UK hopes to get rid of Irish border checks

After early analysis of government data showed that at least 85% of goods arriving in Northern Ireland from Great Britain stay in factories or shops in the region, the UK hopes to get rid of the controversial checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea.

The research comes from a new HM Revenue and Customs database, the EU Access system, which tracked the movement of 1 m goods crossing the Irish Sea in 2021.

Under the Northern Ireland protocol, suppliers of goods from Britain must complete customs declarations to move goods to Northern Ireland in order to avoid a border on the island of Ireland.

The protocol's requirements have ruptured the political settlement in Northern Ireland, where the Democratic Unionist party refuses to sit in the devolved government.

The EU has been testing since November 7 and provides real-time customs and commercial data on everything from agrifood to tractor parts and manufacturing components on ferries bound for Northern Ireland ports.

The UK hopes to give EU officials the data they need to monitor trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and that systems are in place to prevent rogue operators from smuggling substandard goods across the border.

Early analysis in the UK shows that a sixth or 16% of goods by value were considered to be at risk of crossing the border, and will not be published due to the sensitive commercial nature of the data.

The EU is unlikely to be happy with the 85% figure on the need for a border on the island of Ireland, although it is understood that a significant portion of the goods classified as at risk of crossing the border remained in Northern Ireland, but were classified as such because the accompanying paperwork did not meet requirements.

The European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said last week that a deal on the protocol was in reach if political will was in place in the UK.

The database is central to any solution.

A government spokeswoman said that to meet the UK's customs data sharing obligations, HMRC has introduced a new system called the EU Access System. It provides real-time Northern Ireland data from five different HMRC systems in one place.

Since January 2022, the system has been operational and we have been working closely with the EU to make sure the system meets their needs. In September, HMRC data released but not publicised, shows that just over 1 m full declarations were cleared for movements of goods into Northern Ireland from Great Britain in 2021.

According to HMRC figures, 34.3 m British businesses sold into Europe in 2021, it is a small fraction of the total trade conducted with the EU since Brexit.

In order to resolve the protocol dispute, the UK is looking for a new green lane and red lane system to separate lorries destined for the Republic of Ireland from those in Northern Ireland.

It believes suppliers going through the green lane should not be required to fill in customs declarations. Suppliers have told the government they find requirements to list commodity codes for each item in a consignment as burdensome.

The UK argues that commercial manifests, which list the contents, origin and destination of lorries on a ferry, are enough if the database works, and that a robust trade system with hefty fines for rogue operators is a viable solution.

The EU s proposal for an express lane is similar but it still wants producers to complete customs declarations.

Maro ef ovi, the European Commission vice-president, recently told EU and UK parliamentarians that they were not worlds apart from each other. He said that the EU proposals could reduce checks on lorries to two or three a day.