TUV slam rebranding of the 'green lane' as the UK Internal market as an ‘attempt to mislead’

The party’s submission to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (NIAC) has criticised the idea that there is a single market within the United Kingdom when trade is so heavily regulated by the EU.

Since the Northern Ireland Protocol was created, the UK has been divided into two regulatory zones for trade. Great Britain is free to make its own rules, but the province is effectively part of the Brussels-run single market.

This has resulted in trade friction within the UK – particularly for goods moving GB -NI – as Northern Ireland is subject to certain EU laws and its customs code.

​In its submission to the NIAC, the TUV criticise the rebranding of the green lane as the UK internal market – something that was promised in Safeguarding the Union.

The TUV says: “It is through the UK Internal Market System so called, that the clearest attempt to mislead is located.

“This should be confronted both in terms of the terminology of the ‘UK Internal Market System’ and the claims made about it...

“The term ‘internal market’ has an established meaning. If you are in an ‘internal market’ you can move goods without encountering the costs of having to negotiate a customs or international SPS border”.

The submission continued: “the use of the term UK Internal Market System for the Green Lane arrangements is deeply misleading because the arrangements in question remove neither the customs nor the international SPS border.

“They simplify some of the paperwork, but they do not remove the reality of the border which conveys the end of one internal market and the beginning of another, that of the EU single market.

“Thus, rather than giving effect to a UK internal market for goods, the so-called UK Internal Market System is concerned with managing the movement of goods from the Great Britain Internal Market for goods to the EU Single Market for goods”.