Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what would happen in Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework if the UK diverged and changed its regulations from those in the EU.

The Windsor Framework safeguards the UK internal market and its core principles of market access. It removes constraints on UK-wide policymaking on alcohol duty, enabling NI to benefit from cuts on the duty on a pint of beer. There is a brand new green lane maintaining UK food safety standards, meaning the same food on supermarket shelves in NI and GB. Medicines will be provided across the UK on the basis of licences from UK authorities. Northern Ireland will now be able to take full advantage of the UK's new trade deals around the world and will remain out of the Common Agricultural Policy and Common Fisheries Policy.

Inherent in this new way forward is the prospect of significant divergence between the two distinct economies on the island of Ireland - from food and drink to plants and pets, building on the existing differences in every area of economic and political life such as services, migration, currency and taxation. This will require increased market surveillance North-South in some instances to ensure that there is no abuse of these arrangements to move goods across the international border from Northern Ireland into Ireland, and new requirements on Ireland and other EU Member States to ensure that sensitive products such as food are not moved illegally across that international border.