HANSARD
Windsor Framework (Non-Commercial Movement of Pet Animals) Regulations 2024
- Motion to Approve
- 8:03 pm
- That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 10 October be approved.Relevant document: 4th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
- My Lords, the instrument before you provides for the introduction of the Northern Ireland pet travel scheme. The purpose of the instrument is to implement arrangements agreed under the Windsor Framework which were announced in February last year. The framework represents an important step forward for the people of Northern Ireland by significantly improving on the arrangements that existed under the original Northern Ireland protocol. This Government have been very clear in their intention to secure new, better arrangements for sanitary and phytosanitary matters with the EU. We are clear that we want to continue to simplify this process as far as possible in order to support those across the United Kingdom, whilst protecting our internal market.Turning to the SI itself, this scheme will simplify the requirements associated with moving pet dogs, cats and ferrets from Great Britain to Northern Ireland significantly. It replaces single-use animal health certificates with a free-of-charge lifelong travel document and removes the need for costly pet health treatments. Pet owners who travel frequently with their pets, or those who rely on the services of an assistance dog to travel independently, will benefit substantially from this change in approach. I am pleased to say that this benefit has been recognised by Guide Dogs UK specifically, which has noted the positive impact of removing single-use EU certificates on assistance dogs travelling to Northern Ireland.Movement of pets for other reasons, such as young assistance dogs being moved to Northern Ireland for training or the movement of police or military working dogs from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, will also benefit. This SI also reaffirms the Government’s commitment to unfettered access, in that those from Northern Ireland have no requirements whatever beyond the need for a microchip, as is good practice already and in line with this Government’s approach to high animal welfare standards. Finally, the SI empowers relevant competent authorities to carry out their respective responsibilities as part of the scheme in Great Britain and in Northern Ireland. This will ensure that the scheme is sufficiently robust and ensure that those travelling with their pets have the best experience possible.To summarise, the Windsor Framework is already successfully restoring the smooth flow of trade within the UK internal market by removing the burdens that have disrupted east-west trade, as well as safeguarding Northern Ireland’s place in the union. This instrument is essential in implementing those benefits: an international treaty negotiated by the last Government that this Government have committed to delivering in good faith. I hope noble Lords will agree that the Northern Ireland pet travel scheme delivers significant benefits for pet owners and for assistance dog users across the UK, and I urge all to support its implementation. I beg to move.
- Moved by
- At end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations treat pets travelling to Northern Ireland differently from those travelling to any other part of the United Kingdom.”
- I will not be quite as short as the Minister, because it is important that noble Lords understand this in a great deal more detail. Sometimes the words that sound very positive are not nearly as positive when you go into the detail. These regulations are in effect about a new aspect of the Irish Sea border that has not had expression until this point because of the grace periods.As we are an animal-loving nation, I am sure that this statutory instrument will resonate with the British public, perhaps more than the other ones that I and other Members have prayed against in the past. The draft Windsor Framework (Non-Commercial Movement of Pet Animals) Regulations 2024 will impact the everyday lives of people seeking to move for non-trading purposes from one part of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, to another, Northern Ireland, when they travel with a pet under the terms of the regulations.The experience of visiting Northern Ireland with your pet dog or cat, or even a ferret, will be made to feel like a visit to a foreign country. It will be possible for you to travel from GB to NI with pets, including guide dogs—despite what we were told in the past—only if you have ensured that, first, your pet is fitted with a microchip; and, secondly, you have successfully applied to join the Northern Ireland pet travel scheme and have a pet travel document, which amounts to a pet passport. Meeting the requirements for that document remain obscure, because their definition, and indeed the potential for their definition to be changed, rests not with this Parliament but with the EU Commission—in regulation 4(1). Thirdly, as you travel with your pets, you must submit to full documentary and identity Irish Sea border checks, subject to sanctions. Fourthly, and very importantly, you must sign a form saying you will not attempt to enter the Republic of Ireland.Of course, if your pet is found wanting in any way during the border checks, you will then suffer the inconvenience of being sent immediately to an SPS inspection facility, where you must remain with your animal unless and until you are permitted to leave. You could have your membership of the UK pet travel documents scheme suspended. So it is the fourth and final bullet point that makes these regulations particularly absurd, because it seeks to impose an Irish Sea border for internal UK movements while keeping the border for moving into the Republic. On the one hand, we are told that there can be no border across the island of Ireland, which is why there must be a border down the Irish Sea; but, on the other, the regulations before us do not comply with that logic. It is, by any measure, absurd to have both.
- 8:15 pm
- I will raise some issues that the Kennel Club has been concerned about and, like others, has not got satisfactory responses on. In all the regulations on microchipping for the four home countries, there are specific mentions of exemptions by vets. Each regulation on microchipping for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales has a phrase at the end that says, for example, that it
- “does not apply for as long as a veterinary surgeon certifies, on a form approved by the”
- Ministers, such as the Welsh or Scottish Ministers,
- “that microchipping would significantly compromise the dog’s health”.
- It does not say that they cannot travel; it says simply that it would compromise the dog’s health. This is in the methods of getting a chip used by all four of our home countries. Can the Minister tell me where, in these regulations, the same exemption is given? The Kennel Club wants to know. If not, why not? Has she made any assessment of the number of exemptions from the microchipping certificates that are currently active, short-term or permanent, in the UK?
- I turn to the cost. All these things are adding up. All the money spent on building the border posts comes at a huge cost to the taxpayer, but can the Minister give us some idea of the cost of all this extra bureaucracy ‘to take your pet from one part of our country to another? It is almost amazing that I have to say that: we are moving a pet from one part of the United Kingdom to another part, and need to have a statutory instrument, bureaucracy, regulations and added cost to do that. I would like to know what has been done about the costs. How much will it all cost?
- The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has said, as it usually says on Northern Ireland statutory instruments, that a wider consultation should have taken place. I wonder why that did not happen. Officials themselves are not clear about what it means and how it will work. Is it being made up as they go along? It certainly sounds like that when you ring up the helplines from either Defra or DAERA.
- I know that these regulations are better than those under the original protocol, as the Minister has already said. We all said at the time that it was absolutely outrageous that people would need to have rabies injections for their pets and all those sorts of things. There are fewer bits of paper to fill in, but the underlying principle is still there, and surely that is what we should be concerned about: the principle of treating animals and pets going to one part of the United Kingdom differently from those going to another.
- I also expect that the Minister will say that Northern Ireland to GB will have no restrictions—she has already suggested that. She is right, but can she explain this: when someone takes their pet to GB on a holiday or to visit someone, and on the way back is in the queue to get on the boat, how will anyone tell that they are from Northern Ireland? It is just wrong to say, as it does in the Explanatory Memorandum, that they
- “will not be subject to any checks”.
- Of course they will have to be subject to checks—maybe not every single one, but they will need to have checks if they are to prove that that person lives in Northern Ireland, is going back to Northern Ireland and does not need anything, while somebody else in the queue behind them is going to Northern Ireland on a visit to see a relative and needs a pet passport. Maybe the dog from Northern Ireland going back to Northern Ireland will have a little Ulster flag on it, while the dog coming from Wales or England will have a flag that says that they are coming from another part of the United Kingdom. The whole thing is just nonsense.
- Finally, I want us to remember why this is happening. It is not Brexit, but I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, will get up and say, “Ah, but you voted for Brexit. This is all about Brexit”. The reality is that this is happening precisely because Northern Ireland has not got Brexit. As we say repeatedly, it is still subject to EU rules and the EU could change the rules overnight.