Second hand machinery must be shipped back to Scotland for SPS checks - Allister
TUV leader Jim Allister has said that he has received confirmation from the Government that second hand machinery, which a dealer wants to sell to someone in the Republic of Ireland, must be shipped back to Scotland where it originated from for SPS checks rather than have the checks carried out in Northern Ireland.
Jim Allister said: "This week the government has confirmed to me that another Irish Sea Border absurdity is completely intentional and not in any sense a mistake.
"In June we saw the introduction of the Irish Sea Used Agricultural Machinery Border.
"The imposition of the border and requirement to obtain plant health labels in order to move machines from GB to Northern Ireland undermines the operation of the UK Internal Market.
"Lurking beneath this arrangement, however, is an absurdity that confounds both the supposed logic for the Irish Sea border and the operation of the UK internal market that are not immediately obvious and even more concerning.
"In order to understand the difficulty, we need to consider the following scenario.
"A dealer in used farm machinery might bring a piece of machinery across from Scotland with plant health labels for someone in Northern Ireland who then has a change of circumstances and decides they no longer require it. However, a farmer from the Republic decides it would be perfect for them and tells the dealer they would like to buy it.
"We are then confronted with two surprises:
"First, the fact that the provision of the Irish Sea Border has not been inserted instead of, but as well as, the border between NI and ROI. Although the piece of machinery has already been through the Irish Sea Border dividing our own country into two, it is then confronted with the full demands of the international border in any event, the requirement for cleaning, inspection and the issuing of a full SPS certificate. This means that the Windsor Framework’s Plant Health labels provide an additional and inexcusable check on the movement of goods within the UK, while the international border remains fully in place.
"But it is worse than that because we then discover that even though the machinery is supposedly just as much in the UK as it was in Scotland, the SPS check and certification cannot be carried out in Northern Ireland. If the piece of machinery is to be sold to the farmer in the Republic, then, notwithstanding the fact that the dealer has already paid to negotiate the plant health labels border and the transportation of the piece of machinery from Scotland to Northern Ireland, he must then put it on the ferry and take it back to Scotland. The machinery must then be washed, inspected and given an SPS certificate and then put on another ferry and taken back to Northern Ireland.
"Undertaking such expense for second hand machinery is plainly impossible and thus we see once again how our government has submitted to the effective destruction of a functional UK internal market and how this undermines our ability to trade with another country,” said Mr Allister.
"I am very grateful to the dealer who alerted me to this absurdity.
"It is this kind of provision, along with the impending veterinary medicines border that arrives on 1 January, that demonstrates why the TUV has consistently argued that the Windsor Framework Irish Sea border is unsustainable and must be removed."