Marking of Retail Goods Regulations 2025

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 5 June be approved.

My Lords, this instrument will help ensure the security of food supply to Northern Ireland and maintain consumer choice for the people of Northern Ireland. The purpose of this legislation is to deliver the UK Government’s long-standing public commitment to safeguard the supply of retail goods into Northern Ireland and protect the UK internal market, by providing for a contingency power to introduce “not for EU” labelling in Great Britain if required. It upholds commitments made under the Windsor Framework, reiterated in the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper, both of which commanded broad support across this House. It facilitates the movement of goods throughout the UK while also protecting the biosecurity of the island of Ireland.

I begin by setting out the background to this policy. The Windsor Framework, which replaced the original Northern Ireland protocol, was agreed between the United Kingdom and the European Union in February 2023. A key component of the Windsor Framework is the Northern Ireland retail movement scheme, which simplifies the movement of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. It removes the costly certification and controls that were necessary under the original Northern Ireland protocol and allows for goods to be moved on the basis of UK food safety standards. To benefit from these arrangements, business operators must label retail goods in scope of the scheme “not for EU”, and these labelling requirements have been introduced in phases, with the final tranche of products coming into scope on 1 July—tomorrow. From this date, a much larger group of retail goods will need to be labelled to be eligible to be moved via the scheme from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

Given the size of the retail market in Northern Ireland, which is approximately 3% of the entire UK market, certain businesses may decide that the cost of labelling their goods only to move them to Northern Ireland is too great. They may choose not to label, leading to product removal from the Northern Ireland market, known as delisting, if an alternate route to market is not available. This would negatively impact Northern Ireland citizens, since they would not have access to the same range and availability of food goods as the rest of the UK that they rightfully deserve. We do not believe that this is an acceptable outcome.

This brings me to the purpose of the regulations before us. The instrument provides a contingency power by which the Environment Secretary can issue a notice to require that a certain product be marked “not for EU” in order to be sold in Great Britain. Before doing so, the Secretary of State will consider a range of evidence. This includes intelligence from stakeholders and market monitoring data, the latter of which will highlight patterns in the distribution of retail goods throughout the UK internal market and highlight anomalies and changes as they arise.

By extending the labelling requirement for certain products to the much larger GB market, we will take away the incentive for businesses to remove products from Northern Ireland. It will use the size of the whole UK market as an economic incentive to label their goods. This ensures continued product availability and consumer choice in Northern Ireland and upholds the commitments we made in the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for laying out the regulations in detail. She will not be surprised that she has not convinced me. I hope that the short debate that we have tonight—even though there is not much interest on the Labour Back Benches or even the Conservative Back Benches—will get down in Hansard and people might read why many of us will be opposing these regulations.

One of the critical problems arising from the Northern Ireland protocol was the way in which—apart from the democratic aspect of disenfranchising people in 300 areas of law—it threatened Northern Ireland’s supply chain. This was said by many people, including noble Lords in this House, from the beginning. The Windsor Framework was supposed to fix that, but the regulations before us today come with Explanatory Notes that recognise that the Windsor Framework green lane “Not for EU” labour provisions, which come into effect tomorrow—in just a few hours’ time—threaten Northern Ireland’s supply chain.

Paragraph 5.11 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“A much greater range of products will be brought into scope of labelling requirements in July 2025, increasing the potential risk of product delisting. Therefore, the government requires a means of intervention to manage this risk and deter businesses from delisting products by providing a credible threat of enforcement”.

That all sounds very good. The chief executive officer of Marks & Spencer has described the labelling as “madness”. This madness is particularly pronounced in Northern Ireland, which those of us who live there can appreciate much better than those living in Great Britain.

The rationale for the application of “Not for EU” labels was to help protect the integrity of the EU single market, preventing goods produced in Great Britain crossing the border into the Republic of Ireland, the EU territory. The problem is, however, that these labels, which generate huge costs to the UK economy both in terms of packaging and threatening our supply chains, are completely useless.

GB goods tend to be cheaper than comparable goods in the Republic of Ireland, so there is a long-standing tendency for people from the Republic of Ireland to do their shopping over the border in Northern Ireland. Placing “Not for EU” labels on GB goods merely serves to highlight the fact that these are goods that it is perfectly legal for those from the Republic of Ireland—in the European Union—to buy, and they are likely to be cheaper than comparable goods back home because they have been produced in an economy that benefits from the supply chain economies of scale arising from being part of an economy of nearly 70 million, rather than 5 million.

The feeble regulations before us today—and I really do think they are feeble—seek to address the threat to Northern Ireland’s supply chain. They do so not by calling out the central injustice arising from the attempt by the European Union to disturb the integrity of a sovereign state in violation of international law by means of cutting it into two, through the imposition of a customs and international SPS border, and not by pointing out the central absurdity that the provision of “Not for EU” labels makes zero contribution to protecting the integrity of the EU single market and instead involves the UK having to engage in an act of national of self-harm by embracing needless additional packaging costs in relation to Northern Ireland that threaten our own supply chains. They do it by seeking to accommodate and make space for this injustice and absurdity.

The regulations fail for four reasons. The Government’s Explanatory Notes openly acknowledge that these regulations do not pretend to address the presenting problem simply by preventing supply chain breakdown. We are supposed to welcome them because they will provide a means of trying to fix supply chain breakdown after it has taken place. Paragraph 6.5 says that the legislation

“enables the Secretary of State to take swift action to prevent or reverse product delisting from the Northern Ireland market”.

Quite how these regulations will enable the Government to prevent supply chain breakdown, when they need to demonstrate a problem that merits mandating “Not for EU” labels, is completely unclear. Even if such a means existed, the critical point is that the Government are saying that at least part of their purpose is to try to reverse supply chain breakdown after it has happened.

Let us think about that. UK citizens in Northern Ireland, who have already been told we must make do with being disfranchised in all those areas of law, are now being told we must also make do with regular supply chain breakdowns. We are supposed to be satisfied with a government promise that they will try to reverse it. I respectfully suggest that any other self-respecting country in the world would not bow down to the demands of other countries when doing so has the effect of not only agreeing to the partial disfranchisement of its citizens but causing them to live with supply chain breakdowns. Whatever happened to the talk that came from so many people about Northern Ireland’s privileged position as a result of the Irish Sea border? The privilege, perhaps, of having to live with the constant threat of supply chain breakdown is a privilege we can do without, and to which no part of the United Kingdom should be subject.

Secondly, the mechanisms proposed by these regulations are highly dubious, involving government in trying to micromanage the flow of goods, and come straight out of some kind of failed command economy playbook. The legislation smacks of desperation and looks more like the Government trying to cover their back in relation to their legal obligations to have special regard to Northern Ireland’s place in the UK customs territory, as Section 46(1)(b) of the UK Internal Market Act 2020 says.

Thirdly, the solution fails before it starts and makes no attempt to address supply chain breakdown from GB firms employing up to 49 people. This is a big deal, because consumers depend on being able to access smaller companies as well as larger ones to enjoy diversity and choice. Often it is the smaller companies that meet the niche markets, and it would seem that that is not going to matter—there will be no consumer choice in Northern Ireland.

Fourthly, these regulations fail because they continue to pretend that “not for EU” labelling requirements provide a useful function which is worth accommodating, when they do nothing more than impose needless packaging costs on GB companies, threatening the Northern Ireland supply chain. If you visit supermarkets on the Northern Ireland side of the border, you will find their car parks contain a significant number of cars from the Republic that take home with them lots of “not for EU” labelled goods because there is no law against their purchase and they are, on average, as I said, cheaper than comparable Republic of Ireland goods.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the regulations before us today concerns the manner in which the Government sought to defend them in another place when they were debated there last Monday. The honourable Member for North Antrim, Jim Allister, pointed out that there were many reasons to think that the regulations before us today, depending as they do on the failed methodologies of command economies, would fail, so that the trade diversion that the Government themselves admit in the relevant Explanatory Notes constitutes a clear and present danger would likely take place without any effective countervailing action.

Jim Allister further pointed out that this would constitute a major problem for the Government because it would result in more trade diversion and the violation of the Northern Ireland protocol’s own safeguards set out in Article 16:

“If the application of this Protocol leads to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the Union or the United Kingdom may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures”.