Modern solutions to the Irish Sea border have been 'arrogantly dismissed' by the EU and pro-Protocol parties at Stormont - Lord Dodds

​The DUP peer was responding to comments this week from the head of Marks and Spencer’s food business, who said that the supermarket chain is still suffering from an “unfinished Brexit” – and that the bureaucracy under the Windsor Framework has added “cost and complexity” to moving goods across the Irish Sea.

​Alex Freudmann also said he does not want ‘not for EU’ labelling rolled out across Great Britain – something that was a key promise in the ‘Safeguarding the Union’ deal.

It was seen by the DUP and the previous government as a way of protecting consumer choice in Northern Ireland’s supermarkets.

Lord Dodds of Duncairn told the News Letter the fact that Mr Freudmann has complained about the huge cost and complexity of the Windsor Framework “tells you how bad things are”.

The former North Belfast MP said: “If one of the UK’s biggest retailers is suffering, then the situation for smaller businesses doing business with Northern Ireland is far worse.

“The M&S chief executive has pointed out one obvious solution based on digital technology. But the naysayers in the EU and its dinosaur cheerleaders elsewhere insist on bureaucratic processes adding millions of pounds to business costs and restricting consumer choice in Northern Ireland.

“In addition, hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is wasted on Trader Support Services in trying to guide businesses through the labyrinth of paperwork and procedures. This is money that could be spent on hospitals and schools.

“In fact, this is not the first time M&S has proposed a different way forward. Three years ago, its then food managing director Stuart Machin called for all checks and certifications on the entry of food to Northern Ireland from GB to be replaced by a technology-based solution.

“As now, such modern day solutions were arrogantly dismissed as ‘magical thinking’ despite businesses like M&S and others being at the forefront of technological advances.”

As the current Windsor Framework arrangements failed to get the support of unionists at Stormont in December, the government has launched a review into the operation of the Irish Sea border.

This is being led by the former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Paul Murphy.

Lord Dodds said that review – if it is really going to address the fundamental problems of the Windsor Framework and the Irish Sea border – “needs to go to the likes of M&S and talk seriously to them about solutions that protect everyone’s interests”.

He added: “It needs to examine options that actually work while at the same time do not infringe the sovereignty of the UK as the current set-up does.

“The problem of course is that even if the Murphy review recommended sensible outcomes, it requires Sinn Fein and nationalist backing which they would never give even if it saved public money and made things simpler.

“Yet in a show of one-sided bias the government stripped away the need for unionist consent for the current lamentable arrangements when the government flagrantly rigged the recent assembly vote to prevent cross-community consent being required.”

The ‘Safeguarding the Union’ deal between the last government and the DUP pledged to extend a Windsor Framework requirement for certain food products sold in Northern Ireland to have ‘not for EU’ labelling to the rest of the UK.

However, the Labour government dropped that commitment in September after lobbying from businesses on the mainland, who were concerned about the costs.

It has instead pledged to monitor the availability of products on supermarket shelves in Northern Ireland and only implement the policy if it decides that a problem is developing.

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Hilary Benn rubbished the unionist parties’ preferred option of mutual enforcement as a solution to the Irish Sea border. He branded it “magical thinking” – and defended the Windsor Framework as a “big step forward”.