Northern Ireland Protocol

Kevin Foster Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

No. It is that approach—talking about it in the hon. Lady’s terms—that creates the uncertainty. It is a perfectly reasonable thing for the United Kingdom to re-examine all the retained EU law that we inherited and decide which bits are for us to keep, which bits are worth scrapping, and which bits are worth amending. That is entirely the appropriate course of action for a sovereign nation, and in doing that, we can provide benefits to families, businesses and communities across the United Kingdom. That is what this Government will deliver.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

Having spent two years at the Home Office working on the plans to implement the Northern Ireland protocol in full if it had been needed, there are some welcome aspects to this agreement, although there are of course other areas that will need to be studied in further detail. The green and red lanes are welcome. One thought that comes to mind is that there is an EU team based at Belfast port—in fact, that team is hosted in a Home Office facility, because it did not have anywhere of its own. What role does he see that team playing, because, as we are aware, there will inevitably be some attempts to abuse the green lane? Who would take the lead on the law enforcement approach to that, and decide whether that sort of action is taken, to ensure that this is about responding to genuine concerns and that it does not become a way, as we have seen at other borders with the EU, to put checks in place that we would feel were an undue burden?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point from his experience as a Home Office Minister. He is absolutely right that we need to enforce these lanes; that is the assurance that we have rightly provided, and that is why we have those facilities there. What I can say to him is that there are not any routine checks as goods move from GB to NI. Any checks that there are will be because we have reason to suspect smuggling or other criminality, based on intelligence or other risk analysis. That is why we will be intervening, but those checks will not be routine: they will be risk and intelligence based, to deal with exactly the problem that my hon. Friend has highlighted. If we are going to have a functioning green lane, it is right that we enforce that properly.