Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of sales by food manufacturers in Great Britain to Northern Ireland since January 2021.
The Northern Ireland Protocol has led to considerable disruption in the movement of goods. There has been clear diversion of trade. Supply chains have been disrupted and costs increased due to new bureaucracy.
Therefore, we put forward proposals to fix the problems in our Command Paper in July. The Government is now in intensive discussions with the EU with the aim of delivering significant changes to the NI Protocol.
A recent survey (4-19 October) of the members of the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) found that the sales volumes from GB to NI had fallen by an average of 13% since the Northern Ireland Protocol came into effect on 1 January 2021. This was across the 83 businesses surveyed. It should be noted that this is a sub sample of FDF’s over 300 members and not necessarily representative.