[Relevant documents: Oral evidence taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on 21 April, 28 April, 16 June and 15 July 2021 on Brexit and the Northern Ireland Protocol, HC676.]
Before we begin, I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking in the debate, in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of Commons Commission. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. This can be done either at the testing centre in the House, or at home. Please also give each other and members of staff space when seated, and when entering and leaving the room.
That this House has considered the matter of securing a veterinary agreement in the Northern Ireland Protocol.
It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your auspices, Ms Rees, and I am delighted to speak on this really important issue.
I want to go back a little over two years and quote what the Prime Minister said when asked about form-filling as a result of the Johnson protocol, which he paraded as a triumph of his negotiating skills. He told the world:
“If somebody asks you to do that, tell them to ring up the Prime Minister and I will direct them to throw that form in the bin…There will be no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind. You will have unfettered access.”
Two years have gone by. If it were two days, perhaps we would all say, “Let’s just wait and see.” If it were even two weeks or two months, we might say, “We’ll give the Prime Minister a chance to negotiate a solution.” But two years is outrageous.
This debate is not about the Johnson protocol, about which I know those hon. Members present have different views. I say to my friends in the Democratic Unionist party that the majority of people in Northern Ireland are in favour of the protocol, but I know that there are serious doubts about it. This debate is not about the protocol but about the operation of the protocol, an issue on which there is widespread agreement in Northern Ireland.
The situation in Northern Ireland at the moment is quite dangerous. It is building up tensions and concerns, and is possibly being manipulated to the extent that the loyalist community in particular fear for their future. That is why it is irresponsible that, two years on, we have no solution.
The sanitary and phytosanitary controls, which will come fully into operation at some point, are already having an impact, but it is important to acknowledge the very welcome grace periods for chilled meats and medicines. Lord Frost told the Lords last week that he expects those grace periods to continue at least until the end of the year and beyond if negotiations are constructive. Does the Minister expect the grace periods to continue? That really does matter.
I thank the hon. Member for introducing the debate. The very point that he is making is one that is obvious to us. Certainly for my party, including my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart), who is sitting here beside me, the problem is one not only of cost but of bureaucracy, and people are just turned off. In the past they had a simple system allowing them to bring stuff from the UK mainland to Northern Ireland, but suddenly there are all these difficulties. One quick example is the seeds sector for plants and flowers. If someone wants to buy a wee packet of seeds, there is an added £10 or £15 charge, which is ridiculous for a seed packet that costs about £2.50.
The hon. Member is absolutely right. It is possible to transport used farm equipment without the need for many checks, and yet a packet of seeds, which is produced in a controlled way, has to have that bureaucracy and those checks, so he is right to be concerned. The central point is that is the bureaucracy that is frustrating for businesses in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
There is a question for the Minister about the uncertainty. Traders have told us that the trader support service is working well. I am sure that is true, but they also make the point that an education process is needed for producers in Great Britain. How far along are we in securing that process of public education?
As I have said, the damage is already here and now. The sheep industry in Northern Ireland, for example, faces scrapie controls, which means that it will be three years before some sheep farmers can sell their goods into the GB market. Cattle breeders also face uncertainty because of the new regulatory regime. That is not because they move cattle—generally they move fertilised products and suchlike—but because they cannot plan for the future. That is disastrous for the agricultural industry.
The chief executive of Lynas Foodservice, the biggest food processor in Northern Ireland, has pointed out that there are eight different bureaucratic processes to bring mozzarella from Great Britain into Northern Ireland. He estimates that it will cost the business some £50,000 a year to service that requirement. It can do that because it is big, but a small producer cannot compete with that, so supply is going to be a real issue.
The Conservative manifesto was clear—I hope there is still common ground on this—that there would be no
“compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards.”
I hope the Minister will repeat that commitment, because I know it is the mantra that the Government insist on. If that is true, it should be very easy for us to move towards an SPS veterinary agreement. The CBI has talked about the need for a
I thank the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for giving us a chance to participate in this debate. To be fair to him, I think that he and I know these issues. On the Northern Ireland protocol we have very different points of view, but this debate is about the difficulties that the Northern Ireland protocol has brought in through the veterinary agreement. So I will speak about that, because that is perhaps where we will find the unified approach—which I think is what we are trying to do—to overcome the problems.
I am so pleased once again to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), and the Minister; it is always a pleasure to engage with the Minister in debates in this Chamber.
I will also pay a special tribute to the spokesperson for the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson). I had the opportunity to invite him to my constituency and I must say that it was a wonderful chance to engage with him. He himself had asked for such an invitation and I was very pleased to make it happen. He could find out what the Unionist people were saying and thinking, which gave him, as he told me himself, the chance to understand better the psyche of those of us in Unionism and what the key issues for us are. By the way, he is a very engaging person—I say that very honestly—and I know that all the people from my constituency who met him were certainly impressed by him. I will just put that on the record. I have said it to him before, but now it will be in Hansard for the future.
This issue is a very evocative one for me, for my party and indeed for a huge majority of the people I represent. I will give just one example of the Northern Ireland protocol working. To be fair, it is not a veterinary issue, but in just the last week parents and children have been inconvenienced at Christmas—not my grandchildren, by the way, but other grandchildren. To get their Barbie Dream House on Amazon, people have to pay an extra £35 to buy it in Northern Ireland. It is not just the inconvenience but, as the hon. Member for Rochdale said, the cost. It is almost as though £35 or £40 was just added on.
My hon. Friend is making extremely valid points and has raised a number of issues. Daily, businesses highlight to us that they cannot get seed potatoes into Northern Ireland; we cannot get approval for plant protection products; more recently, the Woodland Trust cannot bring its community tree packs into Northern Ireland for the Queen’s Green Canopy because it creates some sort of a risk. How is a tree coming from Great Britain to Northern Ireland a risk? It is not; it needs sorted.
I have sympathy with what is being proposed here today. A common SPS area would be beneficial. However, it does not deal with the protocol regulations in their entirety. The message today, if my hon. Friend agrees, is that the protocol needs to go. It needs to be fixed, and it therefore needs to go in its entirety. We need to enter new negotiations and try to get a sensible, common-sense way forward.
I thank my hon. Friend and colleague for that intervention. I absolutely agree. I know this debate is about the machinations of the protocol, but we are very clear where we stand. We are against the protocol per se, for the reasons covered in this debate, but also for reasons far beyond them.
My hon. Friend has stolen two of my examples. The first was seed potatoes. Speaking in a debate here last week, the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) mentioned seed potatoes, where there are clear issues for us. My hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) has been very much at the forefront of trying to address some of those issues. The seed potato sector in Northern Ireland was doing great, but it has lost its way because of the Northern Ireland protocol and veterinary issues.
On the trees, it seems unrealistic that we cannot get in Northern Ireland the trees that the Woodland Trust and others are planting on behalf of schools across the rest of the United Kingdom—in England, Scotland and Wales. Really? They were okay on 31 December 2020, but they did not seem to be okay on 1 January 2021.
I will give another example. I shall not go on too long about this, but I want to have it on the record. One of my constituents from Ballygowan in Strangford bought three horses from England in February or March this year. She was not aware that there would be any problems for them to come over, but when she got them to the harbour she was told she could not bring them in, even though the papers, pedigrees and licences on medical health were all right. She could not bring them in because of the veterinary arrangements in the Northern Ireland protocol. They were held in quarantine for five to six weeks. Only on the intervention of our colleague, Edwin Poots, the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, were they released from quarantine at the harbour to their new home in Ballygowan. Frustration does not get where we are on this.
Thank you, Jim Shannon. I think we are all grateful that you shortened your remarks by at least two minutes, because Christmas is coming, I have been told.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I thank the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) for bringing the debate and for his long-standing and genuine commitment to achieving good outcomes for Northern Ireland. I know that is a common cause for many hon. Members across the House, for which we are grateful.
Divergence and potential divergence on veterinary and SPS arrangements is the reason for the vast majority of checks between Britain and Northern Ireland since Brexit. Stripping out the politics, it is worth saying that the island of Ireland has always been counted as one single epidemiological and veterinary unit. That long predates Brexit and has offered protection for biodiversity, agri-foods and farming generally. Hon. Members will remember that foot and mouth disease did not ravage the island of Ireland because we were protected by those checks.
I will defer as always to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on farming matters—South Belfast is not a farming constituency—but moving organic material in the form of soil had not been allowed before Brexit, because of the SPS arrangement. Those high quality standards have offered protection and given a unique selling point to Northern Ireland farmers and producers for many years. That is what we do: we produce high-quality goods and sell them to people who wish to buy high-quality goods. As far as I am aware, there is no demand to drop those standards. For what it is worth, I do not see demand to drop those standards in Britain, either.
I am a member of the UK Trade and Business Commission, which has MPs from across the House, including from the Democratic Unionist party. Over the last year, we have heard evidence on all sorts of trading and business issues from all sorts of sectors. The clear message from a range of businesses is that they value those high standards and do not want to drop them. People say that we will have higher standards in Britain—knock yourself out. It is a bit like going to a museum where the minimum donation is £5. If someone wants to put £20 in there, that is absolutely fine. The minimum standards can still be agreed, and Britain can exceed them if it wants to. So it is genuinely perplexing to me that the UK Government would not consider a veterinary arrangement. The EU even offered to sunset it, so that in a few years, when Britain worked out what it wanted from Brexit, that agreement could dissolve and a different set of arrangements could exist. Genuinely, I can only put that decision down to ideological reasons, because I do not see a demand for it from UK businesses or consumers.
I thank the hon. Lady for her measured delivery of that point. The issue may not be as clear as she refers to. The soil was okay at Hillmount Nursery in my constituency before 31 December, and it was no different afterwards. The issue was not that the UK or Northern Ireland were going to do anything different. We want to obey the same rules. So the rules were there that we were going to adhere to.
The point is that the UK has made it very clear that it will not sign up to commit to those rules. That is fundamentally the issue—that the UK has not agreed, as a continuum, to adhere to those rules. Yes, obviously the soil has not changed over the new year, so I understand some of the frustrations, but those could be addressed by exactly the sort of veterinary arrangement that the hon. Member for Rochdale suggests, and that businesses across the UK have been suggesting. It is perplexing to me that all of the parties across the board in Northern Ireland did not get together to call for that, because at different times all of them said that an SPS arrangement would be acceptable. That unanimity and that consistency of message from Northern Ireland’s political representatives would have been very powerful.
In the absence of that SPS arrangement, which I would love to see, the protocol is the show in town at the moment. It is nobody’s first choice; nobody loves it; nobody would have designed it. It is a bit like that thing about getting directions in Ireland—“I wouldn’t start from here,” and you would not start from the protocol, but the reality is that all the other options have been taken off the table. I genuinely understand the frustration and confusion of constituents and consumers, reflected by the hon. Members for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) and for Strangford. They say that all of a sudden the rules are different, but that is because of Brexit, which in every way was always going to mean barriers. Brexit is, by definition, a set of trade barriers. That is why some of the rules have changed. In Northern Ireland, businesses were clear before the referendum that they were very happy with the status quo—being able to trade north, south, east and west.
The hon. Lady makes a valid point. Some of the regulations and rules brought in at this point in time are Brexit-related. However, will she not accept that more are actually protocol-related? Had NI left the EU on the same grounds as GB, we would not be in this position and would not be dealing with issues such as seed potatoes, the Queen’s canopy and all the others listed here today.
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Export health certificates have already come into operation for goods being transported from Great Britain to the European Union, and from GB to Northern Ireland. Aodhán Connolly, convenor of the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group, told both the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee and the International Trade Committee that there is no food shortage—that has to be acknowledged—but that not everything is perfect. Big supermarkets in Northern Ireland usually stock between 40,000 to 50,000 lines; in the worst case there was a shortage of 600 lines, but in better cases the figure is in the tens. Therefore, there is no food shortage, but there are some specific shortages. A friend told me recently that she could not get flour or vanilla. Such things are important for some people, and we ought to acknowledge that there are shortages.
Of course, trade volumes are down. Earlier this year, pork sales from GB were down some 70%, and piglets were going to be slaughtered because farmers simply could not sell them on the open market. That was some time ago, but can the Minister provide an update on how trade has been affected. Even with the grace periods, and even though the export health certificates have come into operation only recently, the reality is that the volume of sales has gone down. I have heard very different estimates, so it would be helpful if the Minister could update us?
Under the SPS regime there is a need for forms and documents. Vets have to certify the fitness of animals, either live or slaughtered, and there is a certification process for food products as well. Vets also have to check the registration number of vehicles, to guarantee that they are the same ones that originally carried the food. We do not know exactly how that will work for GB to Northern Ireland. We do know, however, how it works for GB into the European Union, because at the port of Dublin there are physical checks on 4% to 5% of goods, and documentary checks on up to 30%. That is a major barrier to trade for GB producers.
The chief veterinary officer for Northern Ireland says that they need 27 vets to do the checking work that will now be required at the ports, but only half that number are available. There is a real question for the Minister about the number of vets available—not simply at the ports in Northern Ireland, but across GB—to ensure that GB producers can sell to Northern Ireland.
There is already a cost to us in Great Britain and to the EU, and this does not just apply to Northern Ireland. Welsh lamb and Scottish fishery products are also affected, as are the processed foods that the whole of Great Britain sells in considerable numbers. There are, however, real questions, which my Northern Ireland colleagues will want to hear addressed, about whether GB producers will consider it worth selling to Northern Ireland in particular. Supply chains already face challenges and the biggest issue is that of uncertainty. I do not know how much of an answer the Minister will be able to give us but, two years on, producers still have uncertainty hanging over them and are asking whether it is reasonable for them to sell to a relatively small market in Northern Ireland when the alternative is simply not to go through the hassle involved.
“bespoke, modern UK-EU Veterinary Agreement”,
specific for Northern Ireland within the context of the protocol. That is supported by Retail NI, the Ulster Farmers Union and every party represented in Stormont. Oddly, it is one of the things that everyone agrees on—as well as that there should be no amnesty for those who committed murder during the troubles. It would be a great unifier if it was not such a negative thing. We should be able to get that agreement.
The Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in February that the Government want to work on a veterinary agreement so that they can secure the flow of goods and improve the forms. Amen to that. The EU Vice-President told us that a veterinary agreement was “on the table”. Everybody is in favour of it, so what is stopping us? One thing that is stopping us—and the Minister has seen a way to address this—is the lack of trust and the lack of good faith that has been built up. The public diplomacy and rhetoric have been massively unhelpful. It is not something political or a shouting game, but that is what it has become. That has been very unhelpful and it has led to cynicism.
The Minister might want to say that the real ambition is to achieve a trade deal with the United States—not because that would compensate for the trade we have lost with the EU, but because it would allow the Prime Minister to stand up with the big banner headline and say, Donald Trump-style, “I have done a great trade deal”. That is not enough, however, if the price is lower food standards coming into our market, and it is certainly not enough if it prejudices our capacity to deliver a veterinary agreement that could make things easier. Ironically, even in the context of a US trade deal, President Biden has said that he sees no barrier to there being a veterinary agreement between the EU and the UK to protect the situation in Northern Ireland and the protocol.
There are two different models that we can look at. The first is probably a variation of the New Zealand deal, which I know is something that the Government have thought about. It has advantages. I have talked about between 4% and 5% of goods being subject to physical checks in Dublin. If the New Zealand example worked for us, that figure would go down to 2% and documentary checks would go from 30% to 10%. Those are still barriers, though, and the Minister should not underestimate that they would be real for businesses.
The other, much more attractive option is what the EU calls dynamic alignment. In actual fact, we are aligned at the moment. We have not moved our food standards, and nor has the EU. What people have talked about is the possibility of a temporary agreement, which could of course have a guillotine and could be terminated if we sign up to the Australian deal, the New Zealand deal or the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-pacific partnership. We could have a guillotine and move on, but let us have that temporary veterinary agreement, which would allow alignment and enable us to get rid of all the form-filling and other problems. That is the real thing we should play for. So, I ask the Minister, why not?
Well, to a degree we know why not—it is because Lord Frost has ruled it out, saying that he has grave doubts about how long it would take. Actually, that is nonsense—and I hope that the Minister in turn will also tell Lord Frost that it is nonsense—because it would take almost no time. It is the basis on which we were operating 12 months ago, and it would simply mean reverting to a reality already known to businesses in Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the EU.
If we can get this issue right, there is something enormous to be gained, because it would unlock not only the Northern Ireland protocol but the issues experienced GB businesses trading with the rest of the EU. That is something big and really important, and it would stop the erosion of trade.
My final point is that we need to move on to some form of trusted trader scheme. It ought to be easily achievable. It is not magic; it is a very easy thing to achieve. Of course it requires work but, two years on, that work should already have been done.
Perhaps what we really need is a trusted negotiator scheme, and perhaps that would not involve the current Prime Minister. That may sound trivial but this is a serious point, because as long as people play politics with this issue, they will get it wrong. If we can consider the needs of the people of Northern Ireland and the needs of businesses in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we can begin to come up with a real solution. It takes a little bit of imagination—not very much—but it takes a lot of political will, and that is what the Minister has to persuade us exists in the Government today.
Here is another example. A lady who wanted to buy a rug for her horse made inquiries, as she did every year, about buying it on the UK mainland, and was shocked to find that its price had suddenly jumped from £40 to £65. She was quite annoyed at having to spend the extra money; and when she agreed to pay the extra £25, she was then informed that they would not send the rug anyway—the paperwork and the bureaucracy was so great. That was a veterinary issue for a person who has horses and understands those issues—great difficulties.
To be fair, the Minister understands the issues; we will not be telling the hon. Lady anything that she does not already know, but these are our frustrations about the protocol. These issues are not just inconvenient for business people; they are challenging the viability of their very businesses, from those who cannot supply motor parts, parts for lawnmowers or parts for mobility scooters, to the businessman whose supplies have been cut by over a third because of paperwork.
The hon. Member for Rochdale referred to tractors and machinery, and I will provide some examples from my constituency. Tractors must be scrupulously cleaned. If they have any mud or muck on them they cannot come across, even though, on 31 December 2020, that was perfectly acceptable. Did the world change on 1 January 2021? This makes me think that it did. Although we obviously cannot see the change, the EU certainly found a reason to change. The central theme of my speech will be the EU’s attitude and the obstructions that it is putting in place in relation to this issue.
The Northern Ireland protocol is affecting every aspect of life, and as we have said before—and I must put it on record because it is our party’s position—it has to go. It is not fit for purpose; it is massively affecting the quality of life, the cost of living and the rights of people in my constituency of Strangford and across the whole of Northern Ireland. I could, although I will not, speak for days on this issue. Everyone would say, “Look: it’s getting dark, Jim.” I will not do that, but there are so many examples that I could cite to reinforce the points that the hon. Member for Rochdale has made. I am sure that all of my comments on this topic in the House could well amount to a day’s worth—I, at least, definitely sometimes felt as though I was going on for days and days. The reason that I did so, and will continue to do so, is simple: the protocol is unfair, discriminatory and constitutionally unacceptable.
I turn to the specifics of today’s debate, to which the hon. Member for Rochdale referred and about which I want to speak. I contacted the Ulster Farmers Union—I declare an interest as a member of the union—and they have said that we must have a veterinary agreement immediately to survive this impasse. So that is the Ulster Farmers Union, which represents the majority of farmers in Northern Ireland—not all, because, I believe, the Irish Farmers’ Association has a lot of members in the west of the Province. The Ulster Farmers Union said:
“A veterinary agreement could remove up to 80% of checks and documentation that would otherwise be needed. It will support the agri-food and retail industries as well as farming and will keep prices low and choice high for NI families…even a time-limited agreement would assist us in the short and medium term and provide some relief to the current pressures—both trade and social.”
The Ulster Farmers Union has a very large membership. All of my neighbours in the Ards peninsula—I live on a farm as well—are members. That is not just because the insurance premiums are fairly keen but because, in all honesty, it represents us very well.
Farmers cannot wait for further machinations as the Government attempt to reason with the unreasonable. It has been made abundantly clear by the treatment of the European Commission and the manner in which Unionist people are spoken of in those circles that this protocol is not a matter of practicality for the EU; for them it is a matter of pride. They are out to beat us and are using the Northern Ireland protocol as a method to do that. Their pride was hurt, and the saying that hurt people hurt other people is true here.
I have to put on record my disquiet and anger at the tone and the methodology of the EU and how they have treated us. They are determined to inflict as much pain on the Brits as they look upon it. I would just say this: I am a Brit. I am very proud to carry a British passport. I am very proud to be a member of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. When they attack the Brits, they are attacking us as well, so I feel quite angered at how the EU have gone at this. We are not to be the conduit to inflict that pain.
I have two more examples—no more, because they all illustrate the same issue over and over. In his introduction, the hon. Member for Rochdale referred to the movement of cattle. I have been incredulous to hear some of these things. My farmers on the Ards peninsula have cows of a very high pedigree. They sell their bulls and cows all over the United Kingdom. This year, some of them phoned me as they were taking their bulls to market. These bulls are worth about £20,000 or £25,000 on the market when they take them across to the mainland and to Scotland. They informed me that if they went to the market sale on the mainland and they did not perchance happen to sell that bull or cow, they would have to then apply for a licence to keep there the bull or cow that they were hoping to sell. It would have to stay in quarantine for five to six weeks. Fortunately, they did sell them, but the possibility of not selling them meant that the cost factor arose, and that is something that I have great concerns over. The situation is affecting agriculture. It is affecting cattle. I am very concerned.
I said at the start that we in Northern Ireland were being used as a stick to beat the British for daring to leave the EU. Nothing said or done since has altered that opinion. The path forward is clear—I put it on the record. It is to trigger article 16. Do it sooner rather than later; do it right away. The conditions have been met and these intensive talks, which were make or break, are now two months down the line. I am not involved in those negotiations, which may be a good thing, but something is glaringly obvious to those of us on the sidelines. The insulting play for power is not to be borne by us in Northern Ireland any longer. It cannot be borne any longer by anyone.
I thank everyone for their patience, and I will conclude with this. I am aware that discussions are ongoing but progress is not. In the absence of any clear progress, I believe—I say this with respect—that the Government are left with no option other than to trigger article 16. Fulfil your word. Refuse to be made fools of by the Europeans for one second longer. Bring Northern Ireland back from the sidelines and into the fold once more. I believe that “Grin and bear it” is no longer an option. I urge Government and my Minister to make the right choice. I know it may not be the Minister’s choice on the protocol, but I hope it is on the veterinary issue. Make it quick; enough is enough. Stop the toing and froing, knock the protocol on the head and make a final decision that the protocol can no longer rise again.
As for our obeying these rules until new year’s eve and the question of what the difference is now, the difference is that the UK spent five years saying, “We don’t play by anybody’s rules,” so it is difficult now to get everybody to stick by particular rules. This is not the time or place—Christmas is coming—to get into the minutiae of global trade rules, but it is around having an identifiable set of rules and it is around preventing a thousand cliff edges. If on 1 January the UK says it will no longer adhere to a standard on soil and on 2 January says it will no longer adhere to a standard on the temperature of cows or whatever, we will create cliff edge after cliff edge. In the absence of a set of rules, businesses cannot possibly compete.