New rules on food smuggling between NI and GB in place

New rules to prevent Northern Ireland being used as a back door to smuggle international food products into Great Britain have come into effect.

From Tuesday, food and animal feed products need to be processed or owned in Northern Ireland by a Northern Ireland registered business to maintain unfettered access.

A UK government spokesperson said qualifying goods will continue to "benefit from unfettered access" to the rest of the UK market and will not face border controls.

They added that this applied "regardless of whether they arrive directly from Northern Ireland or indirectly via Ireland".

It follows consultation with industry which was concerned that post-Brexit trading rules could be exploited so food from other countries be moved via Northern Ireland to get easy access to GB.

A UK government spokesperson said these controls "ensure that goods from the EU and rest of world entering Great Britain through Northern Ireland are subject to the same regime of biosecurity controls as those entering Great Britain from the Republic of Ireland".

Northern Ireland has effectively remained in the EU's single market for goods after Brexit, meaning goods can cross from the Republic of Ireland into Northern Ireland without checks or controls.

However, those EU goods should be declared and checked if they are then being moved on into the wider UK.

Enforcing that rule is difficult because successive UK governments have promised NI "unfettered" access to the GB market.

Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson famously told Northern Ireland businesses that if anyone asked them to fill in a form for moving goods to GB they should throw it in a bin.

In November 2019, he said: "There will be no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind - you will have unfettered access."

That promise was given legal form by the Qualifying NI Goods Regulations which said that any goods in free circulation in Northern Ireland count as qualifying.

The very wide definition of qualifying was always intended to be narrowed and the tighter rules for food were drawn up after consultation with industry.

The change is principally to enable food and feed to be traceable to a registered Northern Irish business and to limit potential avoidance of checks on goods arriving into GB.

So called "non-qualifying" food products can still be shipped to GB from Northern Ireland but will need official certificates, have to be declared to the GB authorities and will be checked at ports.

There will be no changes for "qualifying" products.