Northern Ireland Protocol: Veterinary Agreement

Claire Hanna Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Claire Hanna (Belfast South) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for bringing the debate and for his long-standing and genuine commitment to achieving good outcomes for Northern Ireland. I know that is a common cause for many hon. Members across the House, for which we are grateful.

Divergence and potential divergence on veterinary and SPS arrangements is the reason for the vast majority of checks between Britain and Northern Ireland since Brexit. Stripping out the politics, it is worth saying that the island of Ireland has always been counted as one single epidemiological and veterinary unit. That long predates Brexit and has offered protection for biodiversity, agri-foods and farming generally. Hon. Members will remember that foot and mouth disease did not ravage the island of Ireland because we were protected by those checks.

I will defer as always to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on farming matters—South Belfast is not a farming constituency—but moving organic material in the form of soil had not been allowed before Brexit, because of the SPS arrangement. Those high quality standards have offered protection and given a unique selling point to Northern Ireland farmers and producers for many years. That is what we do: we produce high-quality goods and sell them to people who wish to buy high-quality goods. As far as I am aware, there is no demand to drop those standards. For what it is worth, I do not see demand to drop those standards in Britain, either.

I am a member of the UK Trade and Business Commission, which has MPs from across the House, including from the Democratic Unionist party. Over the last year, we have heard evidence on all sorts of trading and business issues from all sorts of sectors. The clear message from a range of businesses is that they value those high standards and do not want to drop them. People say that we will have higher standards in Britain—knock yourself out. It is a bit like going to a museum where the minimum donation is £5. If someone wants to put £20 in there, that is absolutely fine. The minimum standards can still be agreed, and Britain can exceed them if it wants to. So it is genuinely perplexing to me that the UK Government would not consider a veterinary arrangement. The EU even offered to sunset it, so that in a few years, when Britain worked out what it wanted from Brexit, that agreement could dissolve and a different set of arrangements could exist. Genuinely, I can only put that decision down to ideological reasons, because I do not see a demand for it from UK businesses or consumers.

As for our obeying these rules until new year’s eve and the question of what the difference is now, the difference is that the UK spent five years saying, “We don’t play by anybody’s rules,” so it is difficult now to get everybody to stick by particular rules. This is not the time or place—Christmas is coming—to get into the minutiae of global trade rules, but it is around having an identifiable set of rules and it is around preventing a thousand cliff edges. If on 1 January the UK says it will no longer adhere to a standard on soil and on 2 January says it will no longer adhere to a standard on the temperature of cows or whatever, we will create cliff edge after cliff edge. In the absence of a set of rules, businesses cannot possibly compete.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her measured delivery of that point. The issue may not be as clear as she refers to. The soil was okay at Hillmount Nursery in my constituency before 31 December, and it was no different afterwards. The issue was not that the UK or Northern Ireland were going to do anything different. We want to obey the same rules. So the rules were there that we were going to adhere to.

[Claire Hanna]

The point is that the UK has made it very clear that it will not sign up to commit to those rules. That is fundamentally the issue—that the UK has not agreed, as a continuum, to adhere to those rules. Yes, obviously the soil has not changed over the new year, so I understand some of the frustrations, but those could be addressed by exactly the sort of veterinary arrangement that the hon. Member for Rochdale suggests, and that businesses across the UK have been suggesting. It is perplexing to me that all of the parties across the board in Northern Ireland did not get together to call for that, because at different times all of them said that an SPS arrangement would be acceptable. That unanimity and that consistency of message from Northern Ireland’s political representatives would have been very powerful.

In the absence of that SPS arrangement, which I would love to see, the protocol is the show in town at the moment. It is nobody’s first choice; nobody loves it; nobody would have designed it. It is a bit like that thing about getting directions in Ireland—“I wouldn’t start from here,” and you would not start from the protocol, but the reality is that all the other options have been taken off the table. I genuinely understand the frustration and confusion of constituents and consumers, reflected by the hon. Members for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and for Strangford. They say that all of a sudden the rules are different, but that is because of Brexit, which in every way was always going to mean barriers. Brexit is, by definition, a set of trade barriers. That is why some of the rules have changed. In Northern Ireland, businesses were clear before the referendum that they were very happy with the status quo—being able to trade north, south, east and west.

[Carla Lockhart]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. Some of the regulations and rules brought in at this point in time are Brexit-related. However, will she not accept that more are actually protocol-related? Had NI left the EU on the same grounds as GB, we would not be in this position and would not be dealing with issues such as seed potatoes, the Queen’s canopy and all the others listed here today.

[Claire Hanna]

They are issues that flow from Brexit and from the trade and co-operation agreement voted through by a large majority in the sovereign Parliament of the UK. I did not support it. The hon. Member did not support it. But that was the settled arrangement.

[Tony Lloyd]

Could the hon. Member remind us who negotiated the trade and co-operation agreement? Who put the protocol into it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Hanna]

I am happy to remind the hon. Member. It is all over Hansard and in TV clips. I think it was one Mr Boris Johnson and one Lord David Frost. I believe that at Christmas-time they told us that it was oven ready and ready to go, but it was clearly not. These are all consequences that flowed from a series of decisions.

As I say, business did not want to change the status quo. Businesses outlined their preferences for any solution that would mean no barriers in either direction. The Social Democratic and Labour party and I personally campaigned exhaustively over those five years, begging those people who were voting to not choose a solution that created a barrier either between north and south or east and west. Not alone did no business I have ever met want to choose between their trade with the single market and their trade with the GB market, but because we are a fragile and interdependent region that was always going to create the perception of winners and losers. That will have come to pass.

Members will be aware of some of the sporadic unrest that was seen in and around Belfast in the spring. For what it is worth, I think it was fairly contrived. Riots and bus burnings that switch on and off like an appointment are not very organic. I say that having spent all my life in a fragile region. I think they were part of a campaign to project an aura of chaos. I really felt for one young man, who was arrested at the riots in April and quoted on BBC TV. He said, “I don’t know what the protocol is, but my leaders keep telling me I am losing.” That is at the root of this Brexit problem. It created a barrier in one direction and created the perception of winners and losers.

Unfortunately, the protocol has been spun by many not to be a consequence of a series of decisions that the UK made for its own reasons. It is fair enough; they are a sovereign Government and are entitled to make decisions, but the perception has been given that it was because of Dublin or the EU. I have had the police round twice at my door with death threats because people have been told, “She brought you the protocol,” when these are the consequences of the UK’s decisions. Unfortunately, that is what we are working around.

I do not love the protocol, but we are now in the business of trying to make it work. At the moment, there are a variety of discussions between the EU and the UK to talk about how we can make the operation smoother based on the reality of how it works. The fact is that if the two jurisdictions have a different trading and customs regime, a border will have to go somewhere. That has been a fact since long before the Brexit referendum. It says it all over leaflets that I spread in 2016: that border will have to go somewhere, and it will create the headache of all headaches for this region.

According to recent polls by Queen's University Belfast and the University of Liverpool, people are saying, “No, I want a different solution.” That is a consequence of years of misinformation and deflection. I want a different solution too, but there is not one. We have spent five years discussing all the different ways to skin this cat, and the protocol was the outcome. The Commission and the UK Government, in conjunction with business and civil society, are trying to work through and find a way that works best for businesses.

There are a lot of challenges for businesses. There is no doubt about that. Brexit equals friction, and friction equals cost for business. Particularly for very small businesses that are moving low-value items and do not have a procurement or logistics department or whatever, it is worth saying that it has always been the case that there are different costs for some businesses between Britain and Northern Ireland. I have numerous examples. I become the most Unionist little warrior on Amazon when somebody tries to charge me a big fee. I have many email exchanges long predating 2016 where GB businesses are saying, “If is going to the highlands and islands, then it is going to be a different price.” I say, “No. It should be subject to the same rules.”

That issue predates Brexit. It has gotten worse after Brexit—there is no doubt about it—but that is a consequence of the failure of the UK Government to explain and prepare GB businesses for the changes that were going to come their way. That I am aware of, there is not one single product that is unavailable now in Northern Ireland. I hope my children do not read Hansard, because I am the Santa at home. I, too, have been trying to procure items for three children, and there was nothing I could get here that I was not able to get in Northern Ireland.

[Jim Shannon]

Did they ask for seed potatoes though?

[Claire Hanna]

No, my children are not seed potato fans. As I said, we are dealing with a series of responses—the consequences of the UK’s decisions and, as I said, they are the UK’s decisions. I do not agree with them. It is very clear that people in Northern Ireland wanted something different. That is a fact. I do not want to get into—we are talking about the practical issues and I am aware that it is difficult to divorce the practical, the emotional, the political and the constitutional, but the discussions under way are about tackling the practical outcomes of the pandemic.

However, there will be differences for Northern Ireland—that is a fact. We have always been a different SPS zone. Even those people who were behind the alternative arrangements commission, and all of those kind of Brexiteer leading lights, have been very clear that there will always need to be some form of protocol to address that situation.

I will not get into all of the issues around consent, but the people of Northern Ireland rejected Brexit and, at every subsequent election, they have chosen parties that reject Brexit and want to try to find a way to make it work for our particular circumstances. That has been very clear in poll after poll; even among those who voted for Brexit, many of them do not want Brexit on exactly the same terms as people on this island. People want that dual market access.

I will briefly address that. There are huge opportunities for Northern Ireland, which has not had a unique selling point in many decades, to trade equally into the UK single market and into the EU single market. That could create jobs, create prosperity and change our futures. The founder of our party, John Hume, said, many times, that the best peace process is a job. We finally have the opportunity to say to businesses, from wherever, that if they want to have a foot in both markets, Northern Ireland should be the place to invest.

However, investors need stability. They need clear rules and to know that there will not be unrest about all of those things. Businesses are very clear that this situation is not perfect, but they have solutions—they have ways to try to make it work. They do not talk about trusted traders, but they talk about data-based solutions. They are also very clear that they do not want the hard Brexit that Britain has; they do not want article 16 to be triggered. They know that it is not the silver bullet that it has been presented as, and that it just brings us back to the table, which is where we are now.

Brexit was always going to be bad news for Northern Ireland. It was always going to insert all of the difficult things for us—sovereignty, identity and borders—into our everyday conversations. That is driving real polarisation. Sovereignty is different in Northern Ireland because people voted for the Good Friday agreement 23 years ago, and it does not operate in the same hard way as it does in other nation states. The protocol, imperfect though it is, is how we will chart our course through this situation.

It is important that the EU and the UK can get around to the solutions. What people in Northern Ireland want, more than anything, is to not have to talk about this any more—not have to turn on the radio and hear this all day long, all year long. The only way to ensure that is to make the protocol work and agree that these are the choices that were made by the people of Northern Ireland and by the UK Government, and to try to make them work.

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[The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)]

It is lovely to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees.

I, too, thank the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for securing this debate and I echo the words of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner): we have heard a résumé of the discussions that we have had for the last few years about this difficult and sensitive subject. It is always good to hear the first-hand experience of the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Belfast South (Claire Hanna), and it is also interesting when those experiences are somewhat different, not least on the issue of Christmas present availability.

Let me explain what the UK Government are seeking in the negotiations. Our Command Paper published in July proposed a new model for GB to NI movements where the product stays within the UK. We agree that additional confidence could be provided by a well-designed SPS agreement. I think we all agree that that would be a helpful step forward. I reassure the House, regardless of what the hon. Member for Cambridge thinks, that that would obviously cover GB to NI agrifood movements and would set out where both UK and EU legislation provides for the same high standards. That absolutely should be taken as read. The Government stand by our manifesto commitment to standards.

As hon. Members know, we are still in the midst of technical discussions with the Commission to try to find satisfactory solutions on the Northern Ireland protocol. There is some precedent, as has been rehearsed, for the EU making such agreements with other countries—one that has been suggested this afternoon is that between the EU and New Zealand, which has been in place for many years—or as part of wider agreements with trading partners such as Canada or Switzerland.

In the trade and co-operation agreement negotiations last year, the UK put forward an SPS model based on equivalence. That would have been very similar to the model agreed between New Zealand and the EU. Sadly, the EU absolutely and repeatedly rejected the possibility of an agreement based on equivalence. Instead, it has pushed for the Swiss-EU style of SPS arrangement, which is based on dynamic alignment. An agreement based on dynamic alignment is not acceptable to us, as it would compromise our sovereignty over our own laws and impact on our ability to strike trade deals or agree trade facilitations with non-EU countries.

[Claire Hanna]

Does the Minister accept that the UK is a sovereign nation and that deciding—for the protection of all its businesses and particularly for the fragile area of Northern Ireland—to make sure there is no divergence between Britain and Northern Ireland and to have an SPS arrangement based on dynamic alignment would be a sovereign decision? That would be a decision of a responsible Government who said, “This is something we should do for all parts of the United Kingdom, for our businesses. This is a decision that we will make ourselves.” Is that not completely compatible with sovereignty? Otherwise, it is very, “I would do anything for Northern Ireland, but I won’t do that.” It is the act of a sovereign Government to act in the interests of all parts of their kingdom.

[Victoria Prentis]

Dynamic alignment is not acceptable to this Government. The difficulty is that we are already starting to see some divergence. The hon. Member for Cambridge and I took part—oh, no, the hon. Gentleman was not there. One of his colleagues took part in an excellent debate earlier this week on getting rid of the VI-1 certification form for wine certification, which is an issue I have discussed with the hon. Gentleman on many occasions in the past.

We are in a position where our laws—not our standards, but our laws—have started to diverge from those of the EU. What we need to achieve, because of that, is an agreement that recognises the equivalence of mutual high standards, facilitates trade, reduces bureaucracy and maintains our regulatory autonomy. The VI-1 certification is just one of a very small number of issues on which we are starting to diverge. We need to start from where we are.