Asked by: Margaret Greenwood (Labour - Wirral West)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what assessment he has made of the infrastructure that will be required at ports in Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland protocol.
Answered by Robin Walker
The Ireland and Northern Ireland Protocol will be delivered by the end of the Transition Period. There will be no new physical customs infrastructure in Northern Ireland and we see no need to build any.
We will be making the necessary adjustments to existing entry points for agrifood goods to provide for proportionate additional controls including some checks to help movements of live animals and agrifood from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. This is in order to respect the pre-existing status of the island of Ireland as a single epidemiological unit. Our proposals will reduce requirements to the absolute minimum so that the integrity and smooth functioning of the UK internal market is protected, in line with the approach we set out in our May Command Paper.