The UK has launched an attempt to substantially rewrite the Northern Ireland protocol, as the Brexit minister said “we cannot go on as we are”.
Brexit minister David Frost and Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis outlined plans on Wednesday for a blueprint for rewriting the Northern Ireland protocol which prime minister Boris Johnson signed the UK up to in 2019.
The plans were laid out in both Houses of Parliament, with Frost speaking in the House of Lords and Lewis in the House of Commons.
Frost and Lewis said: “as we have sought to operate the protocol, it is clear that its burdens have been the source of considerable - and ongoing - disruption to lives and livelihoods,” noting reduced availability of products in supermarkets and suppliers no longer selling into Northern Ireland.
They also noted difficulties in moving chilled meats, medicines, live animals, plants and seeds into Northern Ireland, blaming excessive bureaucracy.
“Nowhere is this more visible than in the fact that the Northern Ireland Executive conducts 20% of all the EU documentary checks on products of animal origin - despite a population of only 1.8 million people.”
They also warned that “these burdens will worsen, not improve over time, as grace periods expire – leaving businesses facing ever more unsustainable burdens.”
Frost called on the EU to agree a temporary “standstill” on enforcement of the protocol, while it drafts its new proposals in full.
The announcement comes after M&S chair Archie Norman wrote a letter to Frost outlining the issues facing retailers trading in the UK and in Northern Ireland under the protocol.
In the letter, Norman said the protocol was “very threatening” to M&S’ Northern Irish business and said the way the regime was being implemented was “pointless and Byzantine”.
He said currently M&S had to fill in 40,000 pages of paperwork per week to ship food products into Ireland due to food safety regulations, noting that in October that would rise to 120,000 pages.
“One error in these documents, which can be completely unrelated to food safety – for example a typing error on a SKU code – leads to an entire truck of 650 items being refused.”
Proposed changes
While both noted they believed the UK had grounds for triggering Article 16 of the protocol, which enables either the UK or EU to suspend part of the arrangements in extreme circumstances, Frost said “we concluded that it is not the right moment to do so.”
In a foreword to the 28-page document, Frost and Lewis said the proposals will “not dispense with many of its [Northern Ireland protocol] concepts” but hoped to create “a stronger long-term foundation to achieve shared interests” with the EU.
In the paper, the UK government is “willing to explore exceptional arrangements around data sharing and cooperation” and “penalties in legislation to deter those looking to move non-compliant products from Northern Ireland to Ireland”.
It also proposes “a full dual regulatory regime” that would allow manufactured, plant or animal goods to “be able to circulate within Northern Ireland if they meet UK or EU rules”.
“Is this bad faith or simple incompetence?”
Shadow Northern Ireland secretary Louise Haigh excoriated the proposals. “The country will be asking: is this bad faith or simple incompetence?” she said, adding that instability had “destroyed trust in the UK government – an essential component of the Good Friday agreement”.
Northern Ireland Retail Consortium’s Aodhán Connolly has called on the UK and the EU to find a mutual solution. “Without this, there can be no stability. This could also have severe consequences for consumers across the UK”.
A statement issued by EU vice president Maroš Šefčovič said the European Union “will continue to engage with the UK” on the proposals made on July 21, but reiterated the EU’s position that it would not renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement.
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