30 June 2022

FT: Northern Irish businesses fear effects of rewriting Brexit trade deal

London wants to rip up the post-Brexit trade deal it agreed for Northern Ireland but Gareth Chambers can see the positives of the current arrangement: it helped him clinch a contract this week that is worth almost a quarter of his Northern Ireland-based company’s turnover.

.... Chambers and suppliers like him are not the only beneficiaries of the trading framework known as the Northern Ireland protocol, which took effect at the start of last year and keeps the region within the EU’s single market for goods that the rest of the UK left.

Analysts and many business leaders say it has given a fillip to the entire Northern Irish economy, which is performing better than had been expected. But Boris Johnson’s government on Monday secured a majority for the second reading of his bill to rewrite the trade arrangement. Ireland’s Taoiseach or prime minister, Micheál Martin, has called the move “economic vandalism” as by “any objective data, Northern Ireland is doing very well”.

Roger Pollen, head of Northern Ireland’s Federation of Small Businesses, says the protocol is “not working well” and M&S chair Archie Norman has slammed “pointless” red tape that he says can mean 700 pages of paperwork, some of it in Latin, to send goods from Britain. Chambers acknowledged the protocol “has brought challenges . . . with sourcing ingredients” because of customs checks imposed on goods entering from Britain.

But he added that “it has been positive for Around Noon in that we have been able to support customers to strengthen their supply chains on the island of Ireland”. His experience is reflected across Northern Ireland. Economic output has surpassed its pre-Covid levels and is outpacing Britain; employment is at a record high and unemployment is the lowest in the UK.

Two in three of the region’s top companies are growing; four in 10 are boosting sales — both to the EU and GB — and orders have risen sharply. Services are also outperforming the UK overall, but are not covered by the protocol.

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For a region that is one of the poorest in the UK, Northern Ireland has a lot to lose if its economy suffers....

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