Official Controls (Plant Health) and Phytosanitary Conditions (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Lord Katz Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

I thank my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, who is forensic on this issue. He has again pointed out that the figure I have mentioned is but a fraction, and I thank him for making that point.

In the second instance, as the Explanatory Memorandum makes plain, if the UK Government judge that Heterobasidion irregulare, known to cause annosus root and butt rot, poses a non-acceptable risk to GB, would that not also pose an unacceptable risk to the rest of the United Kingdom? Similarly, if the United Kingdom Government have judged that specific import requirements must be imposed in relation to—this has been referred to—Popillia japonica, which is simply a Japanese beetle, because it is spreading in Europe, and that therefore it warrants additional measures to prevent its entry into GB, does the spread in the rest of Europe not similarly constitute a threat to the biosecurity of Northern Ireland? If the Minister’s answer is to be the same as her answer to us of 29 January on the related biosecurity foot and mouth question, I say respectfully that that will not do.

The levels of protection that the UK Government insisted on for GB—and rightly so—could not have been more different from those that the EU provided for Northern Ireland. The UK has abdicated its biosecurity responsibilities in relation to Northern Ireland, as the noble Baroness said. In this context, the claim by the Minister in the other place that Northern Ireland farms are just as important looks quite limp, downright pathetic and absurd.

The Minister responded, saying,

“he rightly laid out the situation that Northern Ireland is in as being part of the EU regulations and the fact there is a surveillance zone in Germany. I want to stress that the EU takes its biosecurity responsibilities for something like foot and mouth extremely seriously. There had not been a foot and mouth outbreak in Germany since 1988, so this is very significant for them”.—[Official Report, 29/1/25; cols. 359-60.]

That may not be as reassuring as some would perhaps want it to be, because we have heard this evening a charge of a dereliction of duty. Would there be any remote possibility that Europe could show a dereliction of duty at times too, or have we just to utterly trust it? Quite frankly, I am one who would not be prepared to utterly trust it. It is not enough to say that in Northern Ireland biosecurity standards are now determined by a different country from the rest of us, whose Government you do not elect and cannot change, but not to worry as they are very good in their duties. That is not acceptable any more.

The answer also fails the Windsor Framework because it demonstrates how its operation is now failing in its own terms. Article 1 of the Windsor Framework is designated as having very specific function by means of its heading, “Objectives”. I will not go into those because my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, has already articulated that very well. If the Government are to fully and faithfully implement the Windsor Framework, the task of ensuring that its operation is faithful to those objectives is plainly of the utmost importance.

Furthermore, the objectives include a requirement that the Windsor Framework respects the territorial integrity and essential state functions of the United Kingdom. The regulations before us today do neither; they divide the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland into two, with an international SPS border, disrespecting the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom of GB and Northern Ireland. They testify to the fact that an essential state security function has been passed from the UK to the European Union, in whose legislature, Executive and judiciary the UK is not represented.

In her response to the debate, I very much hope that the Minister will not suggest that a veterinary agreement with the EU is the answer, for I must tell the House emphatically that it is not. If the Government negotiate an SPS agreement with the EU that will not remove the Irish Sea border or restore the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom, because the United Kingdom will still be divided into two by an international customs border and subject to EU law in all manner of areas—law that we do not make and cannot change—that is just not acceptable. We will still be subject to the EU customs code, which deems that Great Britain is a foreign country in relation to Northern Ireland.

In this, it is my purpose not to offer a counsel of despair—far from it. The truth is that the way the Government are managing the movement of non-qualifying Northern Ireland goods from Northern Ireland to GB, in respect of these and the other SPS regulations, through the Official Controls (Amendment) Regulations and without SPS checks on the border, already provides the answer of how to manage the SPS checks on the international border. However, things can be made even more robust by adopting mutual enforcement, which has already been mentioned by a number of speakers this evening. That has been developed within the EU Commission by Sir Jonathan Faull, together with the academics Professor Joseph Weiler and Professor Daniel Sarmiento, and it provides a means of protecting the integrity of both the United Kingdom internal market for goods and the EU internal market for goods without a hard border across the island of Ireland. I pose the question: what is so desperately wrong with that, when, in fact, it does not hurt either territory? There has to be some other reason that the Government must tell us.

If the current delivery mechanism of the Windsor Framework was exchanged for SPS checks away from the border, as is already the case on west-east movements together with mutual enforcement, the objectives of the Windsor Framework, as set out in Article 1, would be clearly met. Not only would the territorial integrity and the essential state functions of the United Kingdom be respected but the other components of the objectives of the Windsor Framework, as set out in Article 1, could then be fulfilled: namely, protecting the Good Friday agreement in all its dimensions. While I will not digress on that point, the reasons that the current Windsor Framework, far from protecting the Good Friday agreement in all its parts, constitutes the greatest existential threat to the 1998 agreement were eloquently set out recently in an important article in one of our local papers.

There are some strong advocates in this House for the Belfast agreement, and I fail to understand why they are silent on this matter, because it is not being protected. I appreciate that, in 2019, the EU decided that it preferred the Irish Sea border to mutual enforcement, but now we are in a situation where it is clear, in 2025—in part courtesy of the regulations before us today—that the changes necessitated by the Windsor Framework are causing it to contradict, violate and undermine its own objectives as set out by Article 1. The issue must be revisited as a matter of urgency.

In conclusion, I hope that the regulations before us today can rapidly be withdrawn and replaced by regulations that are not implicated in the division of the United Kingdom into two and in the ceding of essential state functions to an entity of which we are not a part. I stress, lest the Minister might be tempted to point this out, that Northern Ireland has been part of the same epidemiological unit since long before the introduction of the Irish Sea border. This point is well understood and is not relevant, because it was never objected to. What is objected to is Northern Ireland being divided from the rest of the United Kingdom by a customs border and an international SPS measure which necessitates Northern Ireland being disenfranchised in hundreds of areas of law.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)]

My Lords, I respectfully remind the House it is a firm convention that the House normally rises around 10 pm on Mondays to Wednesdays unless there has been some other agreement—which there has not been tonight. We have had a very good and forensic debate and we are 90 minutes in, so I suggest that we should move on to Front-Bench contributions. If there are going to be any more Back-Bench contributions, I really must insist that, unlike the last couple, they are very brief in their content.