European Union: Border Control Checks

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

To ask the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) what plans Her Majesty’s Government have, if any, to extend easements to border control checks on goods from the European Union on 1 January 2022.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are fully prepared for the introduction of border import controls and, as previously announced, will introduce these controls on 1 January for EU goods coming from mainland Europe. However, in order to create the best possible environment for negotiations on the protocol and to avoid complexity and uncertainty, I announced yesterday, on 15 December, that the current arrangements for goods coming from the island of Ireland will be extended on a provisional basis.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, in an earlier answer the Minister said that he had noticed no difficulties in securing trade with the European Union. But the cross-party European Affairs Committee report on trade in goods with the EU, published today, found that small businesses and agri-food sectors have been hardest hit by the changes of the TCA, resulting in GB exports becoming

“slower, less competitive, and more costly.”

The committee calls for an urgent SPS agreement with the EU. When the Minister is discussing this with the vice-president tomorrow, will he signal that an urgent SPS agreement with the EU is a priority, to support our small business and agri-food sectors that have been so hard hit?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I have had the opportunity to look briefly at the report that is referred to, which as always is an extremely comprehensive and worthwhile assessment of the state of play. We have never denied that there are new processes that need to be followed by UK exporters, but experience over the year is that UK business has come to grips with them very successfully and we have brought in, for example, our new export support service to help support smaller companies. On the question of an SPS equivalence arrangement, we asked last year for the TCA to include an equivalence process. That was not possible and, as far as we know, still is not possible, but obviously it would help if the EU was willing to look at that again and move forward.