Businesses in Northern Ireland will be required to fill out Brexit paperwork when sending their goods across the Irish Sea to Britain, Boris Johnson has conceded, a year after he told them they could put export forms in the bin.
The concession was made as part of a package of arrangements hammered out in the UK-EU joint committee in exchange for the UK dropping its law-breaking Brexit clauses in the internal market and taxation bills.
So Gove’s claim of a breakthrough really amounts to this Government of Fools finally having to drop the bluster, jingoism and falsehoods and face the reality of a small country negotiating with a powerful trading bloc. A bloc that we were a short while ago a major player in .
It represents a climbdown by Johnson, who last year sought to reassure voters and businesses in Northern Ireland there would be unfettered access to markets in Great Britain. Johnson said any business asked to fill in such paperwork should telephone him “and I will direct them to throw that form in the bin”, he told them in an exchange caught on video.
Gove told the BBC on Wednesday that the prime minister was correct as under the deal “there wouldn’t be a need for customs declarations” on goods going from Northern Ireland to Britain. A statement that has now been proved to be wrong is never wrong in Tory eyes.
There are concessions for supermarkets, which are to be permitted to continue to supply Northern Ireland shops without special Brexit checks that kick in, deal or no deal, on 1 January. But they will be subject to the same checks after an initial few months. So it is a delay, not a cancellation.
“There will be a grace period; trusted traders will not be subjected to the checks during a grace period,” said a government source. “It will not apply for very long but they won’t be required to do the full checks. The point is everyone has to comply with the sanitary and phytosanitary checks but we were determined to ensure food supplies were not interrupted and got this concession from the EU,” said the source.
A small concession seen as a great victory. It seems very unlikely that the EU had planned to starve the people of N.I.
There has also been a deal allowing 15 EU officials to be permanently based in offices in Belfast to help traders get to grips with the new system and monitor enforcement by UK officials.
Their presence represents a U-turn for the government coming months after they told Brussels they could not open an office in Belfast.
The officials will have access to all UK databases and controls will be able to take place at any time without any prior notification. They will not have a building but appropriate office space will be found, sources say.
The UK will provide documents concerning the work schedule for completion of the control posts to the EU as part of the joint committee agreement which will all be inspected by the health directorate, DG Sante, which will oversee the sanitary and phytosanitary controls on agrifood arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
This will be reviewed after three and a half years, six months before the end of the four-year period during which the Northern Ireland protocol applies.
Now the signing of this agreement is good. It is what should have, and could have happened some time ago. But first it was clearly necessary for Johnson to act the hard man and continue in his quest of making the UK the laughing stock of the world.
