Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard (UUP)

My Lords, I apologise to the House and to the noble Lord, Lord Frost; I missed the first minute of his introduction. Since the introduction of the protocol and the Windsor Framework, we have witnessed—although many of us have not agreed with—a significant divergence of trade and goods movement between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We now appear to be witnessing Great Britain being required to accept those EU regulations. I notice that a number of those speaking this evening in your Lordships’ House are from Northern Ireland, but this has a significant impact on the people of Great Britain as well. Is this a situation of “back to the future”? As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has indicated, the detail of this particular legislation may be relatively minor, but today in the Lords Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee we had a number of regulations for consideration. These ranged from electric vehicles to animal feed safety, cereal products, vegetables, nuts, fruits, honey, jellies, veterinary products and now the EUDR, the European deforestation regulations. How many more of these are we going to have to contemplate over the forthcoming years? It is the public and the businesses who are suffering in all this, administratively and financially. In Northern Ireland we know the significant negative impact this has had over the last number of years on businesses, particularly small businesses, as they try to bring in goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Larger businesses have some flexibility in that they may be able to employ administrators, but small businesses are suffering greatly and they are the people most impacted.