Brexit: Whitehall denies claim it forced Edwin Poots to build Irish Sea border

On Friday the BBC reported that it had seen a letter from Whitehall department DEFRA to Mr Poots’ department, DAERA, which “instructs it to start work on check-points at NI’s sea ports without delay”.

The letter was said to have told DAERA that it is critical for the infrastructure necessary for checks to be put in place, and stating that such moves are in accordance with the UK-EU Brexit deal.

Unusually, the letter was not sent from DEFRA minister George Eustice to his DUP counterpart in Stormont – but from Mr Eustice to Mr Poots’ most senior civil servant, Denis McMahon.

As reported by the News Letter last week, the letter set out DEFRA’s expectation that the work – which now involves major procurement – would resume after Mr Poots had intervened to pause the work two weeks ago.

The Tory minister told Mr McMahon: “My view is that it is now the role of your department to procure the facilities for agri-food checks without delay.”

Mr McMahon then wrote a memo for Mr Poots “to note” that he must press ahead with procurement for border checks.

However, unusually in such circumstances, he did not ask his minister for permission to do so or to take a formal decision.

Nevertheless, as a minister Mr Poots has the authority to issue a ministerial direction forcing his officials to act in a particular way – something he has not done in this instance, thus allowing them to help construct the new border.

Last week DEFRA told the News Letter that it had not formally ordered Mr Poots to allow the work to resume, although it could have done so under a sweeping power which allows London to overrule devolved ministers but which has never been used.

When asked yesterday if it did in fact instruct Mr Poots to proceed with the border work, and, if so, under what statutory provision it issued such an instruction, a spokesman for DEFRA said that it gave no such order to Mr Poots’ department and that it “stands over” its statement of last week in which it said that “no instructions have been issued”.

At the time of going to press, DAERA had not responded to a request to clarify whether it accepted that it had acted voluntarily – rather than under compulsion – to allow the border infrastructure to proceed.

The contracts for the work were published last week. Although they are not publicly available – and can only be seen by a small number of companies pre-approved to bid for such work – BBC NI’s business and economics editor John Campbell last week revealed a leaked section of the tendering document.

It showed that firms have only until Friday to bid for the work which is split into three lots – Larne infrastructure worth between £12.8m and £15.8m, Belfast infrastructure worth between £11m and £13.5m, and Warrenpoint infrastructure worth between £4.2m and £5.2m.

The contracts will be awarded by next week.

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