Historically speaking, Brexit has never quite been defined by a ‘sensible politics’ approach. Ever since the 2016 referendum, all issues pertaining to the UK’s exit from the EU have tended to turn into a tug of war competition, in which each side has one aim: to get screwed over the least.
However, a chink of light is on the horizon. As The Grocer reported this week, Labour ministers are considering canning proposals put forward by the previous government to expand the ‘Not for EU’ labelling requirements on meat and dairy products to the rest of the UK.
The labels have been in place in Northern Ireland since last year. Were the expansion to be given the green light, the new rules would come into effect across the UK as early as this October. While they would initially apply to meat and dairy, they would eventually span an array of food and drink goods including fruit & veg, fish, pizzas and biscuits by 2025.
The decision originally stemmed from a “safeguarding the union” deal made between the UK government and the Democratic Unionist Party, who claimed the new labelling requirements would discourage GB manufacturers from exporting to NI.
The DUP successfully lobbied for the labelling requirements to be gradually extended to Great Britain. Rishi Sunak’s government conceded the labels would be needed “to ensure no incentive arises for businesses to avoid placing goods on the Northern Ireland market”, and to ensure NI shoppers had the same range of choices as their counterparts in the rest of the UK.
The proposals prompted fierce backlash from the food industry. Forcing these requirements on all British manufacturers – particularly those who didn’t even trade with the EU – would increase costs massively for producers and, in turn, shoppers, industry leaders warned.
The Food & Drink Federation put the costs of meeting the new labelling requirements at up to £250m a year. It has repeatedly argued there is no evidence of GB exports to Northern Ireland falling substantially due to the ‘not for EU’ labels, as feared originally. Instead, it has pointed to the potential impact of more bureaucracy on UK-EU trade, which has already massively slumped since Brexit.
Just one day ago, in its half-year trade snapshot, the trade body said mandatory GB-wide ‘not for EU’ labelling “not only threatens our exports to Ireland” – our largest market – “but also the rest of the world”.
That message appears to have finally got through to government, who is taking a more practical stance than its predecessor.
Following this week’s news that the government is to scrap plans for on pack mandatory recycling labelling after EU bosses insisted they were a breach of the post-Brexit Windsor Framework, Defra is also now proposing a pragmatic solution to introduce GB-wide ‘not for EU’ labels as a “contingency mechanism”, according to one senior industry figure.
That would mean the labels go “only on those products that have been de-ranged or de-listed from Northern Ireland, to level the playing field by removing any competitive advantage suppliers may get in avoiding sending products to NI”.
While the DUP will certainly have something to say about Northern Ireland not being in complete alignment with all three other nations, until it can be proven that NI has not benefited from having unique access to both the UK and EU markets, it’s just unfounded political noise.
Because here’s the thing: these ‘not for EU’ labels were never just about food, or trade, or biosecurity. They were largely about ascertaining power, which is often the enemy of getting stuff done. So it is a breath of fresh air to see that, for once, (almost) everyone is pulling in the same direction.
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