Owen Polley: ​The delay to the parcels border shows the seriousness of the Windsor Framework

​The government announced last week that a key part of the Windsor Framework, the new Irish Sea parcels’ border, would be postponed until March 2025.
The parcel arrangements were scheduled originally to come into force from October 1, alongside other important changes to trade with Great Britain. Business representatives in Northern Ireland predicted disaster if implementation went ahead as plannedThe parcel arrangements were scheduled originally to come into force from October 1, alongside other important changes to trade with Great Britain. Business representatives in Northern Ireland predicted disaster if implementation went ahead as planned
The parcel arrangements were scheduled originally to come into force from October 1, alongside other important changes to trade with Great Britain. Business representatives in Northern Ireland predicted disaster if implementation went ahead as planned

These arrangements were scheduled originally to come into force from the 1st of October, alongside other important changes to trade with Great Britain.

Business representatives in Northern Ireland, particularly those from the haulage and freight industries, have lobbied hard for this delay. They predicted disaster if implementation went ahead as planned. And the pause also reflected, as His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) acknowledged in an email to clients, the authorities’ state of unreadiness.

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This is a stay of execution rather than a reprieve and the new barriers were postponed precisely because they are so complex and significant. All of which makes the comparative lack of political debate that they created even more perplexing.

Last week, the UUP MLA, Steve Aiken, described the Stormont committee that is supposed to examine the implications of the Windsor Framework as ‘comatose’.

That description could be applied more broadly. Many of our political parties, various layers of government and much of the media seem to be intently looking at their shoes and whistling, as changes to the Irish Sea border loom.

The parcel arrangements were supposed to apply to parcels arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain. These will eventually have to pass through either the red lane, which requires onerous paperwork and potentially tariffs, or the UK Internal Market Scheme (UKIMS), which, despite its name, is far from straightforward.

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If a mainland company sells to businesses in Northern Ireland, from March it must be a trusted trader and authorised by UKIMS to use this route. When it sends parcels to the province, it will then be asked to provide an authorisation number and it will also be required to sign up to a lengthy set of declarations that its goods are ‘not at risk’ of entering the EU market.

That may sound relatively simple, but the GB business is being asked to ensure that its customers in Northern Ireland will not sell any products into the EU. In addition, if it includes ‘at risk’ items by mistake, it could be chucked out of the scheme and penalised financially, and it is required to keep records of ‘not at risk’ movements for five years.

This, you will remember, is the slimmed down route that was supposed to keep goods from the rest of Britain moving freely across the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland. It is hardly surprising that many companies have already decided that the added costs and legal implications of selling here are not worthwhile.

The UKIMS route will, in any case, be unavailable for most goods coming to Northern Ireland. If products cannot be demonstrated categorically to be ‘not at risk’ of entering the EU market, they are deemed automatically ‘at risk’, meaning that they must undergo the full rigours of the ‘red lane’.

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Despite the parcels postponement, the way that retail goods move into Northern Ireland is still set to change from October, with the introduction of the Retail Movement Scheme. Again, while this is sold as a streamlined route into our market, it implements aspects of the Irish Sea border that, before the Windsor Framework, were waived through grace periods and other easements.

The latest tranche of labelling regulations, too, will mean that more products in our shops must bear the words ‘Not for EU’. The previous government, in order to reassure traders in Northern Ireland that they were not being singled out, promised that those rules would eventually be extended across the whole UK.

Now, the new Labour administration has postponed that pledge’s implementation indefinitely, because it was poised to cause ‘chaos’ for suppliers. The Food and Drink federation estimated that it would cost the industry £250 million per year.

This burden will now fall only on products intended for the NI market.

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That was just one Conservative plan to ameliorate the Irish Sea border that never came to fruition. Most of the DUP’s Safeguarding the Union deal was not enacted before the election.

As this disaster unfolds, there is a sense of resignation, even among unionists, who believe that nothing can be done to stop the framework. For that reason, perhaps, there has been little discussion of what is happening. But it won’t be possible to ignore the issue indefinitely.

The Northern Ireland Protocol included a ‘democratic consent’ mechanism for the Irish Sea border, which Stormont is due to vote on later this year. As the former DUP policy chief, Dan Boucher, who is now in the TUV, pointed out in the News Letter last week, the usual requirements for cross-community consent at the Assembly were waived for this motion on the behest of the EU.

That was effectively intended to gerrymander the result, so that the protocol arrangements would stay in place with only the support of nationalists and Alliance. It was a scandal that was barely mentioned, because it was inflicted on unionists.

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The Assembly is, in any case, effectively being asked to endorse agreements that cede control of vast swathes of public policy to the EU, which we are not a part of and over which we have no democratic control.

Mr Boucher says that the legality of that is highly questionable, never mind the ethical questions it raises. Surely all politicians should be bothered by that, whether they are unionist, nationalist or other?

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