Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Carla Lockhart Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 19th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Paisley]

I thank the hon. Member for that point, but I want to make it clear that I listened to the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim, who works with and knows Mike Johnston as well as I do, and he did not make any detrimental comment about Mike himself in any of the comments he made. He referred to other members and other motives, but he did not make any reference, derogatory or otherwise, about Mike Johnston. I think that is very clear. It is unfair to cast those aspersions.

It is not for us as politicians to say, “Oh, we’ll parade this body in front of Parliament; they’re for us.” That goes back to the zero-sum game of politics. Parading the Ulster Farmers Union and saying, “They’re on our side on this point,” is a cop-out of our political responsibilities. We have a duty as politicians to solve this political problem. The protocol is not a dairy milk problem; it has an impact on the dairy milk sector, but the protocol is a political problem that has caused these problems in the sector. We have a responsibility as politicians to solve the problem and to pull together to try to fix it, because it affects Protestant farmers, Catholic farmers and farmers of no religion the same way. It damages the potential for their business, and we should be pulling together to try to fix it. If this Bill does one thing to try to fix it, I will support that as a step in the right direction.

[Carla Lockhart (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way; he is certainly in full flow. It is important to strip this debate back to the businesses currently impacted by the protocol. We cannot look ahead of ourselves. Wilson’s Country and Glens of Antrim Potatoes cannot bring seed potatoes in to Northern Ireland from Scotland, and that will ultimately damage the potato industry in Northern Ireland in future years. AJ Power in my own constituency has said that the increase in costs is sixfold and is likely to be more when the UK Government input reduces. My hon. Friend makes an important point that those issues are impacting businesses now, and therefore we need this Bill to resolve some of them.

[Ian Paisley]

The point about seed potatoes is particularly interesting, because that represents the entire community in Northern Ireland—companies that employ right across the community and farms from across the community are all being detrimentally impacted in the same way as a result of the protocol. That is why it needs to be fixed.

We have heard some scaremongering about a mass cull of cows and suddenly milk in Northern Ireland becomes different milk because of paperwork, when the milk is being produced in the same way and the same green grass is being used to feed the cows to produce it. Not only is the milk being produced normally, but the same seeds and crops are brought in to feed the cattle, and it is very clear that none of that will change.

The commercial issues that I referred to and that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim touched on are very interesting: I think there are more dairy cows in County Cork than there are in the whole of Northern Ireland, yet County Cork and the Republic of Ireland still cannot produce enough milk. Therefore, they need a commercial relationship with Northern Ireland dairy farms to help them and to increase and encourage their businesses. The commercial reality is that we have to do business across the island. The idea that suddenly people will be able to say to farms in Northern Ireland, “Well, you can’t do business with us in the Republic of Ireland.”, when Republic of Ireland companies need Northern Ireland farm produce, highlights the commercial reality in all this.

Again, I go back to this point: the protocol is a political problem that is interfering in commercial and farming activity, and we have to pull it away from that and solve the politics around this.

The Bill does not change the cows, as the hon. Member for North Down seemed to imply. It does not change the grass that the cows are fed on. It does not change how the cows are milked, what lorries the produce goes into or what factories the milk is processed in. No, this is about Eurocrats stopping trade, not because the standard of the food has changed but because the paperwork might change. That is not a good basis on which to run any business, to run cross-border activity or to run cross-national frontier businesses. It is not. That is why the protocol should be changed and why the European Union should be ashamed of itself when it refuses to change some of the aspects of the protocol and to try to fix these matters.

The hon. Member for North Down has mentioned on many occasions the issue relating to veterinary products, pharmaceutical products and so on. A solution was agreed for human products, but the EU has blocked that solution for animals and animal welfare. It did so in such a manner that in a matter of months 50% of all veterinary products will be prevented from going to Northern Ireland. That will have a detrimental impact on farming, and the commercial aspect of that, on pets and on our income and our economy.

If ever there was a threat to cattle, it comes from the EU blocking veterinary products coming into Northern Ireland. That is the damage to our business. Do not take my word for it. Take the words of the National Office of Animal Health. It has been campaigning for this change and it has written to all the Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive and told us that this has to be changed. But there is no appetite in the EU to change it. NOAH says clearly that this is not about getting more time to negotiate. Time is over; time has run out. Indeed, the Government’s position is that they have been talking for a year and a half to try to fix this. Time is now over. Time is called on this matter. We have to have it resolved urgently and immediately.

Some references have also been made to manufacturing. I am proud to have one of Northern Ireland’s largest and most obvious manufacturing businesses—a world business in fact—in Ballymena, a part of my North Antrim constituency. Wrightbus has traded both before we were in the EU—before 1973— for 40 years after joining the EU, and since leaving the EU. It has been a successful world business. Why? Because of EU regulations? No. Because of British regulations? No. Because it makes the best product, and the best product sells. When it made poor products they did not sell. So because it makes the best product, it has at its feet a world market. It has been able to trade in the United States, all over Malaysia, in the middle east and in other parts of the world as well as the EU.

The idea that suddenly the protocol is making life easier or better for Wrightbus is wrong. The evidence from Wrightbus has been that, yes, it is getting good trade deals both inside the EU—in Germany and the Republic of Ireland—and outside the EU—in Australia, New Zealand and the United States. That is because of its product, but its product has been made costly to produce due to the impact of the protocol. It has made it more costly to get aluminium and other components into Northern Ireland from Great Britain. That adds to the manufacturing time, and time equals money. There is an impact on its product. While it is a market leader at present, as soon as it is challenged in that market lead, we will soon find out the pressure that that industry will be under.

It is very clear to me that in the Republic of Ireland there is a commercial interest in having some damage done to Northern Ireland’s trade. People do not like that being said, but it is a fact. The Republic of Ireland has breached regulations time and again. It is being investigated for a £200 million loan to Aer Lingus, which was brought to our attention in April. Since Brexit, I understand that the UK Government have set up an EU subsidy monitoring unit, which has asked for that £200 million loan to be investigated. It is causing commercial differences on the island of Ireland, to the point that the arm of Aer Lingus that operates out of Northern Ireland airports is being damaged by the grants and loans being given to its commercial arm in the Republic of Ireland.