Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what steps the Government is taking to help ensure the continued availability of veterinary medicines in Northern Ireland beyond 2025.
Answered by Steve Baker
The Government’s priority is to secure a long-term sustainable solution on veterinary medicines. To that end, the Government’s priority is to pursue such a solution through discussions with the EU, as well as preparing for safeguards in all scenarios. We will be setting up a Veterinary Medicines Working Group shortly to help us with this.
In the meantime, we have put in place a grace period arrangement until the end of 2025 which supports continuity of supply to Northern Ireland.
Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how much his Department has (a) budgeted for and (b) spent on software updates to legacy computer systems in each of the last three financial years.
Answered by Steve Baker
The Northern Ireland Office does not have any legacy computer systems and therefore has not budgeted or spent anything relating to legacy computer systems in any of the last three financial years.
Asked by: Nia Griffith (Labour - Llanelli)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the status of talks with (a) the European Union and (b) political parties in Northern Ireland on the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Answered by Chris Heaton-Harris
I have regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues and Northern Ireland political leaders on Northern Ireland matters, including the Protocol.
The Government is engaging in constructive dialogue with the EU to find solutions to the problems the Protocol is causing. We are also proceeding with legislation that aims to fix these problems in the event we cannot reach a negotiated solution.