28
Examination of witnesses
Stuart Anderson, Roger Pollen and Alexander Kinnear.
Q1 The Chair: Good morning and welcome to this public meeting of the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee. Today we are holding the first public session of our short follow-up inquiry on strengthening Northern Ireland’s voice in the context of the Windsor Framework. This follows the Government’s recent response to the committee’s last report as well as their response to the independent report of Lord Murphy of Torfaen’s review of the Windsor Framework.
We are joined today and welcome three familiar Northern Ireland business representatives: Stuart Anderson, the director of public affairs and international relations at the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Roger Pollen, the head of the Federation of Small Businesses, Northern Ireland; and Alexander Kinnear, the parliamentary officer of the Ulster Farmers’ Union. You are all very welcome, once again, to this committee and we very much look forward to what you are going to tell us.
We would be grateful if you could introduce yourselves briefly the first time you speak. Today’s meeting is being broadcast and a verbatim transcript will be taken for subsequent publication, which will be sent to witnesses to check for accuracy. I refer to the register of members’ interests as published on this committee’s website.
I will start by asking a general question. What are the key issues facing your organisation or sector with the Windsor Framework now? We will start with Mr Anderson.
Stuart Anderson: I am director of public affairs and international relations at the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce. First, I will say thank you to this committee for its work and the predecessor committee for its work in keeping Northern Ireland on the agenda. I think that we always face a challenge that Northern Ireland is deemed to be solved and then it slips off the agenda in media presentation of the challenges and opportunities that we have. This committee and its predecessor have done a fantastic job of keeping those issues alive, so thank you for that.
I would like to start with where Northern Ireland is and what we are doing in economic performance, perhaps to challenge some of that narrative a little bit, and then move on to where we are with the challenges with Windsor Framework implementation. When you look at official data, Northern Ireland has outperformed the rest of the UK, considerably. In post-pandemic economic output, we are sitting at 12% against the UK as a whole of 5.2% and, as a devolved comparator, Scotland is 2.7%.
On the face of it that looks very positive but—and I met with a group of about 30 CEOs of some of our leading businesses yesterday—while turnover is up and while demand typically looks good, the challenge is operating profit and increasing costs. Even when we were trying to dissect the question of how challenging the Windsor Framework is in relation to costs, I reached out to a number of members on Friday and they said that it is difficult to disaggregate the costs of some of the trading pressures from some of the other costs that they are incurring.
It is probably fair to say that last year, 2025, notwithstanding those headline figures, was probably one of the most challenging years I have encountered. I left the legal profession in 2019 and I have been involved in this process ever since with the various stages of implementation of the Windsor Framework, whether it was parcels, the introduction of ICS2 or the uncertainty, and I think the uncertainty is a key issue from last year. We were anticipating the deforestation regulation to come into effect. It was supposed to come into effect in 2024, then 2025 and now 2026—but the end of 2026, subject to review in April 2026. Those things are difficult to get on top of.
Coupled with that, one of the greatest challenges I have experienced was trying to navigate the global trade situation and the potential impact that it might have on Northern Ireland. While we had the question of US tariffs it was continually monitoring the UK and EU response and what that meant for Northern Ireland. That was subject to change from around this time last year right through until as late as last week. I find myself travelling to Brussels regularly just to get in front of people to remind them of their treaty-level responsibilities to Northern Ireland. We were told 12 months ago that the tariff duty reimbursement scheme was the solution to the problem, should countermeasures and divergence arise. It is clear from talking to my members, but also from the question that Lord Dodds posed to the Government, that that is significantly underutilised, and we have been pressing them to change. If the last few weeks have demonstrated anything, it is that these challenges have not gone away. They are still there and we still need to think about protecting Northern Ireland in that wider environment.
It is quite difficult. Like Roger, the key measure that we try to look at for how our members are performing is to ask them quarterly. We have a quarterly economic survey that has been running for 20 years. I asked questions about the challenges with the Windsor Framework this year so we can identify what they might be. That is open at the moment, so I will share the results in time. There is a mismatch in timing.
I appeared in front of your predecessor committee almost three years ago to the day, in April 2023, and I was asked a question about what business’s perception is of the Windsor Framework. My response, and I stand by this today, is that we have seen areas of movement that were unexpected but the principal challenge we face—and I remain unconvinced that we are in a position where it has been dealt with properly—is the issue of regulatory divergence. That is because the position that Northern Ireland is in with trade flows is testament to the resilience of industry in Northern Ireland. The trade flows from GB, our largest market, have been maintained and we have performed in the way that we have, notwithstanding the cost pressures and complexity. I would ask that we focus our attention on the forward look and what that means.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr Kinnear, what is the farmers’ view?
Alexander Kinnear: Good morning to everybody. Similar to Stuart, I want to thank the committee for its work. It is the only committee really that is digging into these issues in a meaningful way and, of course, that is greatly appreciated.
We are inching towards a better place with the Windsor Framework, albeit we are in a period of uncertainty until an SPS veterinary agreement is dealt with. Our members are under significant pressure, whether that is with the weather at the current time, dealing with Government after the ordeal we went through last year on inheritance tax, or a wider issue whereby farmers are feeling undervalued. Of course, that all plays a significant role in any policy issue, including today on the Windsor Framework.
To go through a couple of practical issues to update the committee, on veterinary medicines, 1 January this year passed relatively peacefully and that was because many of the veterinary companies, wholesalers and distributors in Northern Ireland stockpiled to an extreme level with 2025 product to get over any hurdles. The Government have set up a supply co-ordination forum, which is a small group basically to feed in what is happening on the ground—practical advice. It is made up of ourselves, vets and other industry folk, and we welcome that group, but anecdotally we are hearing that there will be problems whenever the stockpiles run out, probably in late spring or early summer, and that is causing some concern.
Obviously, the Government schemes are still there. They have not been tested yet. We have pushed Government to go on a test case to try to see what would happen and what the result would be if they trigger the schemes. They have been reluctant to do it and there are other complications as well, which I mentioned before. We continue to keep an eye on this issue. It is our number one issue and we will see where it goes.
Other things that are still aggrieving our members are importing agricultural machinery, animal movements throughout the United Kingdom, plant protection products and sprays, and different things where Northern Ireland has found itself under EU law but governed by UK bodies, which is complicated to say the very least. There is the importation of plants and seeds from GB and wider general bureaucracy and annoyance about an east-west divide that has clearly opened up. There is the issue of regulatory divergence and the democratic deficit that still exists in Northern Ireland, which we have not really got an answer to. Those are just some broad things that are still out there.
The Chair: Would you be kind enough to keep us informed of any examples, any case studies you can present, on the veterinary pharmaceuticals issue as it develops? The committee is taking a great interest in that.
Alexander Kinnear: Yes, we will endeavour to do that and the work is much appreciated. I know the distributors’ association is undertaking a cost exercise to compare what farmers in GB are paying versus what their equivalents are back home.
Roger Pollen: I would like to echo what colleagues have said here in thanking you as a committee and the predecessor committee for the work you undertook last year, in particular in listening to the concerns of small businesses in Northern Ireland about the Windsor Framework and how it was operating and impacting them.
I am conscious that there are a couple of new members of the committee, so I will rewind to probably this point last year where we were taking a lot of calls, mostly from businesses in England and Scotland, about difficulties with accessing Northern Ireland. They were routed to our office because it was one of those problems that is a Northern Ireland problem. We started to engage with Ministers and got a real sense of denial: “That is the Windsor Framework. We are committed to full and faithful and timely implementation of it. Just get on with it”. But we kept on getting the calls.
We were not able to resolve that situation for members, so we decided we would go out and do a piece of work to research not just our membership in Northern Ireland, where we have about 6,000 members, but right across the UK, where we also operate. That got a really strong response, which came up with some quite disturbing findings. It produced this report, which I know you, as a committee, have referred to in your own work, which is very welcome. That gave us a foundation, and we saw the Government last year, frankly with an awful lot of effort and involvement with yourselves, I think, moving from that position of denial to acceptance. That was a positive step last year and gave a lot of encouragement that people finally recognised there was a problem and that something needed to be done about it. Then, in the Autumn Budget, £16.6 million was made available to help address that problem.
So 2025 was a good year: the problem was accepted, with resource put in place to deal with it. We are now in 2026 and the question is: what are we going to do with that resource? At the moment the businesses we speak to are still living in that 2025 world where the problems are still there. There is a difference between a lot of businesses Stuart would talk about, which probably have the capacity to deal with the bureaucracy, and a lot of the smaller businesses that do not have that. We are seeing that having a chilling effect on them.
The call in that report, and we may come on to it, is for a one-stop shop: a single place that businesses could go to. Before I came here today I thought it would be helpful if I looked to see where businesses go to today in government to find out. I went on to business.gov.uk, as you would, and I put in “Windsor Framework”, and 17 results were found. The top three were “UK legal services for the Middle East”, “UK services combine trusted jurisprudential excellence with innovative solutions governing global commercial transactions reliably”, and “UK innovation for Turkish commercial partnerships and LSEG Islamic finance”.
The Chair: I will ask you a follow-up question. Last Thursday in the House of Lords, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Livermore, said, among other things, that, “The Windsor Framework is the best workable solution to Northern Ireland’s unique circumstances. We will work constructively with all stakeholders.” Do you think that there is some way to go to justify the phrase “best workable solution”?
Roger Pollen: Yes, there is clearly some way to go. I suppose you may say that is the best workable solution. It has not yet been properly implemented and made to work. That is the differential. This is the nadir for businesses going on to try to get advice on navigating the Windsor Framework. It is as bad as that. We need to get to the zenith with this new resource being put in place and made to work effectively.
Q2 Lord Dodds of Duncairn: Thank you for being here again. It is very important to hear from you. Do you feel that your views have been listened to by the Government so far on the support services? I am not talking about the wider issue but specifically about the support services—Roger referenced looking up what is available online—and things like trader support and all the rest of it. All those mechanisms that have been put in place by the Government to try to help. Are the Government listening to you on those particular issues?
Roger Pollen: The short answer is that they must be if they made a Budget line for £16.6 million, so that is good. That has to be welcomed. As lobby organisations we want to bring about change that benefits business and I think that is a commitment to make a change, but the change, as illustrated, has not yet happened. The Government are listening. We have been working with bits of government to try to say what would work better, what a business user needs to see for them to give effect to the ambition that the Chair referenced earlier.
Stuart Anderson: I very much agree with that sentiment. When we are in the position that we are, we will always acknowledge progress when and where we see it. I think that is a fair comment.
A point of differentiation on that is that one of the things that we have been calling for since the original protocol was agreed back in 2019 was a very clear database—and I am sure we will come on to this discussion in a moment—of all the regulations that were tendered for annexe 2, with a clear understanding of who the competent authority is in each case and with a further clear understanding of whether those regulations were subject to amendment or revision. That has not come to fruition and it creates significant challenges for people like us who are trying to horizon scan, look ahead to the future and, at a very basic level, contact the competent authority to determine how a regulation may or may not be implemented.
The Chair: Leaving aside agriculture just for the moment, can you put your finger on any other identifiable sectors for business and industry that are very badly affected by the uncertainties that exist in the current system?
Stuart Anderson: Agriculture is the big one, but strictly speaking it is not just agriculture. Deforestation regulation is much wider and much broader than that, so it brings into play an awful lot more sectors than agri-food. You have chemical regulation and the potential impact of CBAM. The lack of knowledge and understanding of the direction of travel on each of these regulations is where the challenge lies. There are numerous sectors. Annex 2 is very wide ranging, as you will appreciate. It applies to the application of goods in the broadest sense, but on the issues that are brought to me, it is things like the deforestation regulation that are at the front and centre of the minds of our members.
Roger Pollen: From speaking to members, it is on basic goods—domestic goods being sold. For instance, we were talking with a member last week who was being told by their supplier that they could not continue to get stuff through to them from GB. There was nothing remarkable about the product lines—it was household goods—but that relationship just was not working. It was not a big enough contract for the supplier in GB but it was existential for the business in Northern Ireland. There are solutions to that already in existence but they were not readily available, easily applied and quickly responded to. Therein lies part of the problem. Getting from the 2025 situation to where we have been told we might get to could be the answer, but for businesses that will not be quick enough.
The Chair: Can we move on to Baroness Ritchie’s question, which is quite central to all this? I think it will broaden the discussion.
Q3 Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: My question centres around the one-stop shop. Obviously, that was a recommendation that came out of Lord Murphy’s report and our report. It was based on the evidence that was given by people and organisations like yours. So far, have the Government engaged with you on the creation of the one-stop shop? If so, what has been your experience? As a supplementary, in your discussions with Government, if they have taken place, have they given any indication of the engagement they will have with you and the implementation framework for the one-stop shop: the terms of reference, how it will be staffed and how they will deliver that? I should have also declared that I am a member of the Veterinary Medicines Working Group.
Roger Pollen: I will pick that up in the first instance and then everybody can bring parts to it. I think that the concept of the one-stop shop is to simplify the workings of government from the end user’s point of view. We find that government works in silos and a business does not necessarily know how that links together. The one-stop shop was intended to be a single place where you can get a single source of the truth and have legal certainty. If you ask the question, you are given the advice and you follow the advice, and that is all you should be required to do.
In some ways it is quite simple. The wiring behind the scenes will be immensely complicated, but it is for government to do that, not for the users to know how to navigate. We have had engagement with government on it through the Cabinet Office and I think that it has been encouraging so far because they are keen to understand the user experience and what the user needs to see from it so they know what they are trying to design.
You asked about how it would be staffed. The sense is that the initial part of the process will be AI-driven so there will be quite a lot of automation getting through what will probably be very repetitive questions. Lots of users will ask the same sorts of things, but when you get to a point where you have a more nuanced or difficult part to go to, you then get to a human being. I think that is the aspiration and the intention.
The Chair: It is a triage system.
Roger Pollen: It is a triaged system and the phrase I picked up is that it will be iterative. It will start and it will improve. It is always encouraging to think that it will not just be set in stone, but it is also worrying because it makes you think that it may not be that great at the beginning. Therein is where we collectively have to hold government’s feet to the fire.
The Chair: You have a triage system that becomes iterative, which is a complicated word for telling you where to go. One rather hopes it will tell one to go somewhere useful.
Roger Pollen: Yes, that is the ambition.
Alexander Kinnear: Specifically on the one-stop shop, we have not engaged with government or have not been asked really what our thoughts are, which is rather odd. I think that sometimes farming and agriculture is not seen as a normal business in some circles in government and that is a theory that needs to be blown apart. We very much support the idea of this whole principle of simplification. I came back from Brussels last week and Europe is undergoing a process of simplifying rules, going through regulations and stripping out bureaucracy where it can. When we come to the Windsor Framework we find the opposite to that. That principle has not really landed there yet but we are very supportive of the principle when we get there. It is essential that something gives. Our members particularly rely on our organisations to do the heavy lifting on that and, when it comes to an individual’s problem, they struggle to navigate whatever systems of government that they have.
The Chair: Are you an optimist about this one-stop shop process, Mr Anderson?
Stuart Anderson: I like to think that I am generally an optimist, yes, but I agree with Roger’s sentiment. I think that it is a necessity. However, we have a bit of an issue sometimes in trying to deal with problems by saying that establishing a body or a new service is the solution to the challenge, and I think that we have to be cognisant of that.
The other issue is that at the moment there is a multiplicity of services and supports that are available. You have InterTradeIreland with a trade hub. Invest Northern Ireland has a service and works together with the Department for the Economy through NI Business Info. InterTrade UK has been established and has its own workstream. This needs to bring it all together and what I do not want to see is a duplication or further confusion by the creation of a one-stop shop. It needs to meet the exam question: are you actually simplifying or are you adding to what is already there?
The Chair: I will stop you and ask Lady Sanderson to provoke you a little bit on that very subject, because she has a very pertinent question.
Q4 Baroness Sanderson of Welton: As one of the new members of the committee, it is very nice to meet you all. The question is about your priorities in what you would like to see in the one-stop shop. On the points you have just made, anybody who uses GOV.UK knows that the Government are notoriously bad at making easy, user-friendly databases and interface services. That is quite an interesting point because it is not just what is within it but how you will be able to use it. I am interested to know what your particular priorities are—not “nice to haves” but what really must be there.
Stuart Anderson: That is a good question. To build on the previous point, the first thing it needs to do is simplification and not duplication of what is already there. The value in the service should be subject to constant review and constant stakeholder engagement. To be fair to the Government, that is a commitment that they have made, and they have engaged with me, Roger and other organisations regularly on that. I think that is to be taken as a positive.
Another thing that Roger reflected on in his opening remarks is that the focus on the Windsor Framework is often misplaced. Northern Ireland is where the focus of the attention is, but actually so much of the challenge comes from the GB supply side: a lack of awareness and a lack of willingness in some cases. I find that with the Chamber of Commerce network. I have been asked to do a series of webinars through our extensive network throughout GB to inform and brief. Simplifying that for GB suppliers and a communication strategy around the fact that this has been established will be critical.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton: That is interesting. I also thought there is no point having it unless we are very clear.
Roger Pollen: I am thinking back to the last time we were here. I think that we gave an example, which was that just before the change to parcels on 1 May last year, HMRC put out a scree of guidance and links to various documents on how to move parcels to Northern Ireland after 1 May. You worked your way right down this and then it said, “But if you are sending SPS goods, Defra will publish guidance here”—future tense, a week out from the deadline. For a user coming into that, it is unacceptable that government cannot actually just tell you what you will have to do. The wiring behind the scenes should not have allowed that to happen. On trying to think what it would look like, I am not sure whether we are allowed to advertise here or not—
The Chair: Feel free.
Roger Pollen: If you go on to Amazon, it does it well, and that is why Amazon is so big and successful. When you go in there, it remembers your preferences. It suggests things that other people who are buying your stuff might also have bought, which might be interesting. In the same way, we should have a very good one-stop shop, understanding that you are this type of business and showing what other types of business doing the same thing consider—a clever, iterative and well thought-through AI-driven platform that has the user in mind. At the moment, with the best will in the world, when you go on to business.gov.uk, let alone GOV.UK, it is just not the sort of place where normal people go to get the advice and guidance that they can then rely on with legal certainty.
The Chair: I think that you are saying that it is the methodology that is very important. In setting up a triage system, the methodology behind it has to mean that, with the iterative process, you are able to get to someone who can give you a real answer or something that can give you a real answer, maybe through AI.
Roger Pollen: Yes, and the point that Stuart makes is very well made. It was captured in your report in, as I recall, the organogram. That is what we just do not need to see. All those bits should be behind a user interface, and it needs to be done in such a way that you are not duplicating or creating gaps. It is a big task, but this is a key part of the UK internal market, and that is something that has been overlooked. People in Northern Ireland would know about the UK internal market. I am not actually sure that it is a concept that exists in GB.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: Have you been involved in the designing of the one-stop shop at all?
Roger Pollen: We were in the early stages of it, yes: they have engaged with us and that is very welcome. I hope that we have made some positive contribution, but we will not be the users of it. It is our members who will be the users, and there is a big difference between people who are used to navigating a bit of bureaucratic complexity and somebody who is just trying to run a business and needs to get advice.
The Chair: Can I bring Mr Kinnear in here on Baroness Sanderson’s question? Farmers play a very important part in supplying food from Northern Ireland to GB. Have you seen any signs of the one-stop shop yet being tasked to deal with that question so that your members can sell their goods and obtain their supplies reasonably freely?
Alexander Kinnear: No, I do not think that we have. On your point about food security, Northern Ireland is now supplying upwards of 25% of the UK’s indigenous food supply. I do not think that the Government realise that, and food production in Northern Ireland is looked on like an extra bonus that England can take or leave, which simply is not good enough. It does not change the fundamentals of our issues; it is about making a difficult situation work better. We want to see horizon scanning highlighting matters of relevance for sectors, mapping progress and, as Stuart said, identifying who is responsible.
It is quite something that we are this far down the Windsor Framework journey and there are issues within the Windsor Framework that no part of government is putting its hand up to say, “Yes, we have responsibility for that, we will take it and show leadership”. That is an odd situation to find ourselves in.
The key priority for this is getting it done. If it takes so long, we might as well just continue doing what we can ourselves. I have explained before about our office in Brussels; we are getting 99.9% of our information through that and that is provided with the four farming unions putting money into an office, which our members are paying for. Yes, these are all great plans and intentions, but the Government need to get on with it and deliver it.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton: I want to make a very quick point. You said that you are in touch with the Cabinet Office. For the first time ever, the Government have produced something that is easily understood and accessible and it is for public inquiry, so on recommendations you can go in and check. It has never been done before and it is the only time that they have done it. Because government works in silos, I thought it was worth mentioning that to you, because having a look at that and having something that is similar and easy to use might be helpful in this instance.
Roger Pollen: I will have a look; thank you.
Q5 Baroness O’Loan: Mr Kinnear, for the record, can you tell us what issues are not being dealt with?
Alexander Kinnear: We have approached the majority of last year and this year with the hope and desire that the SPS veterinary agreement—and we may come to that later—will solve the issues that I outlined at the start. Hence, we have taken our foot, if you like, off the accelerator to give government and the Commission time. That is with the promise that it has said, in the Government’s own words, that this is to ensure that the Windsor Framework works better. The Windsor Framework is the engine; the SPS veterinary agreement is the oil to make sure that that engine can run effectively. As I say, it has assured that we get there.
Specifically in veterinary medicines, which is our number one concern, the Government have opted down a path for which now there is no return. It was a missed opportunity back in May last year when the boundaries of the reset were complied. It was a political decision not to include veterinary medicines in that. To be fair to the UK side, it did try to and it was told that that would not happen. That is an outstanding issue that there is no remedy for and we are again trying to make a difficult situation work. On the other issues, we are hoping that the SPS veterinary agreement will address them fundamentally, but we will see in a couple of months’ time.
The Chair: Following on from what you have been asked already, we have some discrete issues that we want to take up.
Q6 Baroness Goudie: Good morning. It is lovely to see you all again. The committee previously recommended that, in addition to the one-stop shop, a database of EU law should be maintained and available, which I think you were very keen for us to have. The Government’s websites have some information, but not on the one-stop shop. How do you find accessing it, going from one website to another to another, and recommending it to your members?
Roger Pollen: We were very keen to see what we called an office of regulatory divergence; we were delighted that you picked it up as one of your recommendations and then disheartened when the Government did not run with your recommendation. We need to keep the pressure on there and keep trying to make that happen because, frankly, that is understanding how the landscape will change at some point in the future; it is not looking at what the landscape is now. Doing things in an orderly and planned way, and understanding where you might need to change your own rules or find adaptations to other rules, is how you get sighted on it. The absence of that is a real concern. I was chatting about this with Stuart, so I will bring Stuart in.
Stuart Anderson: I wholeheartedly agree with that position. Much like us, I would ask, even though the Government sometimes say no to things, that you keep going. I am of the view that, whenever we look at the European Commission website it is instructive and helpful, but it is very complicated. Look at other examples: look at the Norwegians, for example—they are part of the EEA. Yes, the mechanics by which they apply EU law are different to what they are in Northern Ireland, but they have a no-surprises policy when it comes to EU regulation. They have a portal there. I tried to access it, but it is in Norwegian so I did not get very far. It gives an assessment of impact upon communities and upon businesses, which would be really useful.
It comes back to the point that I made earlier about our asks of government to maintain a database around annexe 2. If we could get there, it would be hugely welcome, as it would for transparency around potential consequences and implications.
The Chair: We have discussed the Norwegian situation in the past in these meetings. The problem with Norway is that it has a completely different constitutional structure in relation to the EU as compared with NI.
Stuart Anderson: That is the point that I made at the start. Yes, it has a completely different legal construct and mechanics as to how EU law applies. However, the outcome is still the same in the sense that EU law is still an application in Norway and there is an assessment of what that application looks like. We are asking for something similar. If EU law is to apply in Northern Ireland, we need to understand what it means for our businesses. You look at some of the things that the EU is attempting to apply through the Windsor Framework, like this AI Act or Cyber Resilience Act; I have no foresight as to what that means for our businesses. Something that is independent of the EU that is managed by government would be really helpful.
The Chair: Baroness Ludford, would you include question 6 to what you ask?
Q7 Baroness Ludford: That was question 6. I want to follow up on that, because the Government’s response when they rejected the idea of providing a database was to go and look at EUR-Lex. I am a new member of the committee—Sarah Ludford—but for 15 years I was an MEP. It is a long time since I looked at EUR-Lex, but how adequate do you find that tool for understanding the regulatory landscape? I noticed a comment made by Mr Anderson earlier that what you want from a database includes knowing what is coming down the track, in terms of amendment or new regulations. You will not get that from EUR-Lex, which is a static tool. With the increased dynamic alignment that we are expecting for GB, presumably a more responsive interactive database would be very useful for the whole of GB in times to come, not just Northern Ireland.
Stuart Anderson: I could not disagree with that. We are part of the British Chambers network and it surveys the membership broadly every year. It is clear that trade with the EU is the UK’s biggest external market and is becoming much more challenging. That is down to issues like regulatory divergence and the challenge of businesses, particularly SMEs, in understanding how to engage with European regulation. It is very complicated; it is something that I have been looking at for over 20 years and I know it, but it is very difficult to get around. It would be useful for those GB businesses—that foresight and knowledge and independent assessment from the EU itself by our Government. They have made the political decision here so they should follow through in helping us with an assessment of the applications.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn: Do you agree that a database, which is very much something that this committee and its predecessor has pushed for and will continue to do so, needs not just to look at what the impact is on Northern Ireland businesses, but what the impact is on businesses in Northern Ireland if Great Britain does something different or stays the same? That is the other aspect of it. Secondly, it also needs to include in that database where GB regulations are changing and Northern Ireland is staying the same because we cannot move. It is more than just Northern Ireland businesses; it is where GB stays the same and then UK government legislation.
Stuart Anderson: All that would be very helpful, particularly for GB businesses and in developing their understanding. What has been interesting is the conversation that has taken place in terms of the SPS agreement. The EU moves quickly: there have been significant changes and there is a growing understanding of what is needed to prepare the UK if it is going to enter into this ambitious SPS agreement. That is one discrete area and I think that that would be instructive.
The Chair: Can I bring us back to Baroness Ludford’s question about EUR-Lex? I want to ask a very practical question. Among your very large membership in Northern Ireland, what proportion would know how to deal with EUR-Lex or would attempt to deal with EUR-Lex?
Roger Pollen: From a small business point of view, it is statistically insignificant.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: I have had a look at it, and you need a specialist lawyer to understand that.
The Chair: He is one, and a very sophisticated one. I saw you, Mr Anderson, smiling as I asked the question. Do you have the same view?
Stuart Anderson: Certainly, our larger members would have the resource, capacity and necessity to do that—absolutely. However, as Roger said, 99% of businesses in Northern Ireland—I say that as a matter of fact, not of conjecture—are small and would not have the capacity to do that. Even if they did, it is not straightforward.
The Chair: What about farmers?
Alexander Kinnear: Everybody knows the answer to that without me having to say, but your point is that it is a static tool and it is not the item that we need it to be. Take this from a practical point of view: we are covering legislative developments in Stormont and Brussels and how they all interact. Whenever one moves, it moves everything else. A lot of times we end up in a situation whereby EU law applies in Northern Ireland, and we are not disagreeing with that concept because we have to trade with Europe. Something changes in Westminster, which is on the same issue, so we are replying to a consultation from Brussels and replying to a consultation from Westminster, which does not have direct impact but may have impact in the future, plus dealing with our own devolved situation. There has to be something that is streamlined, which is essential going forward.
The issue of dynamic alignment is where the SPS veterinary deal will either live or die. If we do not all successfully manage expectations around that—because there is a certain price that has to be paid, or that is the argument that will be made by some, and the bonus is that we get to trade with Europe—we do not have to have a win-lose situation for one side or the other. It can be a win-win. Of course, Northern Ireland has been here; we have been here for four years. We know what works; we certainly know what does not work. Addressing the democratic deficit is key and that issue of dynamic alignment because, whatever issues the SPS veterinary agreement does not solve, the farmers of the United Kingdom will all be farming under one regulatory regime. In a sense that will, I hope, take pressure off our own department, which is not resourced to deal with European matters effectively, and they will become Defra issues whereby that department will lead for the UK.
A lot of this is nearly a Treasury question about how much money the Government are willing to put into lobbying and putting ourselves in that position. That is probably the most worrying aspect. If it is not going to be resourced properly, you could have the best system in the world but if you do not have the people it is a waste of time.
The Chair: That is a very perspicacious comment, if I may say so, and very useful to the committee. Baroness Foster has a specific question about vet meds.
Q8 Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee: Yes, I have but, just before I ask that question, can I declare my interest as chair of InterTrade UK? Yesterday, when we were discussing Gibraltar the line was, “Nothing about Gibraltar without Gibraltar”. Would it not be lovely if it was “Nothing about Northern Ireland without Northern Ireland”? If the Government could lean in and listen to what is happening in Northern Ireland, it would make things easier when they go to the EU. That is just my view.
In relation to vet meds, Alexander, you said that stockpiling meant that 1 January went quite smoothly and that it may be difficult later. I had a direct request from—I cannot call him a constituent now—someone in Northern Ireland who was getting their pet medication online and it was costing them £12 before 1 January. They can no longer get that online and an alternative is now costing them £28. That is a doubling of price. Is that something that you have seen elsewhere from your contacts, or is it too early to talk about that? This gentleman says that this is happening now. He used to get it online from Pets at Home and he cannot get it anymore; they will not send it to him. He has to get an alternative and it is costing him double. That is significant for people in Northern Ireland.
Alexander Kinnear: It is very significant, and that pet sector side has sat outside of us, albeit it is a concern. The background to that is that vets give a prescription to a pet owner in Northern Ireland and they go online and go for the cheapest thing that they can get, which anybody would do. We are expecting to see similar outcomes to that in the summertime.
We have approached the whole veterinary medicine issue across a number of fronts. There is product discontinuation; that list has been watered down and the Government are always very keen to say that it is not what it was, and they are correct in that. But the issues of cost and traditional supply lines are equally important to us. We have made the point before that if you have a flock of 50 sheep and you have to now buy a product for 500 sheep, of course our farmers do not want to waste anything, but what are they supposed to do? If they are to get the product, they will have to pay something. It is too early to give definitive answers.
As I said last time, we have approached this from a worst-case scenario of what could happen to try to stir the Government on. Anecdotally, what we are hearing is a difficult picture that will present itself early in the summertime. The effects on the pet sector have been felt directly because the majority of them were getting their products online from GB.
The Chair: Baroness Goudie, can I ask you to go back to question number 5 on the list?
Q9 Baroness Goudie: Yes, I would like to do that. In the light of the new contractor to run the trader support service, how could the service be improved, particularly in terms of urgent information? Is there a way of gauging that?
Stuart Anderson: I am happy to take that because we have engaged members on it. It is a good question. To be fair to the new provider, it has been out of the blocks very quickly, by coming and meeting us in person and engaging in what our members most want from a new and improved service.
I would give three baskets, for want of a better expression, around how we think it could be improved. Credit goes to those who operated the first system. They had, I think, eight weeks to get it up and running and they did but it was a challenging time for members to get on top of the user interface. We have a little more time now. That is the first ask—that it is just a little more user-friendly. For example, error messages will be much clearer and easier to navigate.
The second issue is the management of compliance. We frequently hear misuse of EORI numbers and challenges around data access, which is all the more important today as it has ever been in the past.
Finally, when the first iteration of the TSS launched six years ago, we had the benefit of having what was effectively a very informal triage system. Our members would try to engage with the system; if they had a bespoke query, we could escalate it to human contact and that really helped. I have to be honest: that died away a bit over time. This is the real challenge with technological improvement. It is important that we have a streamlined, efficient system that is good value for money. All that is important, but ultimately no two businesses are the same. They will come across bespoke queries from time to time, and we need to have that human contact at the appropriate time and at the appropriate level.
Roger Pollen: I should have done something earlier and declared an interest, because I am also on InterTrade UK. I thought that we might get to a section of questioning where I could declare that interest.
Stuart has captured it very well there. The new incumbents, if we call them TSS2 for shorthand’s sake, have also been out engaging with us. More encouraging than that was that they were asking for us to get sample members for them to engage with in certain sectors, so that they can really get in and understand what it is that those users need, what they did not like, what they did not get before, what they want to get now, and tune the system. The ambition, appetite and approach seem to be encouraging at this stage. It is work in progress and we will see when it goes live, but they are off to a good start with the engagement that they have had with us.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I would like to move on now to a question that Lord Thomas was going to ask, number 8.
Q10 Lord Thomas of Gresford: What is your response to the Government’s announcements of the new Northern Ireland business stakeholders group? Are you able to share any further details on it—for example, its membership, the format and the regularity of its meetings?
The Chair: Does it differ from previous more informal forums that were in existence, such as the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group?
Roger Pollen: I can start and then bring in Stuart. The earlier one, the informal Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group, was industry’s response to a vacuum. We got together in late 2019 when we saw something serious was coming along and we had no elected Members at Stormont to engage on our behalf. Industry decided that that is not an acceptable position to find itself in. We needed to set ourselves up in a way such that we were a conduit for information to come to and from business and government.
From those early informal starts, it rapidly became a body that government engaged with, the EU engaged with and so on. It was self-resourced, self-organised and we tried to make sure that we found common ground among ourselves first, so that we went in with clear messaging rather than looking to have one sector vying for positioning over another. We tried to look at the bigger picture of the entirety of the economy and the business sector in Northern Ireland, and ask what we needed to do.
The mantra that emerged out of that was no sector left behind. At that time, we had done a mapping of our membership and we found that there were five cohorts, as we called them, and the fifth cohort was being very badly affected by the new arrangements. The group came together and said that that is unacceptable, we cannot leave somebody behind and, therefore, we need to all own that problem and advance it. That was the origins of it; I will let Stuart move on to where it has now evolved.
Stuart Anderson: I do not disagree with any of that. There have been voluntary coalitions of various descriptions in Northern Ireland for various needs. That loose, informal, no-resources—an important point to add—dimension to what we did as a Brexit working group is important. However, it is up to the UK Government and EU to determine who it engages with and when. They did engage with us because we coalesced around very clear positions. They also noted our candour and written form, and we have had letters from Prime Ministers and all sorts in the past acknowledging that we robustly challenged them as and when we saw it as appropriate.
However, there is a need for a very clear, formalised engagement structure with the joint committee. This goes back to the earlier point around the need to take account of the internal UK market as a whole and the role of GB suppliers. I welcome the fact that you now have a transparent process for application and engagement with the UK Government and the specialised committee. That is a good thing and I hope that it comes with resources. I also welcome the extension of the group to include others, particularly those in GB who can speak on behalf of GB suppliers.
It is more challenging to do, however, and the purpose is very different from what we were trying to achieve in trying to get consensus as and when we could. In this group, everyone will have the opportunity to speak for themselves and that creates its challenges. None the less, it is important that the Government have formal engagement. They had the domestic advisory group in place, which I am part of, which allows and facilitates as many people to be involved with it as the Government see fit.
The Chair: Where do you think supply chain issues can best be dealt with in all this architecture that we are talking about?
Roger Pollen: Could you unpack what you mean by that? I will put a point first. One of the new members to the new group is in the horticultural sector, and they were very much part of the supply chain from GB into Northern Ireland. Although we had members in Northern Ireland who were in that sector, we were effectively speaking on behalf of the end-user who was badly affected. Now we will have input from the upstream supply chain side of that and that is a valuable extra.
The Chair: I am referring to filling the gap between the end-user and the people who manufacture the components and everything in between the components and the end-user.
Roger Pollen: I am not convinced that the new group has all that in it in all sectors—in fact, it definitely does not—but it has more parts in it and it has GB input to that. That will give us a wider picture of the challenges on both sides of the Irish Sea.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: How do you join the group and who speaks for it?
Roger Pollen: It was opened to open application and advertised. It was quite a short process but it was to make sure that it was publicly accessible. Who speaks for it is a good question; Stuart is our convener. I am not sure if anybody feels that they speak for it. We are having our first meeting tomorrow, so we do not yet have a collective voice.
The Chair: Mr Anderson, have a go at speaking for it.
Stuart Anderson: If I may, I politely decline. I was not entirely clear what you meant around supply chain, but I am getting clearer as I think about it. Those who are moving the goods is where a lot of focus of attention needs to be. Logistics UK, the Road Haulage Association and AICES—the logistics fast parcel operators—are all part of this group and that is important. They all have an important role to play and they are at the sharp end. Certainly, from my own members, particularly in haulage, they are probably those I hear from most, in terms of complaint and those day-to-day challenges.
The Chair: You have absolutely got it, because my question is concerned about the supply chain, which includes people who are making supplies or receiving goods in GB and vice versa. It is a very complicated process.
Stuart Anderson: It is.
Q11 Baroness O’Loan: I have been listening and I wanting to ask this question for a while. It seems to me, as an ordinary consumer talking to some businesses in Northern Ireland, there are businesses in England and Wales that have given up. They think that it is too hard. It probably could be explained to them that it is not always too hard. There is a major problem with supply in Northern Ireland, particularly in the retail end. It is not your job to encourage trade. Maybe it is Arlene’s job, I do not know, but who is taking responsibility for trying to explain to people that these terrible bureaucratic processes can be navigable and that there is purpose in doing business with Northern Ireland? It is not just final products, it is components and so on, and that affects the running.
Stuart Anderson: I do not want to put Baroness Foster or Roger on the spot on this one, but I remember when the discussions were ensuing on moving from the Windsor Framework to the changes that were brought forward the following year. We had a lot of discussion about the need for support for GB suppliers. In my view, we needed a full-time agency in the form of InterTrade UK that was all about encouraging GB supply to Northern Ireland, with very clear KPIs on maintaining the supply, that was aggressively going and supporting businesses. From talking to a trade consultant in the last few weeks, he said that once they get on top of it you have a competitive advantage over your other competitors if you are prepared to engage with it. So there is an opportunity here with things like utilising the one-stop shop effectively, using InterTrade UK as a means of communicating that to GB suppliers and ultimately using it to the competitive advantage as far as you can.
The Chair: Of course, it is more difficult for small businesses to get on top of it than large businesses, which is where you come in, is it not?
Roger Pollen: There are a couple of things. Having declared my interest in InterTrade UK, it definitely has a very clear role in doing the job of establishing the UK internal market. It is not a concept that resonates in the UK. When we joined the single market in 1992, that was a big thing. There was a lot of talk about what that would mean for customs clearance and so on. It was a huge thing for business suddenly to have access to the other states. The UK internal market has not been promoted within the UK in that way.
To take advantage of some of the facilitations from GB to Northern Ireland, one or other end of that transaction has to be UKIMS registered. UKIMS is the UK internal market scheme; there are 15,000 businesses registered out of 5.5 million businesses in the UK. I also note that about 300,000 new businesses start every year. By the end of this term of Parliament, there will be 1 million new businesses, so you cannot just do a once-and-done advertising campaign on how to get stuff in and overcome the perceived barriers.
It is a bit like your tax return. Every year in December we start getting advertising on the television about the fact we have to do our tax return by the end of January—every year, even though we all have to do it every year. Why? There are other new people who will be on it or it is a reminder to others who have been doing it before. That is the same with this: the UK internal market needs promotion, and the resources to operate within it need to be well set up, then well articulated and made easily available. If you do that, the perceived barriers fall away and a lot of the actual barriers fall away as well.
The Chair: I have to ask Lady Foster to contribute to this discussion.
Q12 Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee: Very quickly, in InterTrade UK we have a work programme for doing what Baroness O’Loan has referred to; in other words, engaging with small businesses across GB, going out and talking to them about what their perceived issues are in relation to trading with Northern Ireland, seeing whether they are real or whether it is just a perception, and then dealing with those issues on the ground. That is the work programme of InterTrade UK.
Can I also take the opportunity to ask Stuart, in relation to your question about supply chains, one of the criticisms about InterTrade UK—and we take it on the chin because we did not appoint ourselves—is that it is only Northern Ireland people sitting on it at present? This committee made a recommendation—which I recused myself from, of course—that we should have some GB people on InterTrade UK. That has gone to the Government. Do you think that the Northern Ireland stakeholders group should have suppliers from GB on the group as well? I think that it would add to dealing with some of the issues that we have talked about here today.
Stuart Anderson: On that recommendation for InterTrade UK, unequivocally it is something that I would support. It is the case, whenever you look at the bodies that are on it, 20 or 22 bodies in total, you have the likes of the FSB, which is a UK body; the CBI, which is a UK body; the Chambers of Commerce, with a slightly different structure, but they are all in there; and AICES, which is a UK body. There is a lot of good, strong GB representation within it. It is probably something that we should come back to in a year’s time, because this was only set up in December. It is certainly something worth reviewing to see the impact and the change.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: I have an additional question, Stuart, further to what you have said. How many new groups will join the committee and be at the meeting tomorrow? You mentioned the Road Haulage Association and Logistics UK, which deal with the delivery of the supply side to Northern Ireland and have encountered difficulties, as they encountered difficulties with the border target operating model as well.
Stuart Anderson: You are testing my mental maths here. There are 14 of us in our voluntary group and I think that the total is 22.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: That is eight additional. Thank you.
Q13 Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard: Thank you very much for your input and your forbearance and perseverance with all this process. I should declare an interest as a member of the Ulster Farmers’ Union.
Quite often we think that a lot of the work by government and the agreements have been put in place without a huge amount of thought as to how they will work on the ground. I know that that seems to have been the difficulty, particularly for small businesses, the ones I have heard most from. I want to look a wee bit to the future and see how we can plan better. We have heard a lot about the UK-EU reset process, but not a great lot of detail from the Government. They seem to be concentrating more on structures and bigger picture issues as opposed to detail. What would you like to see from a UK-EU reset?
Roger Pollen: This is an interesting question because the fewer differences that there are between the UK market and the EU, the easier it is for businesses to trade between GB and Northern Ireland. There has been a certain amount of talk about dual market access as the promised land that businesses can enjoy in Northern Ireland. First, not a lot has been done to capitalise on that differential. The more we bring alignment between the UK and the EU, the more that shrinks, in any case. I think that businesses in Northern Ireland would prefer shrinkage. They would prefer to have much less difficulty trading with GB than have this notional advantage over other parts of GB to trade into the EU. I will pause at that.
Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard: The problems at the moment are mainly the movement of goods from GB to Northern Ireland, as opposed to Northern Ireland exporting to other parts of GB or Europe. Is that reasonable? How can we make it better to trade, importing from GB?
Roger Pollen: The fewer differences that there are between the EU and the UK, the fewer differences there will be between GB and Northern Ireland. That is the first bit. I can go back to the model that you set out in the previous report that one-stop shop was the front end, but the back end was the office for regulatory divergence. We need to understand where those differences are and work out are there better ways of overcoming those differences, still to be compliant with any agreements that have been reached. In some ways it is not that difficult. The wiring behind the scenes may be difficult, but from the point of view of a small business navigating it, you need to have as few differences as possible, but where there are differences you need to be able to access knowledge about those and guidance as to how to navigate that system.
Stuart Anderson: There was a lot within the reset. We had a manifesto that we engaged our members on for the 2024 general election, which I am happy to circulate. We had material asks on an ambitious SPS agreement and linkage of ETS schemes. As Roger says, the narrower the level of divergence, the better it is for us in terms of trading, and GB as a whole in terms of its access. Certainly, that is what the GB members of British Chambers are saying.
One thing that was absent from the reset and was not honed in on enough in the Murphy report, if I might say so by extension, was the customs issues. When we talk about regulatory divergence, you are typically talking about a sector or sectors. You are not talking about the universal application of a particular barrier to trade. Customs is the one issue that I come back to time and again, and even the operation of the at-risk test that we have. That is one of the things that we want to continually focus our attention on and what we are pushing the UK Government on.
Other things are, as we mentioned, that the haulage industry is very exercised about ICS2. While I would not underestimate the challenge politically in getting something like this over the line, I do not understand the need for ICS2 between GB and Northern Ireland. That is something that we can look to. If you have EU-UK wide solutions to Northern Ireland problems from a trading perspective, that is something that we are very open to. When you look at things such as SPS, the principles are encouraging but, like most of these things, we need to see the detail. Significant promises have been made on what it will mean for Northern Ireland. I am sure that Alexander will expand on this. What we need is to see it happen quickly and in a way that is transparent.
Alexander Kinnear: Yes, this is the final opportunity in this Parliament to rectify the problems that we have on our side, and we will not hit and miss this time round. Whenever Theresa May’s deal fell, this was our plan B and something that we wanted to see. In a sense, practically you are asking: what will change? We want to see the pedigree animal sector being able to export animals to GB, with the condition that bluetongue is dealt with. We want to see used agricultural machinery being able to move from GB to Northern Ireland free. We want to see the farmers of the UK being able to use the same set of plant protection products. We want to go back to a situation whereby our arable and horticulture sectors can import seeds and plants that they were doing before Brexit and that many EU farmers are doing. Those are the key things.
On the issues that it does not resolve—and we have highlighted this time and again—DAERA does not have the capacity to deal with EU law and implementing that in Northern Ireland. That is abundantly clear. We will all go under one regime within the UK, if it is the correct deal, and hence Defra will take the lead in that. The fear that is building is GB’s desire to seek carve-outs for itself in this deal, and what those will be. The more carve-outs there are for GB, the less relevant this SPS veterinary agreement is for Northern Ireland. There will be a constituency at home that says that the fundamentals have not changed, and it is right in that, but at the level that we are dealing with we want to see these changes take place first, well before the Assembly election next year, to take the poison out of the debate.
Looking to 2029, the next election here, this has to be something that is sealed and done and that is it. We are not coming back to negotiate SPS veterinary arrangements every year or every time there is a new Government because we need to inject stability. As I say, we have great sympathy for Roger and Stuart on this because it does not solve the customs issue one iota, but it should resolve the vast majority of our issues, with the exception of some things, including veterinary medicines.
Q14 Lord Dodds of Duncairn: I wanted to come in on the UK internal market stuff—but I will park it for the time being—but since we are on the reset, that very last point was the point I was going to raise, Alexander. By the way, I agree that people sometimes say the SPS agreement will solve the problems for Northern Ireland and remove the customs issue, and all these other issues remain and they are some of the most outstanding issues for Northern Ireland. There is nothing for the manufacturing sector in this reset.
You say we need to get it all settled and finalised so that we cannot return and open it all up again. One of the issues that we have to recognise is that, whatever happens, the Windsor Framework, the protocol, international treaty, not a word of it changes. We accept that. Therefore, any reset is a current government policy, which the Government negotiate. The problem with saying that things are settled is that things are never settled. One of the things that we have heard in this is that this is an ongoing, continuous process. A new Government could come in and decide that they want to have regulatory freedom in the SPS sector and tear up the current agreement.
This is just a comment. To say that things are finalised and settled for ever and that is it, that is not realistic nor likely if a new Government come into place. That is why dealing with the fundamentals of the problem will always be the ultimate solution.
Alexander Kinnear: I get that, but the point I would push back on is that we can still celebrate the as easing problems in Northern Ireland, particularly for our farmers and the wider agriculture industry, while still championing and lobbying on other issues.
I have to push back as well that our own Executive at home have not been proactive in dealing with these issues. To be fair to DAERA, it has a stated position on SPS veterinary that is the same as ours. There needs to be an attitude change at home—we understand the problems, we understand the fundamentals and we get all that—where the people on the ground have to see changes. If the Government are standing by what they have committed to do, as I have said both publicly and privately to ourselves and everybody else, this can be a win and the end for some issues. I concede that it will not solve everything, it will not solve everything on our side, but it will put the farmers of the UK under one regime. That is essential to solve those problems because until there is that deal, we are stuck.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn: I agree with you on the Northern Ireland Executive point entirely. It is something that we have raised in this committee and what you say makes entire sense. All I am saying is that it is a guess. It comes back to this issue of overselling, which we have seen in the past, that if there is a deal it needs to be clear that it is a deal that does improve things, but it does not necessarily mean that it will solve them for the long term. In terms of the messaging, that is what we need to be clear about, that it is susceptible to change again.
I do not know whether you want me to go back to the previous point or people have other questions on the reset.
The Chair: We will probably move on. You do not have to respond to Lord Dodds’ always powerful advocacy.
Lord Dodds of Duncairn: To come back to the UK internal market, and we have talked about it, remember there is the UK Internal Market Act 2020. I remember when I first came in here that we spent a long time in our House debating the UK Internal Market Bill, which was designed specifically to iron out difficulties between the devolved Governments and all the rest of it, and because powers have come back into the UK that previously resided at the EU level.
Part of that Act does put obligations on His Majesty’s Government to ensure that every regulation and law that is brought forward specifically has Northern Ireland in mind and what damage or benefit it is to Northern Ireland if it is introduced. When the Command Paper Safeguarding the Union was introduced this was massively sold by the Government and others as being a real safeguard for Northern Ireland on the issue of regulatory divergence, that it would put a brake on the Government in introducing such legislation that would cause further difficulties.
I am throwing it out there for our committee. Perhaps we should consider asking the Government what regard have they had to this Act, which is there in lights, and those obligations, because I do not think that they have lived up to the promises that are in statute and are there specifically to deal with some of the issues that our witnesses are raising.
The Chair: I just happen to have in my hand paragraph 128 of Safeguarding the Union. It may be worth quoting it to you and getting your comments on it: “The Government will adopt a clear objective of ensuring maximum coverage for the whole of the United Kingdom in the sale of goods and supply of services. In the case of Northern Ireland, while this is an issue that predated the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, it is also the case that the lack of clarity around trading arrangements for Northern Ireland has left some businesses in Great Britain uncertain about what they need to do to comprehensively trade on a UK-wide basis”. How far have we moved on from that text?
Roger Pollen: I would say that we have not. Some businesses may have moved on but, as I say, more than a million new businesses have been formed since that was written. The evidence in our report shows that there are a lot of businesses that are experiencing actual or perceived difficulties. So I am not convinced we have moved.
Stuart Anderson: We go back to the same point that regulatory divergence is the challenge of the day. Attempts and efforts have been made, whether it is the one-stop shop or the establishment of InterTrade UK. Some of the actions that have been taken in relation to potential regulatory divergence and government being open and transparent on some of the amendments and revisions that have happened to annexe 2 have been welcomed. There has been work done certainly to minimise divergence on the UK Government’s part in some circumstances, but in others there is a lot that is outside their control. Take the deforestation regulation as an example of that. While they have obligations that they need to work harder at fulfilling, if the EU is going to review that in April, that again is something that is outside their control.
Baroness Ludford: I have a couple of points arising from the discussion that has flowed on. One was just a thought, and you do well to stress the customs issues alongside the single market issues, because obviously our exclusion from the customs union raises a lot of problems in Northern Ireland. We have seen on the small parcels issue that customs issues, duty, VAT and so on, regularly pop up and raise their ugly heads. That is just a comment, a reminder to self, as it were.
Ages ago now, one of you—I have forgotten who—mentioned the office for regulatory divergence. Forgive my ignorance as a new member. I either do not know or have entirely forgotten in my early briefings what that is.
Roger Pollen: It does not exist yet, so do not worry.
Baroness Ludford: I am forgiven.
Roger Pollen: It was something that we felt was so obvious there was a need for: an office with all the heft of the UK Government that understands where divergence is occurring.
Baroness Ludford: Would that run the database, for instance?
Roger Pollen: It would be the source of the truth in which then the one-stop shop would communicate that truth to businesses. It would be future-scanning. It would look at regulation that might be emerging in the EU or in the UK Parliament or in the devolved Administrations, and understand where that divergence would impact and then consider what you do about it. Do you mitigate it? Do you follow those other regulations? How do you make sure that this is a managed process—“no surprises” was the phrase that Stuart used earlier—so that you have the advance notice of change that is coming and you can consider how you will deal with that? The one-stop shop is to communicate the reality of it once it is happening. It does not exist yet, and the previous committee had recommended that it should exist. The Government have said that they are not doing it and directed us to the other resource that you mentioned. That shows that we still have a job of work to do.
Baroness Ludford: I have a cheeky supplementary. Would we be right in concluding that this Government and maybe any other Government do not want to advertise regulatory divergence? They do not want to have such an office because they do not want people to know?
The Chair: Lady Ludford is asking that question on her own account, not on the account of the committee.
Baroness Ludford: Absolutely, and I apologise.
Roger Pollen: One answer is that there may well be an office for regulatory divergence that we do not know about that is doing all this, but it would be helpful if business and other Administrations were aware of those potential divergences.
Baroness Ludford: Someone has to know.
Roger Pollen: If it does exist in government, it would be very helpful if it were accessible to everybody so that we can all make more informed choices.
The Chair: The strong point about Lady Ludford’s question is that it talks to the architecture behind the one-stop shop, as we discussed earlier, and how all that works and where the AI is and where the expertise is that eventually reaches real people.
Q15 Baroness O’Loan: I want to ask a question that is not on the paper and of which I should probably have given you notice. It is for Mr Kinnear. You may tell me, Lord Chair, that it is outside our remit. What is the impact of EU regulation on the increase in the level of the killing of animals for halal meat rather than normal procedures where it is more humane. Is EU regulation driving us down that path? Is GB practice driving us down that path? Are we being driven down that path?
Alexander Kinnear: It is one that I would have to come back to you on, because I do not have enough information on it to hand today.
Baroness O'Loan: It is one that regularly raises its voice in the Chamber, and it is an issue that people keep talking to me about in Northern Ireland, because we are very proud of our meat exports and this does not sit well with that at all.
Alexander Kinnear: I will endeavour to come back.
The Chair: Perhaps you could ask a colleague—I am sure that there is somebody who is expert on this question—to write to the committee to answer Lady O’Loan’s question.
Baroness O’Loan: It is specifically about EU regulation driving it or GB.
Baroness Ludford: I had a little bit of involvement in that when I was an MEP. If I remember, each member state can apply derogation from pre-stunning. I would imagine that that covers the UK as a whole.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick: If we go back to the issue of the reset, and Alexander referred to the Northern Ireland Executive not taking a particular interest, has the Ulster Farmers’ Union talked to the Northern Ireland Executive or talked to parties generally about needing to get involved in the SPS agreement directly or discussions directly with the UK Government?
Alexander Kinnear: We speak regularly to DAERA, which is the main point of contact. To be fair to Minister Muir, he has a good position on it and is trying, as are the civil servants, specifically on that and other issues. Of course, we do struggle with them on other things, but it is a general point. We can see the direction of travel and what will be agreed, and we are getting closer to that.
In order to make it a success, to harvest the benefits of it, the government departments at home have to play their role. To this date, they have not done that. I will go a step further to say that whenever these issues are raised on the Assembly floor, the debate is not reflective, first, of society and, secondly, of where the business community is at, because we are having to do the heavy lifting. We tell the Government this all the time, and the Commission. It is the business community carrying the credibility of the Windsor Framework on our shoulders, not anybody else, and we have to do that for them. It would be foolish of us all to batter away a win, which inevitably will come. We might as well try to make a success of it because, as I say again, that is it for this Parliament. There is very little else coming for us to ease problems unless the Government do another U-turn.
Q16 The Chair: We are coming towards the end of this session. We have a very able team that advises us here, and one of our team has come up with, I think, a very good question, which draws on your experience, which is more than that of most other people, of dealing with the European Union since Brexit. From a business engagement perspective, is there advice that you, with your experience of dealing with the Windsor Framework and the consequences of Brexit over recent years, could give the United Kingdom Government of the lessons that you have learned and that they should address in dealing with the EU-UK reset?
Stuart Anderson: That is a great question.
The Chair: It is a good question.
Stuart Anderson: I will have the first go at that. I personally do not have a difficulty in getting access to Commission officials. I was in Brussels four or five times over the last 12 months. Every time I reach out to them, even at short notice, they are ready and willing to engage. It is much the same on the UK government side. Officials, generally speaking—and there is variance between departments and agencies—are very willing and very open to engage. What this needs is political oversight, concentrated political oversight, because if that does not happen it is left with officials who have very clear guardrails as to what they can and cannot say. If you want to get this done quickly and in a way that is most advantageous to your businesses and community, that engagement has to take place at a political level.
That is more challenging now in the European Union than it has ever been because Maroš Šefčovič has a very good, clear understanding of post-Brexit trading arrangements, but his portfolio is massive. He is the Trade Commissioner. Trying to get his attention is particularly difficult, but that should be the number one focus of attention. If you have any sticking points, it should be politically led and with engagement with stakeholders such as us. Engagement with officials is good, it is useful, it is helpful, but sometimes the political engagement, particularly from government, from government politicians, can be much more regular and much more periodic.
The Chair: You are very politely saying that politicians should gain a much greater understanding of the issues that they are dealing with.
Stuart Anderson: That is part of it, but they need to take greater control of the process.
Roger Pollen: That is a great question. I could be trite and say that we do not like to give advice unless we are being paid for it.
The Chair: Go ahead. Please, please.
Roger Pollen: It is knowing what your strengths are going in and focusing on what you want to get out of it, and then it is moving with pace. If we look back to last May, the great summit in 2025, we will maybe see an outcome from it in May 2026, for implementation in May 2027. That seems to smack of lack of ambition on all sides, not just on—well, on all sides. There is a lot of common ground and common purpose and it would be better to focus on how to maximise and expand that, but not to go in without knowing your strengths. For example, Northern Ireland has a great defence sector, yet quite a lot of the supply chain for that defence sector is being hampered by the issues that we have been talking about for the last hour or so here. You would like to think that they could feature in the same conversations so that we get a shared objective on both sides to ease those problems so that the outcome then is to greater mutual benefit.
The Chair: Mr Kinnear, as the former MP for a Welsh agricultural constituency, I am slightly inclined to try to tempt you with the leading question to which the answer might be, “Go in thinking about agriculture because it is such an important part of our way of life”—but you say what you like.
Alexander Kinnear: It is a good point. When we look around our world today, and particularly after last weekend, we can see that anything is possible. Food security is not on the Government’s radar like it should be. In this agreement, when you strip everything back, food security is sitting top of that list.
There are a great many lessons to learn from Northern Ireland. We have been here now for four years. We know what works; we certainly know what does not work. Number one is listening to the business community in GB to actively address concerns, not allowing this sentiment that dynamic alignment means that we are all giving something away on the altar of the EU. It does not have to be like that. We have seen this in the early days of the Northern Ireland protocol, whereby our own Government went in and gold-plated everything to the nth degree, instead of putting on their flexibility hat and thinking outside the box, as European states do with derogations and different things. There are many ways to do these things.
The key point to this and making this SPS veterinary agreement work—I have said this earlier—is ensuring that our presence in Brussels is strong, that we know what we are doing, that we know what we want and that we know the outcomes that we are trying to deliver for the people back home. Again, this can be a win-win situation for us and all parts of the United Kingdom. It is about tying that down so that it has longevity. That is the essential point to this.
The Chair: Thank you. That was a very good coda to our meeting. We have run out of time now. On behalf of the whole committee, thank you very much. You have been direct, informative, expert, and it has been, for me, a fascinating session. I am sure that the committee would agree. I am afraid that we look forward to seeing you again if you could ever bear it. Thank you very much.
This brings the public part of our meeting to an end. The public element of this meeting is now concluded and the broadcast will finish.
