Northern Ireland After Brexit (Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee Report)

Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hain. Noble Lords will understand that I do not agree with everything he says. In fact, he does not always agree with me either. I declare my interests: I am member of the Ulster Farmers Union and a farmer. One day, he questioned about me actually being a farmer. Some people at home would probably question that as well. I was not on the committee when the report was brought forward, but I enjoy being on the committee now, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. The staff are excellent and make an excellent contribution to what we do.

The Northern Ireland protocol, Windsor Framework and Safeguarding the Union—whatever document you want to look at—promised so much for the people of Northern Ireland, but they have not delivered. That is the problem that everybody faces here. Today, we are all trying to address some of those shortfalls, particularly within the Windsor Framework. At this stage, I commend the businesses, farming community and the sectors of Northern Ireland, which have been extremely resilient in the face of adversity, in relation to trying to make their businesses and the economy work and doing it under so much stress and with many difficulties. The reality for businesses on the ground is that there is a fog of uncertainty within that process, and that is something that we need to address.

I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, being here and I welcomed his report, because it went into some of the detail, similar to what the scrutiny committee worked out. But the one recommendation that was mentioned here before the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, brought that out was the one-stop shop. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, that we cannot wait an overly long time for that to be implemented, because businesses just cannot afford that time. If you run a business that is struggling in Northern Ireland, and you are told that you will need to wait another 18 months to two years for a one-stop shop to give you advice, that is not going to be any help to you at that stage. That is one aspect that needs more urgent attention and delivery.

Uncertainty is not a neutral condition; it corrodes investment, deters expansion and punishes smaller firms in particular. Yes, we have heard that larger firms are also impacted, but they can absorb it slightly more easily than the smaller firms, which have huge difficulty within their sector. In the Ulster Unionist Party, certainly, we have vociferous in our opposition to the border in the Irish Sea; it inhibits any trade between GB and Northern Ireland. That is, in effect, what we have. I am sure that we all know loads of people that have tried to order goods online and they cannot get them because that business in GB has stopped trading with Northern Ireland—full-stop.

I want to raise the issue of the importation of machinery from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. There has been a huge impact on that industry and economy in Northern Ireland. Lots of the machinery may be sold outside Northern Ireland, but there is no reason why the inspections could not be simplified and why they could not be done in Northern Ireland for goods that are moving on to the Republic of Ireland or other parts of the EU. It is nonsensical that the inspections have to be done in GB before the goods come to Northern Ireland. There needs to be a much better process for that.

Another issue is veterinary medicines, which has been a problem for a long time. We got the human medicines sorted out at a very early stage in the process; why could we not also sort out the veterinary medicines at a similar time?

I have heard so much talk about the Democratic Scrutiny Committee in the Northern Ireland Assembly, but it is just not working. I accept the point from the noble Lord, Lord Hain, that MLAs in the Northern Ireland Assembly need a bigger role, but we need to persuade the Government and EU that they be allowed that additional role, because at present my understanding is that they are not permitted that extra responsibility. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hain, I feel that they should be. There is a job of work there, whether it is for the UK Government, the European Union or both together, to allow greater input from the Northern Ireland Assembly. The MLAs are the people on the ground who hear daily from businesses and, on most occasions, try to assist and help them.

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, made the point that this process is temporary. It may be temporary, but it is here. The fact is that we have businesses trying to manage their way around it, and they are finding it so difficult without that one-stop shop. It is temporary until the reset takes place. We hear a lot about what is happening at present. One of the faults of the Windsor Framework—or of implementing it and the protocol before it—was that little or no preparation was done, and the people of Northern Ireland have been the fall people. That is why it is so important that we now start preparation for the UK-EU reset.

I am not hearing much—others may be—from the Government about what is taking place and what process is in place around that EU-UK reset. What is happening and what processes can we expect? Now is the time to get the information, evidence and foresight from those businesses that have had to comply with what we have in Northern Ireland. They should have an input into the reset, and it should be codesigned in parallel with them. Now is the time to start preparing for that, otherwise—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Lilley—unless we find a better mechanism, it will not improve things, even though this is temporary. Whatever the more final process is, we need to ensure that it is much better.

The list of barriers continues. I have mentioned agricultural machinery and veterinary medicines, but the movement of livestock—sheep and cattle—from GB to Northern Ireland is also a huge problem. That is within the United Kingdom, and it should not be an issue. In particular, people are purchasing pedigree animals on mainland GB and cannot get them imported into Northern Ireland. I know farmers who have bought extremely expensive animals that have now been sitting in what we would call storage or in farm isolation units in Scotland or England for almost 18 months. That is totally unfair to those farmers who are trying to do their best for not only the economy of Northern Ireland but the entirety of the UK.

What is most striking is that we still have not found a resolution to all this, even though we have been at it for a number of years. Most businesses have found their own resolutions in many aspects—they have just got on with business and found ways around it—but the one thing that they find extremely difficult is that they still cannot import some goods that they need from GB into Northern Ireland. They have to look for those goods from other sources, which is not always easy. That is going to be an aspect, as this year goes on, for veterinary medicines, because those arrangements already been implemented. There are quite large stocks within vets, but as those start to run down it will be much more difficult for the veterinarians first and then for the farmers to access the medicines they need. They will have to find other sources that are probably much more expensive and in different bulk sizes. They may have to buy veterinary medicine for 500 animals when they need it for only 50, because they cannot get it in that smaller size.

UK-EU Relations

Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

The Government are meeting with four countries—France, Germany, Holland and Belgium—on those exact points.

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, at present, Northern Ireland is sitting apart from the rest of the UK in relation to Europe. Will any future relationships and management processes that the UK might have with the European Union include Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, so we will all be back into one position again?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I refer the noble Lord to the independent review of the Windsor Framework, led by my noble friend Lord Murphy, which will report within six months. As somebody with family in Northern Ireland, I am very clear that it is absolutely part of the UK.

Inheritance Tax, National Insurance and VAT

Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate and I declare an interest as a farmer and a landowner.

First, I want to touch briefly on the national insurance contributions increase. This will be increased on the employers, but who will really pay for it? The people who will pay for are the consumers, the people who use the services and buy the goods, because the employer is going to pass that on. So what is it? It is really a tax—another tax on the individuals and the people of our community. That is what the additional national insurance contributions are.

I move on to the inheritance tax and the APR: damaging, unfair, destructive—we have heard all these terms for the last couple of months around this policy, and that is exactly what it is. It is going to do exactly the opposite of what I believe the genuine intention of the Government is. So there is bound to be a way around it. Look at the active farmer issue: safeguard those active farmers and the small family farms and hit the bigger corporations, because those are the people who will ultimately gain out of it now.

We need to produce food here in an environmentally safe way, that is good for the consumer, and that has better welfare standards than importing it from those countries that do not have the same welfare standards as we do in the United Kingdom, which we pride ourselves on.

So, please, let us not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. I say to the Government: make sure that you protect those family-run farms in the United Kingdom that can produce that good food. I just believe that this is an unfair picking on the family farm that will ruin that sector, and all it will do is provide more land and more income for the big, commercialised people.

Renewable Energy: Costs

Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)]

My Lords I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Frost, for securing it. The renewable energy system stems from the climate change issue, so we cannot look at one in isolation without the other. I am interested in the noble Lord, Lord Frost, saying that there is no consensus around some of the figures and costings. I assume that that is because some of those estimates are just guesstimates at a high level, as opposed to having any significant background to the figures.

I am concerned about climate change, as I am sure most in this House are. I want to see renewable energy and I support it, but it all comes at a cost. We have to devise that cost in a practical manner and not just set targets that cannot be achieved. In Northern Ireland, we have set targets that I do not believe are achievable—in fact, we have missed all our early targets on climate change.

It also comes sometimes at an environmental cost. In the early 1950s, a renewable project—a hydro-plant—was built at Ballyshannon, in the Republic of Ireland, using the water that flows from Lough Erne in County Fermanagh. That has had huge environmental challenges, not least in that it has decimated the salmon and eel industries in Lough Erne. The salmon, eel and other fish trying to get back up through the hydro-plant have been slaughtered. They have been cut and killed by the blades of the hydro-plant, and that has reduced the number of fish stocks within Lough Erne. This has been a huge environmental disaster in County Fermanagh, so we need to be careful about how we do this. Just a few years ago, hundreds of thousands of eels were trapped in that hydro-plant and killed. That is a huge loss to the environment in County Fermanagh and to Lough Erne.

We do not always have sun shining and wind blowing, so we need to find other back-up mechanisms. I accept that other aspects, such as wave energy, might be more reliable. We need to do this in a managed way. In Northern Ireland, we had the renewable heat incentive, or RHI, which turned out to be an absolute disaster. We cannot now invest in further renewable incentives in Northern Ireland; we are pouring money back from the Executive every year, simply because we are not allowed to utilise that funding while the RHI is still in place. It has been a disaster not only for the Government and the Executive but for many of those genuine users who have invested millions of pounds into projects that they now cannot make pay, and who are returning to conventional types of heating such as oil and coal. We need to be careful in what we do and how we do it. That is why we should not rush into issues that are not reasonable.

Last December, I attended a seminar led by government and executive officials in Northern Ireland. We were told that, by 2027—in just three years—it will cost government departments in the small area of Northern Ireland £2.3 billion to implement climate change policies up to that point, and that is not to talk of what it will cost businesses, ordinary householders and the public.