Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) (Extension to Maritime Activities) Order 2026

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2026 Lords Chamber

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[Baroness Hoey]

Leave out all the words after “that” and insert “this House declines to approve the draft Order laid before the House on 13 January because while the Scottish Islands are protected from the Order, Northern Ireland, which is already marginalised from the rest of the UK through the imposition of the Windsor Framework, is denied the same protection; and because in a context where no viable fuel alternatives exist the only impact of the Order will be to increase bureaucratic burdens on business and impose additional costs on those living in parts of the UK that depend on maritime transport”.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

I thank the Minister for his remarks and for his kindness in reaching out to me asking for a meeting when I tabled the amendment. Without wanting to in any way ruin his career prospects, I suggest to noble Lords that if this particular Minister had been in charge, this SI would not be going forward—it would be being dropped at this stage while we await future negotiations over any linkage between the EU ETS and the UK ETS.

As noble Lords will know, I have tabled several regret and fatal amendments over the past number of years, all to draw attention to the way in which the Windsor Framework has affected businesses and people in Northern Ireland. But this is a very different SI: it has absolutely nothing to do with the Windsor Framework and the protocol, although it does compound the further isolating of Northern Ireland from the rest of the country. This SI is a deliberate and calculated attack by His Majesty’s Government on business and consumers in Northern Ireland by introducing what is effectively a new maritime carbon tax, while not recognising Northern Ireland’s total reliance on maritime transport. The consequence will be that businesses and households will be disproportionately affected by it.

Noble Lords need to understand why this matters so much to Northern Ireland. It matters because we are uniquely dependent on maritime connectivity: 90% of goods entering or leaving Northern Ireland move by sea. Ferry services are absolutely vital. They are not a choice; they are an absolute must, as a route to the market in GB. These routes are vital for—to give some examples we all know about—agri-food exports, manufacturing parts, supermarket and retail distribution, supplies for construction and, of course, passenger movement.

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[Lord Weir of Ballyholme (DUP)]

The noble Baroness referenced the good work of the Scotland Office in lobbying to ensure that Scotland was exempted. Does she agree that this stands in sharp contrast to the Northern Ireland Office, which was instead lobbying parties in Northern Ireland to back this order and ensure that it was implemented?

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

The noble Lord almost pre-empts what I was about to say, so I thank him. As if this is not enough to give politics a bad name, the events of last week, I am afraid, leave a nasty taste in the mouth. The Northern Ireland Assembly’s DAERA scrutiny committee met last Thursday and heard from Stena Line, the key ferry company linking GB to NI, and the UK Chamber of Shipping. All parties there, bar the Alliance, expressed concerns. The Minister is an Alliance member, of course. The committee was ready to reject the order but was told that there was a Northern Ireland-specific impact assessment around, and agreed to postpone its decision until Monday this week so that members could read the impact assessment. On Monday, the committee met again and was presented with no NI impact assessment because no such impact assessment existed. Officials suggested that the impact on Northern Ireland was already assessed but, again, this is not true.

The Frontier Economics study often cited was commissioned in 2023 by Whitehall departments, not the NI department. It mentions Northern Ireland a few times but provides no quantified estimates of the impacts on Northern Ireland’s consumers or business. It also spends a lot of time emphasising cruise liner shipping, which is not even covered, and barely touches on freight routes. The Government have acknowledged that Northern Ireland is more exposed to cost transmission through maritime freight but surely then there should have been a dedicated economic impact assessment carried out. Did the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland ever even discuss it with Secretary of State Miliband to point out the unfairness? Sometimes we almost question the role and purpose of the Northern Ireland Office. The impact assessment statement was just a ruse to prevent a vote last Thursday that would have gone the wrong way, and to buy the Government time.

Over the weekend, Northern Ireland officials lobbied MLAs very hard. Even the Secretary of State was engaged in texting and maybe even telephoning party leaders with the argument that had never been mentioned in the other place when this was discussed, saying that the entire EU reset would be threatened if the Assembly blocked the SI. The people of Northern Ireland expect their Secretary of State to at the very least put forward the arguments as to why they should not be subject to discriminatory treatment, leading to higher fares. It is clear that Northern Ireland does not have a Northern Ireland Office that works for the people of Northern Ireland the way in which the Scotland Office does.

The committee voted by five votes to four to approve the SI. One MLA, Michelle McIlveen, described these events in the following terms in the Assembly. She stated:

“What happened was, frankly, disgraceful. Last-minute pressure was placed on parties by UKG. A new dimension associated with CBAM and impact on EU negotiations was introduced. No facts, detail or proper briefing, just smoke and mirrors. That is not the way that we should do our politics, and interference at such a late stage is highly suspicious”.


The EU reset argument is nonsense. It played on the suggestion that if this order is not passed, that would be the end of any discussion on maritime greenhouse gases. In truth, however, as noble Lords know, regulations are pulled fairly regularly to make corrections and replaced a few days later with a new set of corrected regulations with “(No.2)” added at the end. The order that we are discussing is blatantly discriminatory and I call on the Government to commit at the very least to withdraw it and table a draft (No.2) order, which can have the same wording as the current order but applies the same exemption to Northern Ireland or Scotland. I appreciate that there may be noble Lords who wish to mention some other areas of the United Kingdom that have not been exempted.

Stena Line and the UK Chamber of Shipping have asked for reasonable adjustments: a 12-month delay to allow them to prepare, a Northern Ireland-specific economic assessment, a phased introduction period, and revenues raised to be targeted towards maritime decarbonisation. All those seem eminently sensible to me, as I hope they do to other noble Lords. I support the regret amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, but I feel very strongly that we are fed up with regretting things—regret does not change anything. That is why, unless we get a very strong response from the Minister—although I appreciate that he is not making these decisions—I believe that, for the sake of the people of Northern Ireland and for the sake of decency and fairness, I will be forced to push this to a vote.

I will mention something that came up in the other House. The honourable Member for North Antrim and the honourable Member for South Antrim both spoke against this and the Conservative Members voted against it in Committee, but of course with the huge Labour majority it went through the House. The 50% reduction was raised, which Northern Ireland is of course getting. The Minister there responded by saying:

“I wanted to clear up a couple of points … The 50% reduction that applies to Northern Ireland is there to create parity between vessels that operate between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and those that operate between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland”.—[Official Report, Commons, Second Delegated Legislation Committee, 3/2/26; col. 13.]


Of course, the Republic of Ireland is under the EU’s 50% reduction. The honourable Member for North Antrim responded:

“The Minister is telling the Committee that parity with the Republic of Ireland is more important to him than parity with the rest of the United Kingdom”.—[Official Report, Commons, Second Delegated Legislation Committee, 3/2/26; col. 14.]


That tells us something. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, I should inform the House that, if this amendment is agreed to, I will be unable to call the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, by reason of pre-emption.

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[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

It is not an impossibility for the next 15 years. Getting an accurate picture of trade always involves a range of calculations—you cannot get it exactly right. However, so far the impact of this proposed order has been assessed at below 1% of those costs; the Government do not recognise the figure of 6% put out by some parts of the industry. That is set against the gain that could come from those bodies being in the ETS, the alignment with CBAM in future and so on.

I might add that, although the product of this particular entry into the ETS has not and will not be hypothecated—indeed, no British Government have ever hypothecated anything that has come into their coffers—what we need to judge it by is how much money has already gone out. Just last week, £271 million went out to further support the maritime industry in its transition to a low-carbon basis. The SHORE fund has several hundred million in it, including £18 million that has already gone to Northern Ireland. All of these are paying back the money that is going into the fund in the future, for the benefit of the maritime industry and its transition.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, at the beginning of this debate, when I was being nice to the Minister and thanked him for the meeting he asked for with me, I said that I did not want to spoil his career prospects and that I thought that, if it had been his decision, he might have chosen to withdraw the SI at the beginning. Now, by the end of this debate, perhaps he would have been even more keen to withdraw it.

This has been an extremely good and wide-ranging debate, as the Minister said. It has brought together two or three key issues—I will not go over them again. It is the first time I have had an SI dealing with not only Northern Ireland but other parts of the United Kingdom, and it has been very good to see so many of the Government Benches full. If one benefit of tabling a fatal amendment is to get a lot of Labour Peers to come here and listen, it is probably worth it.

I thank in particular those Peers who do not normally speak on issues related to Northern Ireland. My fatal amendment is very much geared to the inequality of Northern Ireland and the way it is treated differently from Scotland. It was particularly good to hear from the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Ashcombe, on the wider aspects of the SI in relation to the Isle of Wight and the Scilly Isles. It was also good to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lords, Lord Mountevans and Lord Greenway—I am very sorry if this might well have been his last speech in the House—who brought their genuine experience of shipping.

If there is any lesson to learn today about speeches, it is that we should all, including me, follow the example of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who, in her two very short interventions, hit the nail right on the head about how this issue has been handled. Despite the meetings on this side, what happened over the past few days in Northern Ireland was a very bad way for government to be working. The way that the Northern Ireland Office has completely ignored the wishes and needs of Northern Ireland, in terms of business opportunities and what will happen with this carbon tax, has been quite deplorable. Worst of all, as has been said by a number of Peers, was the way the statutory instrument was dealt with in the other place: absolutely different information was given right up to the very last minute. The MLAs were cajoled, blackmailed and treated by the Government as if they were pretty stupid and would not understand that they were being told things that were different from what had been said in the other place.

I thank all Members who have spoken. Of course, all the Northern Ireland Members know the issue and how strongly people will feel its effects. The unfairness to part of the United Kingdom, which comes up over and over again in this place, is becoming ridiculous and quite unsustainable if we care about the union and equality between all parts of the union. Having said all that, I really do not want to waste people’s time when they have sat through and listened. I would like to test the opinion of the House.