Northern Ireland Protocol

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we do not agree that we are in breach of our legal obligations. The steps that we took are lawful and consistent with the progressive and good-faith implementation of the protocol. They are temporary, operational steps where additional delivery time is needed, consistent with the common practice internationally of temporarily delayed implementation for operational and delivery reasons.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD) [V]]

My Lords, since sanitary and phytosanitary checks are a major problem in trade across the Irish Sea, and since the Government have now made it clear that they do not intend to lower such standards in negotiations with the United States, do the Government have any current plans to diverge from EU SPS regulations in the next four to five years? If there are no plans for significant divergence, could Her Majesty’s Government not declare that we will continue to adhere to EU standards until the next major review, as we are, in effect, doing on data regulation? Or is the principle of sovereignty more important here than the practice of food imports and exports?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we indicated in last year’s negotiations that we were interested in an equivalence mechanism covering agri-foods, and the EU was not. We continue to be interested in such discussions if the EU is open to them. We will not agree to arrangements based on dynamic alignment, as this could compromise our future SPS rules and our trade agreements.