Response by Jim Allister KC MP to today’s announcement by the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee about the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/853):
“I am pleased that further to my making representations to the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee about the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/853) that the Committee has today used the power at its disposal to draw the attention of the Regulations to the House on the grounds that:
“it is politically or legally important and gives rise to issues of public policy likely to be of interest to the House.”
“These are regulations that would have otherwise become law automatically without any parliamentary comment or debate.
“The purpose of the Regulations is to give effect to EU Regulation 2023/1231 which is very curious for two reasons:
“First, it does not apply to an inch of EU territory but to the territory of every inch of the UK (which is supposed to have left the EU) and what is permitted to move from one part of it to another.
“Second, the effect of the regulations is the governance of the division that those 27 countries have imposed on the United Kingdom in the form of an international SPS border between one part of the country and another.
“This disrespects the territorial integrity of the UK and is in breach of the UN Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations which censures: ‘any action which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States’.
“While EU Regulation 2023/1231 makes some of the demands in relation to the border it has imposed on us less burdensome for some purposes (on the basis of submission to additional burdens like ‘Not for EU’ labels) it reserves the right to default back to removing all easements in Article 14, meaning that the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024/853) could effectively be rendered null and void at any time not because of the actions of our Parliament but because of the actions of a foreign government.
“No country with an ounce of self-respect could agree to submit to such humiliating terms.
“These Regulations, however, are also a call to action for anyone wanting Brexit to be a success for the UK economy as whole.
“They give direct effect to what has always been feared, namely that the EU would try to use keeping Northern Ireland in their single market as a means of tying the whole country to EU regulation, undermining Brexit for everyone.
“The Regulations turn this fear into a reality as they impose on Great Britain EU standards that are already on Northern Ireland on account of which rather than removing the border in the Irish Sea, they simply offer some easements, subject to some additional burdens, and their Article 14 to remove them completely in certain circumstances.
“The Regulations demonstrate with complete clarity, first, that Brexit has not been done for the whole United Kingdom and, second, that on account of that Brexit in the rest of the United Kingdom is now in jeopardy.
“We will none of us ever know what Brexit is like unless and until the UK Government has the courage to demand, as any other self-respecting state would, that the EU 27 recognise the territorial integrity of the UK and facilitate the departure of the whole UK from the EU, respecting the outcome of the 2016 referendum.
“I am delighted that Baroness Hoey has already secured a debate in the House of Lords on these dangerous regulations, scheduled for 23 October, and I will move to annul them in the House of Commons next week.”