Windsor Framework: NI businesses 'need more detail on Brexit deal'

The Windsor Framework is intended to ease post-Brexit trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK

Northern Ireland business organisations say they need more details about how the Windsor Framework will operate in practice.

The framework was agreed by the EU and UK in February.

It is intended to ease post-Brexit trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.

But a House of Lords committee has been told there is "still a lack of operational detail".

The framework modifies the Northern Ireland Protocol, the 2019 deal which kept Northern Ireland inside the EU's single market for goods.

That arrangement keeps the Irish land border open but has meant products arriving into Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK are subject to checks and controls.

The new deal should reduce the frictions on GB-to-NI trade, primarily by expanding a trusted trader scheme and introducing a system of green lanes and red lanes at Northern Ireland ports.

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Stuart Anderson, from the NI Chamber of Commerce, told the Lords that there was still a lack of detail "particularly in respect of customs issues and how the green lane and red lane will be constructed".

That was echoed by Mark Tait, owner of haulage firm Target Transport, who said "we need to see that detail rather quickly because some of this is coming in October".

He also expressed concern that business-to-business goods trade will all have to go via the red lane which could mean an increase on the current levels of bureaucracy.

He said apart from retail goods it looks as though "we will all be lumped into the red lane".

'Tested and tried'

He added that there should be no repeat of the initial implementation of the protocol in 2021 when businesses received operational details about a week before new systems were implemented.

David Brown, president of the Ulster Farmers Union, said "we really need those processes to be tested and tried".

So far the tangible outworkings of the framework include cutting VAT on domestic green goods such as solar panels, which will apply from 1 May.