK pet travel documents scheme suspended. So it is the fourth and final bullet point that makes these regulations particularly absurd, because it seeks to impose an Irish Sea border for internal UK movements while keeping the border for moving into the Republic. On the one hand, we are told that there can be no border across the island of Ireland, which is why there must be a border down the Irish Sea; but, on the other, the regulations before us do not comply with that logic. It is, by any measure, absurd to have both.

Your Lordships need to look at the implications of, if you use the pet travel scheme, having to sign that you will not go over the border to the Republic with your pet. Does the Minister have any idea of the effect that this will have on the casual tourist, who, perhaps having visited the Glens of Antrim, decides to drive down to the Ring of Kerry? There will be specific tourist implications of this, on top of the tourism effect of having to get a pet passport in the first place. Relatives going back home for Christmas or summer holidays next year, as they have always done, will no longer be able simply to travel freely with their pet within their own country.

Can noble Lords imagine how they would feel if it were their county in England, Scotland or Wales that required this extra bureaucracy? This could spell the end of holiday trips for pet owners from GB to NI and then on to the Republic, when they want to explore both Northern Ireland and the Republic. If they have a pet passport, they will have renounced their right to go to the Republic. That makes the border more of an obstruction than having border control posts on it, because at least in that eventuality, you could still cross over it. If you have a pet travel document, you cannot go to the Republic of Ireland via NI, unless you leave your pet behind or find somewhere in Northern Ireland to fulfil all these requirements. Can the Minister say where those requirements will be fulfilled in Northern Ireland for that travelling person?

The Minister might respond by saying, “Yes, that’s right”. However, that would be ridiculous, because rather than making it less of a border, the border is being made more of a border than ever, by preventing people with pets travelling over it. What advice will be given to prevent them breaking the law? Will they be told to drive back to get a boat to Liverpool and then to get the boat from Liverpool to Dublin? Does the Minister have an answer to this question? I assure her that neither Defra nor DAERA has that answer. All the people who have rung them, over the past week or so, get a different view every single time depending on whom they speak to. I wonder whether anyone in Defra or DAERA actually understands the detail of these regulations.

The Minister could say, “No, if you want to stay in Northern Ireland and then go on to the Republic, you can, but not on the basis of the pet travel scheme. You have to stay in Belfast or Larne, and we will then give you entry on the basis of EU regulation 576/2013—not on the basis of a pet travel document under the pet travel scheme”. So where will that happen and what will the cost be? In that instance, the reality of the rationale for the pet passport—being subject to documentary checks, having your pet checked, with the possibility of being sent to an SPS centre and being made to feel as though you are going to a foreign country—makes no sense, because these animals are not going to the Republic. They will remain in the EU under EU law, as designated by the withdrawal agreement. On that basis, we do not need to divide our own country. We do not need a pet travel scheme for the movements of pets that do not leave the UK, with pets and people being sent to SPS facilities. Have His Majesty’s Government even thought about the fundamental implications of the pet travel document making the open border absolute?

As the Explanatory Memorandum makes clear—as does Article 12 of the now very famous EU regulation 1231, the important one that allows the EU to govern the division of our country—pets can be moved into the Republic of Ireland only if one is subject to another border. The rationale is absurd. If the border for moving a pet from NI to the Republic of Ireland is such that it cannot be crossed without engaging in border requirements, surely the rationale for the Irish Sea border evaporates. It is particularly absurd when you remember that, to get the pet passport originally to take your animal to Northern Ireland, you have to sign that you will not take it into the Republic. So there should be no need for any restrictions on taking your pet on holiday or to visit relatives in Northern Ireland from GB.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I apologise; I know that the noble Lord raised this in his speech. I am more than happy to speak to ministerial colleagues on those matters.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken this evening. I want to say, as usual when this kind of statutory instrument is being discussed, that it goes much wider than the actual SI. I kept my remarks specifically to pets, and a number of questions were asked which it was very difficult for the Minister to answer. I very much appreciate her genuine sympathy and concern. We will go through Hansard to see what more needs to be answered, because one of the things that has come out of tonight’s debate is that there is genuine confusion, much more within the departments than even with the Minister. That has to be sorted.

I thank those noble Lords who supported my regret amendment. The two noble Lords who opposed it did not say anything specific about what was wrong with the issues that I raised; they tended to go wider than that. I am sorry if I pre-empted the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie. I always know that she will say that it is all Brexit’s fault. However, I thank her very much for asking some questions that were very relevant to the debate.

Scrutiny is the reason that we are here tonight and why these SIs always take a long time; I know that there are many frustrated colleagues here tonight wishing that this had gone through in a quick hour. It is because there is no real scrutiny in Northern Ireland. As the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, said, many MLAs now say that quite a lot of what is going on there is a farce in terms of scrutiny. The scrutiny for this part of the United Kingdom is more and more having to come in this Chamber, which is why we have these debates.

I am still not at all satisfied and feel very strongly that all those animal lovers out there watching this tonight—many knew that it was happening, particularly the Kennel Club, which I mentioned earlier—will not feel satisfied about any of the answers and will not understand why our Governments have allowed this to happen. I keep tabling regret amendments. I am getting fed up with regret. I would like to press this amendment to a vote.