Fleur Anderson

It is a great pleasure to respond to this debate and to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I thank the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) for bringing this important debate to the Chamber, and for raising the many issues that he talked about in his speech. It was a pleasure to work with him recently to help one of his constituents. When we can do that, it is wonderful to see the results. I also thank all the other hon. Members who raised issues about their constituencies. The hon. Member for East Londonderry is a strong advocate for businesses and consumers in Northern Ireland, and I acknowledge the work that he has done and continues to do. As he said, we need to be constructive. We need to come together and get solutions. The debate will be significant in achieving that. The first provisional estimate for farm incomes in Northern Ireland in 2023, published by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, showed that the horticultural sector had an output of £70 million, with the main horticultural export being mushrooms and vegetables, which made up £46 million of that. The total gross output for agriculture in Northern Ireland in 2023 was £2.87 billion. Just two weeks ago, I visited C & L Mushrooms in Newry to learn about its success in exporting to the organic market across the UK, which it does daily. I also picked some mushrooms and learned about that with the Northern Ireland DAERA Minister, Andrew Muir. There is one fundamental point that we must accept when discussing the matter raised by the hon. Member for East Londonderry. As a result of leaving the European Union, we have two trading entities—the European Union and the United Kingdom—and the ability to have different rules while seeking to ensure the freedom of movement of goods, which is so vital for businesses, jobs and consumers across Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The practical outworkings of that situation are exemplified in the trading of horticultural goods, as the hon. Member has pointed out. It is important that we recognise that the island of Ireland has been treated as one single epidemiological unit for decades, and that is an important part of the negotiations that are happening now. However, the hon. Member rightly pointed out that challenges exist. The Windsor framework protects the UK internal market, while enabling the EU to be confident that its rules will also be respected. Significantly, the arrangements in the Windsor framework protect trade in agricultural goods between GB and Northern Ireland through the establishment of the Northern Ireland retail movement scheme and the Northern Ireland plant health label, also known as the NIPHL. The framework has ensured that movements of agricultural goods from Northern Ireland to Great Britain continue to benefit from unfettered market access. The Northern Ireland plant health label removes the requirement to obtain burdensome and costly phytosanitary certificates, replacing them with free-of-charge, self-printed labels. Nearly 600 businesses in Great Britain and Northern Ireland have joined the Northern Ireland plant health label scheme since it went live on 1 October 2023. Indeed, the NIPHL has also ensured that seed potatoes can once again move freely between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Since the implementation of the plant health label, more than 1,500 tonnes have been moved, protecting this key industry.