Debate contribution: Great Britain to Northern Ireland Trade

Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on 16 September 2024.

MLA

Dr Steve Aiken OBE

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

16 September 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Great Britain to Northern Ireland Trade

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4532577

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Before I start, I am a bit disappointed that neither the First Minister nor the deputy First Minister made themselves available for the debate. As we go through it, we will understand that the issues of trade diversion that we are already beginning to see are significant. Those of us who have the misfortune to sit on the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee, as some who are sitting here do, understand the importance and implication of that word "significant" and what it means. The road haulage industry is a vital part of the logistics lifeblood of our economy. Without the smooth and timely operation of its services, much of our just-enough, just-in-time supermarket, manufacturing, food and e-commerce services would come to a grinding halt, with massive implications for every sector of life in Northern Ireland. The regular transportation of goods into Northern Ireland from the rest of our nation by ferry and air freight, and in the form of everything from bulk loads to small parcels, is what maintains the so-far-seamless integration and interdependence of our economy with our largest trading partner, the rest of our country, the United Kingdom. Today, the regular flow of lorries, ferries and aircraft means that whatever we have on supermarket shelves and in our storerooms is the same as that in England, Scotland and Wales and is generally a similar price with similar availability. That so-far-seamless stream has been maintained, but, as of the end of this month, the requirements of the UK internal market scheme — the green lane — will come into force. Of those changes, the logistics industry states:

"insufficient clarity has been provided about the new arrangements,"

and that many companies — public and, more forcefully, private — have said to us that it is likely to disrupt trade. It is already disrupting trade. However, the present Government and the previous one stated, quite categorically, that there are to be no disruptions to trade; there is to be a seamless market and there needs to be a seamless transfer. The previous Conservative Government went so far as to state that there was no border in the Irish Sea, despite every piece of evidence showing otherwise, and that seamless movement across the narrow stretch of water between us will continue. The present Labour Government stated that the combination of mitigations, derogations and — to use Secretary of State, Hilary Benn's, words — the operation of the Windsor framework "in good faith" would see that there was minimal or no disruption. At the end of this month, however, new arrangements will come into force. A quick glance at the government website will show what the new arrangements are. Some would have us believe that there will be only minimal requirements from the end of the month, when there are few or none now, but there will be four categories at the end of the month. Please bear with me on this, Members. The categories for goods sent by a business in Great Britain to a business in Northern Ireland are: business to consumer, consumer to business, consumer to consumer and business to business. I hope that you are following this. To support those four categories, up to 27 steps need to be taken in order to send goods and parcels to Northern Ireland from the rest of our nation, along with, for good measure, 10 additional requirements to become an authorised carrier and a requirement to register with the UK internal market scheme. You will be glad to know that I will not be reading out every one of the requirements, but suffice it to say that there are a few of them, and I will bring those up. Some are quite obvious. They include: carrier name; date of delivery; name and address of sender in Great Britain; name and address of recipient in Northern Ireland; number of items; value, where known; parcel reference tracking number; and a six-digit commodity code, which is generated by the authorised carrier based on the goods description — you will be glad to know that HMRC is working with carriers to support them to produce those commodity codes. The requirements also include: the name of a representative that the carrier will deliver the parcel to; supporting documents, with, where relevant, a reference number for documents such as certificates and licences that are produced in support of the movement; the numbers of the items in a parcel, which has to be done using the sequential numbers of the items contained in each parcel, for example, "1, 2, 3" — I am glad that HMRC spelled that out. They also include: total value of goods in the parcel; amount invoiced; place of delivery if different from the address of the recipient; gross weight of the parcel, with weight limits of individual packages not to exceed 31·5 kg if the parcel contains more than one item, or 100 kg if it contains a single item; and a goods description of each item. Are you following me so far? You can only use that lane if you follow the 10 requirements of being an authorised carrier. You must be established in the UK, and if you are not established in Northern Ireland, you must have an indirect customs representative established in Northern Ireland. A customs representative, but bear in mind that that is not a customs requirement — or so we thought.

You must have a high level of control of your operations, including through a system to manage commercial and transport records, and you must be able to demonstrate that you can show them. You must be able to determine whether the parcels should follow the B2C, C2B or C2C arrangements using information from the sender of the parcel. You need to collect and provide that data on things like parcel movements to HMRC, based on commercial information that you receive from the sender, collected from shipment postage as purchased, and also for various other goods and delivery systems. All those data requirements are helpfully laid out on a government website, which I could not access yesterday because it had crashed. You will also be required to work closely with HMRC to combat attempts to use the arrangements for consumer parcels for smuggling. HMRC will work with carriers in preparation for tackling this risk.

All those things that do not happen now are going to happen at the end of this month. I hope that Members have followed all those requirements. Many businesses, including large ones, are incredulous at the layers of bureaucracy and the added administrative burden and cost. Quite frankly, many are not going to bother. This information is never regularly used internally in the United Kingdom, and, for many distributors, it is a burden they are unwilling to carry, given the size of the market here. Indeed, some have indicated that the necessary amounts of information, coupled with the required membership of the new internal market scheme, are more onerous than those required to make customs declarations, which are much more —.

I thank the Member for his intervention. The economist Esmond Birnie said recently that there is no evidence whatsoever that there has been an increase for dual market access. If we are going to make this work, we need to get rid of those burdens of bureaucracy. This is the very real challenge of creating significant trade disruption. That is why the First Minister and deputy First Minister, the Economy Minister, if we can prise him from Chicago, and the AERA Minister should be raising these issues. We are less than a month away from the introduction of these restrictions, yet we have not heard from the First Minister and deputy First Minister any words of reassurance or that they are making their concerns known to the Secretary of State or the European Union. While it is understandable that businesses, including those in the transport sector, do not wish to become involved in this highly charged political debate, the very real implications of these changes need to be understood and explained. The Windsor framework talks about the mitigation of the impact of significant changes. That is why we need to challenge this. Regardless of the partisan position adopted by some on the protocol, there is no doubt that the implications of the implementation of the Windsor framework, in supposedly good faith, will profoundly impact us all. We call on all MLAs to support our motion.

1,415 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:03 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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