Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023

Considered in Grand Committee

Moved by

That the Grand Committee do consider the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023.

My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023, which were laid before the House on 4 September, be considered.

The purpose of the instrument before the Committee is to implement arrangements agreed under the Windsor Framework, which was announced by this Government in February this year. This framework fundamentally recasts the old Northern Ireland protocol to restore the smooth flow of trade within the UK internal market, safeguard Northern Ireland’s place in the union and address any concerns over a democratic deficit. Importantly, this instrument does not establish those arrangements themselves but provides Northern Irish authorities with the powers to ensure their proper functioning. This guarantees protection for Northern Irish consumers in line with that in the rest of the United Kingdom.

First, the Northern Ireland retail movement scheme establishes a new sustainable, long-term legal framework for trade in retail agri-food goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The new scheme will allow traders moving agri-food goods destined for the final consumer in Northern Ireland to benefit from a unique set of arrangements. These arrangements enable consignments to move based on a single certificate without routine physical checks. This will be on Great British public health, marketing and organics standards, as well as catch documentation requirements for certain species of fish.

In total, the Windsor Framework secures the disapplication of more than 60 EU regulations on goods moving to Northern Ireland via the scheme. The application of GB standards to these goods ensures a common approach across the UK. The scheme will be available to all such traders, including retailers, wholesalers, caterers and those providing food to public institutions such as schools and hospitals.

Secondly, the Northern Ireland plant health label regime will remove the requirement for plants for planting and used farming or forestry machinery to be accompanied by expensive phytosanitary certificates, costing businesses around £150 per movement. Instead, operators will be able to register and become authorised to issue and attach a Northern Ireland plant health label for goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. This will significantly reduce the costs for businesses moving these goods to Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland plant health label is based on the existing UK plant passport regime, which controls plant health in the rest of the UK, ensuring freedom from pests. Previously banned seed potatoes will once again be available in Northern Ireland from other parts of the UK and will also move under the Northern Ireland plant health label scheme. Specifically, this instrument will allow for the sufficient, pragmatic and proportionate enforcement of key elements within these new schemes.

First, as agri-foods entering Northern Ireland under the Northern Ireland retail movement scheme can now meet the same public health, marketing and organic standards that apply elsewhere in the UK, relevant bodies in Northern Ireland need the powers to ensure compliance with these standards. This instrument ensures that existing Northern Ireland powers can be used in respect of goods that move under the scheme, including the ability to remove non-compliant goods from sale and to act against non-compliant businesses. Such powers are already in place in Northern Ireland in respect of EU standards; as such, this does not represent a widening of enforcement powers or additional responsibility for businesses. Importantly, this will ensure the continued protection of public health, consumer interests and food safety in Northern Ireland, guaranteeing that consumers in Northern Ireland will benefit from the same high standards as the rest of the United Kingdom.

This instrument provides the necessary enforcement powers to ensure compliance with the Northern Ireland plant health label regime, in line with what already exists in the rest of the UK. It affects only businesses that make use of this regime and is no more burdensome than it is for British businesses operating within the plant passport regime. This will ensure that authorities in Great Britain and Northern Ireland are able to manage non-compliance with the Northern Ireland plant health label proportionately, utilising the existing domestic plant health enforcement regime. These measures are intended not to burden lawful traders but rather to create an equitable ground for businesses and protect the interests of consumers in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As noble Lords would expect, these measures will have no impact on traders who abide by the relevant Great British standards for agri-food goods and the terms and conditions of the Northern Ireland plant health label scheme.

As we move forward with the Windsor Framework, let us not forget its profound implications for trade and the economy. This framework is an innovative solution. It removes the Irish Sea border for goods remaining in the UK and provides a stable legal foundation for trade, allowing everyday goods to move more easily, while adhering to the highest standards and protecting biosecurity on the island of Ireland. These new arrangements ensure that consumers in Northern Ireland can access goods that are available across other parts of the UK and that they are protected by the same high standards as consumers elsewhere in the UK.

I hope I have reassured your Lordships of the purposes and aims of this statutory instrument as a critical part of the Windsor Framework. I hope noble Lords agree that this is a positive step forward for businesses and consumers. I beg to move.

My Lords, the ostensible purpose of the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023 is to make provision for the enforcement of GB standards rather than EU ones in Northern Ireland with respect to public health, marketing and organic products. That sounds like a step forward in efforts to repatriate powers from the EU to the UK. For reasons that I hope to demonstrate, however, quite the opposite is the case.

These regulations can be understood only if read in tandem with the Windsor Framework (Plant Health) Regulations 2023 and the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Public Health, Marketing and Organic Product Standards and Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations, to which they make repeated reference and which were also laid before Parliament the week before last. Furthermore, none of these regulations can be understood apart from Regulation (EU) 2023/1231 of the European Union—otherwise known as the “SPS regulation”—which was passed on 14 June this year and without which none of them make sense. That regulation is the sun around which the regulations we are considering today, and their fellow regulations, orbit, such that it is not possible to scrutinise and understand the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023 without also understanding Regulation (EU) 2023/1231.

Before I comment further on the said EU regulation for the purpose of understanding the regulations before us today, I will first set out its centrality to these enforcement regulations. Regulation 3(2) of the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023 states that, in the regulations, reference to “the SPS Regulation” is a reference to EU Regulation 2023/1231. Meanwhile, Regulation 9(1)(b) of these enforcement regulations defines where the enforcement provisions fall, which is subject to

“Article 1(2) and Annex I to the SPS Regulation”.

Moreover, the regulations reference

In that sense, anyone voting for the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023 would effectively be saying: we will ask for alternative border arrangements even though we know that, in doing so, we not only accept the reality of the border in the alternative border arrangements, rather than the removal of any sense of border in the Irish Sea, but consent to an arrangement that has at its heart the right of the EU to, in the final analysis, press for the most destructive possible expression of the border and its right and freedom to operate politically on the basis of that reality.

In recognising that fact we must, of course, not forget that that would be in addition to the full destructive manifestation of the border that the EU is already insisting on from 1 October with the advent of the red lane. There is no green lane default safeguard here for the UK, only an EU default safeguard to 100% red lane arrangements. Thus, far from removing any sense of border in the Irish Sea, the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023 authenticate and give life and credibility to an arrangement that cements in and makes permanent, as default, a full international border, cutting off Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Finally, I note in passing that, as well as being the subject of the Windsor Framework (Enforcement etc.) Regulations 2023, enforcement is also completely central to the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme) Regulation 2023, Regulation 11 of which requires the competent authorities to assess goods coming into Northern Ireland on the basis of potential risks, such as disease. However, Regulation 11(2)(b) and (d) to (f) then bizarrely define risk in terms of capacity to conduct checks with respect to available staff and facilities. An enforcement requirement is thus made and effectively withdrawn in the same regulation on grounds of lack of capacity. Is this not a cynical device for encouraging people to conclude in the aftermath of 1 October that Windsor has been a lot less disruptive than usual because this will prevent us seeing what it is really like until July 2025 when the border control posts are ready? Have His Majesty’s Government discussed with the EU the implications of Regulation 11(2)(b) and (d) to (f) on the capacity of the border to meet both the demands of EU Regulation 2023/1231 and the demands of the red lane between 1 October 2023 and 31 July 2025? Have His Majesty’s Government been forced to give an assurance to the EU that Regulation 11 will be repealed, in whole or in part, on 1 August 2025 on completion of the border control posts at Larne, Warrenpoint, Foyle and Belfast?

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his presentation of these Windsor Framework regulations. I have to declare an interest as a member of two of your Lordships’ House’s committees, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and the European Affairs Committee’s Sub-Committee on the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland. Last week in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee we considered these regulations.

I come to this debate as someone who supports the Windsor Framework and wants to see it implemented for the good of business development, so that people and businesses can avail themselves of access to the UK internal market and the EU single market. There needs to be a driver for that process. I note rather sadly that we do not have political institutions as per the Good Friday agreement up and running at the moment. I also note an indication on BBC Radio Ulster that the UK Government intend to drive on with the implementation, from their perspective, of the Windsor Framework. Can the Minister confirm that in summing up and whether that indicates that the Government have a little confidence in the resumption or restoration of political institutions?

Although I have indicated my support for the Windsor Framework, there are certain issues with the regulations, which were raised last week in our Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. There is a pattern across a lot of these SIs; there is a lack of a proper Explanatory Memorandum in some instances and of a proper impact assessment. The Explanatory Memorandum says:

“A De Minimis Assessment for this instrument has been completed”.

However, the advice given to our committee stated that there was a lack of a proper impact assessment. Maybe the Minister can advise us on why that was the case.

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, with whom I have the pleasure to serve on the Northern Ireland protocol Select Committee, to which she referred. I endorse what she said about the need to get resolution on veterinary medicines. We heard evidence last week, from the Ulster Farmers Union and others, about the serious implications of the failure to resolve that issue. The indications coming out of Brussels are that it is not interested in a solution that would guarantee the continued flow of Great Britain vaccines and other medicines for veterinary purposes to Northern Ireland. I would like a timescale from the Minister of when he expects farmers and the agri-food industry in Northern Ireland to be reassured that that matter will be resolved so that they can continue to access British veterinary vaccines and other medicines in the same way that they do now.

Unlike the noble Baroness who just spoke, I do not regard the Windsor Framework/Northern Ireland protocol as a fair and balanced resolution to our problems with the free flow of trade between parts of the United Kingdom. This is very much a process that has protected certain parts of the Belfast agreement, as amended by the St Andrews agreement—namely, the north-south arrangement—but that has completely trashed the east-west relationship and the strand 1 relationship at Stormont. We can see that because there are no functioning institutions of strands 1, 2 or 3. People say that the Windsor Framework and the protocol are designed to protect the Belfast agreement, but show me the evidence of that. It has trashed the Belfast agreement and its institutions.

The Windsor Framework is now being implemented by a series of statutory instruments, through both negative and affirmative resolution. The noble Baroness referred to news reports about the Government taking further powers—that may well be. It sometimes makes you wonder why they talk about wanting to get the Assembly back so much, because all they do is keep taking powers from it and devolved Ministers. There is not much regard for the Sewel convention or any of that, and then they ask people to go back and administer less and less of what they should be administering. For vast swathes of our economy and the agri-food industry, no Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly of any party—unionist, nationalist or whatever—or any MP from Northern Ireland has any powers to make any laws in those areas. We are told that the Assembly must get back to administer Northern Ireland, but those powers have been taken away from Northern Ireland and from elected representatives in the other place and this House.

Our party, the Democratic Unionist Party, made extensive submissions to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee; indeed, it was the only organisation to do so. I am glad that the committee has taken note of our concerns. It expressed concern about the lack of an impact assessment or even “basic information”, as it put it. It said that the absence of such information and the way in which secondary legislation is laid before Parliament are concerns that it has raised repeatedly.