Windsor Framework: Parcel Delivery

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jim Allister (North Antrim) (TUV)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of the Windsor Framework on parcel deliveries across the Irish Sea.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. Tomorrow, 1 May, the noose of the Irish sea border will tighten even further in respect of business in Northern Ireland. We already have the red lane Irish sea border, subject to the full complement of EU requirements, through which all raw materials for our businesses have to pass. We also have what was called the green lane, which has been renamed but otherwise little about it has changed, for the passage of other goods; we have a business-to-consumer border for parcels; and now—in some ways the most threatening because of the scale of the businesses that will be affected—we have the business-to-business parcel border. Of course, that is a border partitioning the supposed United Kingdom and its supposed internal market.

The essence of an internal market is that goods move unfettered and unchecked between and within all parts of it. We now have something else, courtesy of the absurd protocol—or, as we now call it, the Windsor framework. In view of the fact that that decreed that we in Northern Ireland are subject to the EU’s customs code, which in turn decrees that Great Britain is a third or foreign country, we now have the absurdity of various dimensions of border for the passage of goods from GB to Northern Ireland.

For 200 years, the Northern Ireland economy has been intensely integrated with the GB economy, particularly in manufacturing. It was always the northern part of Ireland that had the big manufacturing sectors. Therefore, the integration, in particular with regard to the supply of raw materials, has been pivotal and GB has been the primary source of all that.

Now, parcels will be subject to rigorous EU requirements, including the requirement for a commodity code—

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Jim Allister]

In a moment. Information must be provided about the country of origin each item, the value of each item and the total value of all the items in the parcel, and any goods that are at risk of passing into the EU’s single market across the border. One of the weaknesses of the protocol is the presumption that everything is at risk of passing, and therefore any raw material—if it is going into manufacturing, who knows where it will end up?—has to go through all that rigour.

That is a preposterous imposition, not just in bureaucracy, but in cost and making Northern Ireland non-competitive. It means that a business manufacturing something in Northern Ireland that it wants to sell back on the GB market or wherever is subject to restraints, which will increase costs, making it less and less competitive. That is one of the greatest iniquities of the sea border and of the business-to-business parcels border.

We have had the protocol in place for four years. Is there any evidence that business parcels are imposing any harm on the EU single market? Have the Government, the EU or anyone else carried out an audit of the alleged harm that business parcels passing from GB to Northern Ireland could do? For four years, they have been flowing unfettered because of the grace periods, so where is the harm caused to the single market that must now be protected from?

[Jim Allister]

Of course, the natural, inevitable consequence of that is that GB suppliers will simply say, “It’s not worth the candle. We’re not going to make the effort. Why should we put ourselves through all these hoops in order to supply to Northern Ireland? It’s not a huge market in the first place. We’ll simply stop supplying.” That has already happened. I constantly receive complaints from consumers, but increasingly I am getting them from businesses that say, “We know that our suppliers will simply stop supplying.” That is going to be another hammer blow to our economy.

[Jim Shannon]

I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for bringing forward the debate. He is right to underline the issues and the concerns of both his constituents and mine. The internal market movement information obligation, which begins tomorrow, means that importers must be members of the internal market scheme as authorised parties, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) referred to. My constituents tell me that they are most concerned and confused, and that they do not quite understand the system. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that it is totally unrealistic for the Government to expect small businesses and individuals—my constituents in Strangford—to understand the obligations and abide by them due to ridiculous EU interference? The Government have an easier way of sorting this out: they must take steps to legally remove the obligation from their citizens in Northern Ireland. Do that and the problems are solved.

[Jim Allister]

Indeed. This is a real issue. In my constituency of North Antrim, I have many satellite small engineering firms. Many of them are subcontractors to Wrightbus, for example. They get their raw materials from GB. To get a simple parcel of bolts, nuts, washers or whatever, because they are manufacturers, they will now have to go through the processes of the red lane business-to-business border. That is in circumstances in which there is no evidence—if there were, we would have heard of it—that the EU’s vast single market is being the least bit impacted by business-to-business parcels. The people who will now be affected are those businesses —the people who employ my constituents.

The other consequence of the machinations of this border is that when GB suppliers stop supplying, firms will have to get their raw materials from somewhere, and some of them will have to come from the Republic of Ireland. Of course, that is the overall, underlying intent of the Windsor framework: to reorientate the economy of Northern Ireland away from its GB roots and connections, and to force an increase in all-Ireland trade. Here we are, arriving at a situation where we have a perfectly unfettered, all-Ireland single market, but in the nation of which we are a part, the United Kingdom, our single market is fettered and partitioned. That was the intent of the protocol. The protocol was always about making Northern Ireland the price of Brexit, and so it is turning out to be.