Postal Packets (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2023
Debate between Lord Dodds of Duncairn and Baroness Penn(1 year, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)
My Lords, this statutory instrument will provide United Kingdom authorities with powers in relation to postal packets—parcels—moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. It does nothing more or less than that. It does not itself put in place the wider Windsor Framework arrangements.
These powers are part of delivering what we promised for consumers and businesses in Northern Ireland. They are necessary to ensure that we can implement the Windsor Framework and remove the burdensome regime that the old Northern Ireland protocol would ultimately have required. I am aware of some misunderstanding about what the Windsor Framework requires in respect of parcel movements, so I will attempt to address that also in my opening remarks.
Had it been fully implemented, the Northern Ireland protocol would have required international customs processes for all parcel movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. On the new arrangements, it is worth dealing up front with some of the issues where there has perhaps been a misunderstanding about what will be required in future under the Windsor Framework. In short, I would like to provide some reassurances to noble Lords in that regard.
First, someone in Great Britain sending a parcel to their friends and family in Northern Ireland will not need to engage with any customs processes under the Windsor Framework. Nothing will change for those movements, compared with today. Similarly, Northern Ireland recipients of parcels sent by their friends and family in Great Britain will not need to engage with any customs processes. For example, a grandson in Liverpool sending a package to his grandmother in Belfast will not need to do anything new to send the package and his grandmother will not need to do anything new to receive it.
British businesses in Great Britain selling to Northern Ireland consumers will not need to complete customs declarations, international or otherwise, and Northern Ireland consumers buying from sellers in Great Britain, including via online shopping, will not need to engage with any customs processes. They will buy from the seller in Great Britain and receive their goods without doing anything new.
I emphasise that this means the Windsor Framework explicitly removes one of the most onerous requirements on goods being sold to Northern Ireland consumers and, of course, on goods being sent to friends and families. There will be no routine checks or controls applied to parcels, with interventions only on the basis of a risk-based, intelligence-led approach. This means that the overwhelming majority of parcels will not be subject to checks.
I turn to parcels sent from a business in Great Britain to a Northern Ireland business. These will be treated the same as equivalent freight movements: they can be moved through the new green lane where eligible when it is introduced from October 2024. As with freight movements, the green lane will ensure that eligible goods will no longer require international customs processes. They will instead require only the provision of routine commercial information. Movements via the red lane, including goods destined for the EU, will be subject to the customs processes required by the EU, as noble Lords would expect.
The Prime Minister negotiated the Windsor Framework to ensure that consumers and businesses in Northern Ireland—and, indeed, British businesses selling into Northern Ireland—could benefit by protecting internal trade within the UK. The Government need to ensure that the powers of HMRC and Border Force are sufficient to allow them to monitor the rules for movements of parcels and that, where certain requirements are in place, they can be enforced.
The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report suggested that we clarify the rationale for bringing the instrument into force on 31 August. There is a limited range of prohibited or restricted goods that the UK Government accept are required to comply with EU customs rules today—for example, certain drug precursor chemicals or products derived from or associated with endangered species covered by CITES. HMRC and Border Force cannot currently enforce these requirements, which is why this statutory instrument is needed now rather than in a year. The same powers will be used in respect of the new parcels arrangements that will come into force through the Windsor Framework arrangements for parcels from 30 September 2024. This is so that we are able to determine that parcels destined for the EU can be detected and ensure that they follow the requirements of the red lane.
The committee’s report also noted that arguments had been submitted to it that these regulations would contravene the principle of unfettered access within the UK by introducing a customs border. A submission by the Democratic Unionist Party argues that they would be contrary to the Good Friday agreement.
The Government recognise that there are a range of views on the Windsor Framework. Our view as the Government—as the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland have made clear—is that the arrangements support and protect the Good Friday or Belfast agreement in all its parts. They protect the integrity of the European Union’s single market and Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom’s internal market. These regulations are discrete and relate solely to powers available to HMRC and Border Force. That said, I hope I have provided some reassurance about what the Windsor Framework does and does not require, and therefore what the powers granted by the regulations will be used to monitor and enforce.
The report also notes the absence of a public consultation. It is the Government’s view that a public consultation on an SI of such limited scope is unnecessary. The instrument implements requirements under the Windsor Framework that have been discussed extensively. The Treasury and HMRC continue to engage with a wide range of businesses and sectors, and indeed with fast parcel operators, on both this SI and the wider Windsor Framework.
In summary, the parcel arrangements set out under the Windsor Framework are a significant improvement when compared with the requirements under the old Northern Ireland protocol. But as well as comparing them with what the protocol would have required, it is vital to understand how little will change compared with the status quo for the vast majority of Northern Ireland parcel recipients and those in Great Britain sending goods to them. This statutory instrument is not a barrier but an enabler to the agreement that we have negotiated. I therefore beg to move.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for outlining the purposes of the regulations before us. As noble Lords probably know, just the other day this was a matter of some heated debate in a Delegated Legislation Committee in the other place, and was subject to a vote in that House yesterday evening. Some consternation was expressed in the other place about the manner in which the Government had removed Members from that committee and replaced them with those who would vote these regulations through, but that is a matter for another day and it can be followed by reading Hansard on those committee proceedings.
The Minister said probably the most significant thing at the very end of her speech: these regulations facilitate the Windsor Framework. A lot of the debate is about the benefits of the Windsor Framework compared with the protocol as originally agreed, but the regulations before us are not about implementing the Windsor Framework; they are purely about creating the border for parcels between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. After that, we come on to the Windsor Framework, which is all about the EU law in which it decided, after discussions, to reduce the requirements that would normally be in place to move parcels into the EU for Northern Ireland.
But that is not what is before this Committee. Before this Committee is purely the creation of the parcels border. Whatever the EU then decides to do, whether by agreement or unilaterally, is facilitated by that border. It is our job as parliamentarians to examine the actual regulations before us, not necessarily today, although we can comment on them. The Windsor Framework proposals, which are in EU legislation, are separate, but I will reference them and no doubt they will be referenced by other speakers in this Committee.
The regulations treat Northern Ireland as if it is a foreign country for the purposes of moving parcels. They put in place another piece of the jigsaw of the Irish Sea border. They do not ameliorate or remove it; this is a new creation that is not here at present. Their effect is to separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom in the sense of placing it outside the same single market as Great Britain for postal purposes.
They amend the Postal Services Act 2000 and the Postal Packets (Revenue and Customs) Regulations 2011, so that movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland cease to be unfettered within the same single market and become fettered by a customs barrier that effectively divides them into two single markets. As a consequence of the legislation before the Committee, postal packages destined for Northern Ireland from Great Britain have to be placed in the same group as packages destined for foreign countries. The definition of “export” is changed to include movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Reference to the United Kingdom has to be removed so that the only references in play are Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with the UK single postal market terminated.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I was going to come later to ongoing co-operation with businesses in Northern Ireland and Great Britain, in terms of implementing the provisions when it comes to parcels. For example, we are working through in detail with the couriers and the people who take a lot of this traffic on how we can make it as seamless as possible. If I have anything further to add in my speech, I will do so later.
In respect of the point from the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, on this statutory instrument being about creating a border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as I said just now and in my opening speech, this instrument does not put in place the Windsor Framework arrangements. The noble Lord is right that that has already happened, but we disagree that the Windsor Framework or these regulations separate Northern Ireland from Great Britain in the way that he describes. The regulations do not treat movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland as exports or movements from one country to another; they make some powers that are available in respect of international movements available in respect of movements from GB to NI. However, it is not the case that they treat them the same as parcel movements that are international or exports.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, said, these arrangements are unique. The Windsor Framework is a bespoke set of arrangements. If you move a parcel internationally, such as to your grandmother in France rather than in Northern Ireland, you and she would need to make customs declarations and possibly pay tariffs; that is not the case for the arrangements for GB to NI. Similarly, if you buy from an international retailer, the package goes through customs when it enters the UK; as I set out, that is not the case for GB to NI orders from internet sellers to individuals.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)
Does the Minister accept, however, that the reason for what she has set out is in EU law, and that nobody in Northern Ireland is elected and nobody in the EU is accountable to anyone in Northern Ireland—indeed, in the United Kingdom—for those laws? If those laws change—for example, if the EU changes, tweaks or modifies them—that is what will apply. So the Minister cannot give any guarantee or assurance that the position she is outlining will continue to pertain and apply because no Government, nor this Parliament, will have any power in that respect.
Baroness Penn (Con)
The Windsor Framework is a bilateral agreement. To the noble Lord’s point, there are detailed governance arrangements around the Windsor Framework. Either side can raise issues through those mechanisms. It is not the case that the EU could just impose new requirements without consultation. Of course, the Stormont brake will be available to the Northern Ireland Assembly, when it is sitting.
With regards to the lack of an impact assessment, that point takes me back to what this statutory instrument itself does. It does not impose any requirements on businesses; it is solely about the powers for HMRC and Border Force. The Government are dealing with the resources available to those agencies in the normal way. I cannot remember who asked about this—it was the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, I think—but we will of course ensure that resources are available, in particular to HMRC, to ensure that these agencies can engage with businesses in order to ensure that the process is as smooth as possible.