Stop Taking Us for Fools – Calling Out the Internal Market Guarantee

Jim Allister is leader of the TUV and MP for North Antim. A KC he has previously represented North Antrim in the Northern Ireland Assembly and Northern Ireland in the European Parliament. He outlines the internal sea border problem.

On Wednesday I led a debate in Parliament on the key ‘Safeguarding the Union’ provision that at least 80% of freight travelling from Great Britain to Northern Ireland must move in the UK Internal Market System, ahead of an anticipated report on the subject by the Independent Monitoring Panel.

A key component of the Government’s attempt to woo the DUP back into Stormont, their ‘Internal Market Guarantee pitch’, was and is that, while the partitioning of the UK remains in that some goods that moved unfettered from GB to NI within the UK Internal Market before 2021 will still encounter a customs and international SPS border, this will only be the case for less than 20% of goods.

This they suggest is a great improvement!

If this constituted a correct characterisation of the Internal Market Guarantee, it would still be completely unacceptable because we would still have an international trade border dividing the United Kingdom and the people of Northern Ireland would still be subject to laws we don’t make and cannot change in a staggering 300 different areas.

Crucially, however, the commitment that at least 80% of freight movements from Great Britain to Northern Ireland should travel in an UK Internal Market for goods is in any event completely bogus.

The term the ‘UK Internal Market System’ suggests arrangements that uphold a UK Internal Market for Goods, the free and unfettered movement of goods across the whole UK without the requirements of international trade: needing an export number, having to submit to customs formalities, international SPS paperwork and checks at Border Control Posts.

The truth, however, is that goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland on this ‘UK Internal Market System’ must: have an export number, submit to some customs formalities dictated by EU Regulations 2023/1186, submit to some international SPS rules dictated by EU Regulation 2023/1231 and be subject to 10 to 5% border control posts all as if entering a foreign country!

The UK Internal Market System may offer a different border experience from the Red Lane, but it is still an international border experience arising from the fact that Northern Ireland, is subject to the EU customs code which declares that the rest of the UK is a third country, that is a foreign country, in relation to it.

This is not a UK Internal Market System but an international trade border system and to call it a UK Internal market System, and to describe a commitment that 80% of freight moving from GB to NI travels by this border arrangement, and ‘internal market guarantee’, is to take the people of Northern Ireland for fools.

The truth is that it does not matter whether freight moves from GB to NI on the Red Lane or the Green Lane masquerading as a ‘UK Internal Market System’, none of it can travel without an export number and submitting to some customs and international SPS formalities.

The misnamed ‘UK Internal Market System’ and ‘Internal Market Guarantee’ are consequently working hand in glove with the Red Lane to promote increasing trade diversion in direct violation of Article 16 of the Windsor Framework. They are together working to replace the UK Internal Market for Goods, on which the UK rested from 1800 until 2020, with a GB Internal Market for goods and a separate, all-Ireland single market for goods, the essential prerequisite of all-Ireland statehood.

In this context, rather than taking steps to make things better, the UK Government is actually making matters even worse. Until 30 June the impact of the Irish Sea border was mitigated by the presence of the Movement Assistance Scheme which means that people buying in, for example, potatoes from Great Britain into Northern Ireland did not need to pay for the cost of veterinary inspections (£127.60 each) and SPS forms (£25.52 per inspection). These additional costs are now being passed on to those buying in the potatoes in NI, and then to the NI consumer, and if the additional costs are not met the GB producers will simply stop supplying NI.

As the UK Internal Market for goods is increasingly rendered a legal fiction we must not forget that the DUP was not only persuaded to go back into office because of the Safeguarding the Union promise in relation to the UK Internal Market System and the Internal Market Guarantee but also the Independent Monitoring Panel, charged with responsibility for ensuring that the Internal Market Guarantee is upheld.

The IMP is due to report shortly on the period January 2025 until 30 June 2025. Rather than providing reassurance for unionists, the fact that it will report on whether or not 80% of freight moved via the trade border masquerading as the UK Internal Market System during the first half of 2025 will only serve two purposes:

First, it will involve the Government intensifying its deceit, taking us for fools, pretending that the Internal Market is upheld rather than jeopardised by what are trade border arrangements, further damaging relationships.

Second, it will put into sharp focus the fact that the substance of the UK Internal Market has been removed and that under the Windsor Framework no freight can move from GB to NI on what would be regarded as anything approximating an internal market anywhere else in the world.

Until the Acts of Union are fully restored, the United Kingdom will continue to be placed in jeopardy and the people of Northern Ireland subject to laws they don’t make and cannot change for the purpose of creating an all-Ireland economy, needlessly destabilising the politics of Northern Ireland.

This was and is entirely preventable if we return to the mechanism initially developed within the EU to protect the integrity of both the EU and UK internal markets, and provided for by my Private Members Bill, Mutual Enforcement.