UK-EU Summit

Gavin Robinson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It does so in two ways. It makes permanent the energy chapter in the current deal, and it goes beyond that to allow us to co-operate and co-ordinate more closely on energy; we have the ability for connection already, but we can now take better advantage of it.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

Successive Governments and successive Parliaments have caused unnecessary and at times intolerable damage to our Union. We recognise the reductions in some checks on some issues, but can the Prime Minister explain why, if animals and animal products are now suitable to come to Northern Ireland free of checks, the European Union is still intent on banning the very veterinary medicines that are taken by those animals? If standards are the same in the United Kingdom and the European Union—and this Parliament has already decided that CE markings will be retained—why are products and manufactured goods not part of the arrangement? Will the Prime Minister confirm to this Parliament that it is his intention to rid Northern Ireland of the Windsor framework and to get rid of the barriers within our Union?

[The Prime Minister]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the SPS agreement that we have negotiated for the UK as a whole is good for Northern Ireland because it complements the current SPS agreement for Northern Ireland that it comes up against. That will be a huge step forward for Northern Ireland, which I know he cares about, and others care about, and I care about. It is among the advantages of the SPS deal that we have struck.

I do understand the issue of veterinary medicines, and we are working to resolve the problem that the right hon. Gentleman has rightly described. I think we are in a better position to resolve it by co-operating and co-ordinating with the EU, which is what we are doing. On the Windsor framework, it is important that we implement the agreements that we have in place, because the blunt truth is that no one will make further agreements with a country that walks away from agreements that it has already put in place.