UK-EU Summit

Lord Weir of Ballyholme Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I will pass the noble Lord’s comments to the Prime Minister, the Minister for the Cabinet Office and others involved in the negotiations. We will proceed only when it is in the interests of British businesses and the people of the UK. Each case is being taken step by step and on its own merits, and there is certainly scope for mutual benefit. The noble Lord is right to mention security and defence. He will be pleased to know that, in the second paragraph of the second chapter of the Common Understanding document, it was highlighted that, at the heart of all this, is common security and defence. As we have seen with the invasion of Ukraine, it is more important than ever that we have a strong and secure Europe, and that we are all working together to the same ends.

[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

My Lords, whatever the claims and counterclaims of any deal by any Government, and whatever concerns may be raised today—I share some of those concerns, although some of us see the irony in that some of those raising concerns were very happy, only a short time ago, to see exactly the same conditions imposed on one part of the United Kingdom and to then tell us that it was the best of both worlds—what will be critical will be the practical experience of how this works out in reality.

The Minister is right in identifying that the most significant aspect of this deal is the SPS agreement. Under the previous arrangements that were in place, the Government are due in July to impose a labelling system for goods—food, drink and other SPS products—going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. That adds an additional layer of bureaucracy, creating the only instance in the UK, or indeed all of Europe, where this will happen. In the light of this new agreement, will the Government give a commitment to end what would be a ludicrous situation of imposing new restrictions in July which are then redundant and will have to be removed at some stage in the next couple of months? Would the Government not be better to pause that, or at least increase the grace period, until this is implemented, so that we are not left with an unnecessary additional burden of the labelling of goods coming into Northern Ireland?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, who has experience of this. He will know that I have said in this Chamber before that I think it is a great shame that, when the Brexit debate was taking place, so little attention was given to the impact on Northern Ireland. Some people were taken aback, and certainly there were no preparations by the Government for how Northern Ireland could manage this. The SPS agreement removes the barriers on agri-food products. I will take away the point the noble Lord makes—I think it is wider than just agri-food products—see what is happening and discuss it with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and will come back to him ASAP on that issue.