Northern Ireland Protocol: Implementation Proposals

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the preparations for the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

[The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr Robin Walker)]

My Secretary of State is on the way to Northern Ireland this afternoon, and has asked me to respond to this question on his behalf. We continue our work to implement the protocol in a pragmatic and proportionate way that minimises the disruption to people’s day-to-day lives and preserves the gains of the 22 years since the Belfast/Good Friday agreement was signed. We are helping traders to prepare for the end of the transition period. We published business guidance in August, and are updating it all the time as arrangements are finalised. We have established the trader support scheme, backed by £200 million of Government funding. More than 7,000 businesses have signed up, and hundreds more are joining them every day. We are considering further support measures for agrifood traders, with further details to be announced shortly.

We are getting on with the work that we need to do so that our systems and facilities are ready. We are putting in place the IT systems that are needed to process goods movements, supported by £155 million, which we announced in August. We are working with the Northern Ireland Executive on the delivery of expanded points of entry for agrifood, with the contract now awarded and work under way on arrangements on day one and thereafter.

We are getting on with putting the legislative framework in place for manufactured goods and food safety among many other issues, and our programme is well on track to be delivered in full by the end of the year. We are delivering on our unequivocal commitment to unfettered access. We have provided for robust protections in the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill for mutual recognition and a prohibition on new checks and controls. We will re-table those clauses when the Bill returns to the House.

We laid a draft statutory instrument in Parliament, which was approved on 10 November by this House, and is scheduled for debate in the other place on 30 November. That will ensure that on 1 January Northern Ireland businesses can continue to move their goods as they do now. We are working with the Executive to introduce a longer-lasting second phase of that system, to focus its benefits on Northern Ireland businesses, to be introduced in the course of 2021.

We are working intensively and in good faith through the Joint Committee to pursue the solutions that we need to support our approach. We have already agreed a phased approach for medicines rules in Northern Ireland, ensuring that those critical goods can continue to flow. We have agreed an approach to scoping the application of the electricity directive in respect of Northern Ireland’s single electricity market that will ensure that the single electricity market continues to deliver for Northern Ireland.

We are working to ensure that UK internal freight is not subject to tariffs, and to remove export declarations from Northern Ireland to GB trade. We continue to pursue specific solutions for supermarket trade, noting the huge social and economic importance of avoiding disruption. That essential work will continue at pace in the coming days but, of course, I cannot give a running commentary on discussions with the European Union.

[Louise Haigh]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. There are 43 days until the end of the transition period, and it is hard to express the frustration, anxiety and fears that have been relayed to me and to the Minister by countless businesses and communities in Northern Ireland, as the clock has started to tick. Northern Ireland needed every second of this transition year to get ready for the biggest changes to its trading relationship that it has ever known, but vital time has been squandered, first with the denial that any checks would take place at all and then with the extraordinary spectacle of the Government threatening to tear up their own oven-ready deal and breach international treaties that they had signed into law—an approach that the Minister has just confirmed they are sticking to when the Bill returns to the House from the other place.

The result of that recklessness and incompetence is that thousands of businesses still do not know the bare basics of how they will trade with Great Britain in just six weeks’ time. As the president of the Ulster Farmers Union said this morning, we are in a transition, but we do not know what we are transitioning to. The whole purpose of the protocol was to protect the Good Friday agreement in all its dimensions, and the relationship east-west is as important as the relationship north-south. The Government’s reckless approach to negotiations and their incompetent failure to prepare risk significant disruption, a maximalist interpretation of the protocol and completely unnecessary checks. Ministers should take their heads out of the sand and give businesses the answers for which they have been begging throughout this transition year.

First, on the customs declaration service, which will handle over 1 million declarations in January alone, experts say that they need 18 months to get traders ready for the new system, so why has the industry not had the final version? Given that those experts now say that it is simply too late for the system to work, what are the contingency plans to avoid widespread disruption on 1 January? Will there be flexibility to allow businesses to adapt to new systems? What is plan B?

On the trader support service, which the Minister mentioned and which is supposed to guide businesses through the complex new customs arrangements, can he confirm that the Government are not seriously considering leaving it until 21 December for that system to go live? Why have businesses had no information whatsoever on the tariff rebate system, as confirmed by the chief executive of Manufacturing NI this morning? Where is the border operator model promised by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster over summer? Without it, traders are completely in the dark on what data they will need to provide in order to move goods.

Finally, on food imports, which the Minister referenced, a compromise is now desperately needed—and the EU has a huge responsibility of its own to deliver this—in order to reduce checks that some supermarkets and food producers say could lead them to pull out of Northern Ireland altogether. It is absurd that food destined for Northern Ireland supermarkets should be considered a risk to the EU single market, so is either a temporary waiver requirement or a permanent trusted trader scheme about to be confirmed? Again, why have the Government refused to engage directly with Northern Ireland retailers?

Northern Ireland desperately—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Can I just say that when I grant an urgent question, it is for two minutes, but we are now over three minutes? I did give the hon. Lady some time and I think the Minister will have picked it up.