Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether UK producers and manufacturers will be able to disregard EU laws and rules in the production and manufacture of goods and products for (1) the Northern Ireland market, and (2) the Great Britain market, under the Windsor Framework.

As we said explicitly in the Government's Command Paper on the Windsor Framework, in order to maintain maximum market access for Northern Ireland traders, those EU rules which do apply under the Windsor Framework apply to goods produced in Northern Ireland. But this reflects what we have heard time and again is the balance businesses want in order to prosper:

· Companies producing for their most important market in Great Britain will retain completely unfettered access. That means a permanent guarantee of being able to place goods on the UK market in all scenarios.

· There are many areas of goods rules within the scope of the old Protocol where no international or EU standards apply - covering a quarter of Northern Ireland manufacturers. In those cases UK national rules set the standards for goods on the market in Northern Ireland.

· Elsewhere in manufacturing, international standards apply in practice. Of the nearly 3,600 international goods standards in place, there are differences between the UK and EU in only 11 of them (0.3 percent of standards overall). These reflect minor differences in practice, where the UK has applied higher standards (which Northern Ireland traders can still choose to meet).

· In agrifood, the rules in place reflect longstanding arrangements, protecting the integrated supply chains on which many industries rely. But through this agreement they now do so within a dual regime - with retail trade into Northern Ireland able to use UK food safety standards and flow smoothly; Northern Ireland farmers outside of the Common Agricultural Policy; and the Northern Ireland Executive given the flexibility to decide its own approach locally on agricultural subsidies.

· This dual regime is also consistent with existing devolution arrangements and the market access principles in the UK Internal Market Act, which mean it is entirely possible constitutionally to have different standards across the UK.