UK must show EU it ‘can be trusted again’, minister says

The UK must show the EU it “can be trusted again” after its reputation was “trashed” by the previous government signing deals it had no intention of honouring, according to a veteran British minister. 

In Brussels following last month's summit to reset relations, Hilary Benn, the British minister for Northern Ireland, told Euractiv that an upcoming deal that will see the UK accept EU food and drink rules in return for drastically reduced checks and paperwork has received “near universal business approbation in Northern Ireland”.

Trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland became highly complicated after the UK left the EU. A 2023 agreement, known as the Windsor Framework, went some way towards easing frictions, and a SPS (sanitary and phytosanitary) deal, which the two sides committed last month to negotiating, would go even further.

But the prospective deal is politically sensitive. It has been praised by the Nationalist community in Northern Ireland, who favour an eventual return to the EU via Irish reunification, as well as the Irish government. Conversely, some Unionists – who blocked the formation of a local government for two years over the post-Brexit arrangements – fear the deal brings Northern Ireland unacceptably close to Dublin and Brussels while ostracising them from Great Britain. Nationalists and Unionists share power in Northern Ireland as a pillar of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended a decades-long sectarian conflict known as The Troubles.

What follows is an edited transcript, adjusted for length and clarity. 

Euractiv: You’ve come to Brussels to meet the EU's Trade Commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič. What did you discuss? 

Hilary Benn: The ‘mood music’ was extremely good. It was another chance to thank him for the agreement that the UK and the EU reached and to report how well the SPS part of the agreement was received in Northern Ireland.

We've had really positive comments from the Ulster Farmers Union, from the supermarkets, from the retail consortium, from the horticultural trades. It is quite rare to get something that relates to the EU that gets near universal business approbation in Northern Ireland. 

And why do you think they’re so positive?

Once we've gone through what needs to be done in order to turn the agreement into real change on the ground, they can see that certificates and paperwork will no longer be necessary in relation to agrifood and plants. It also enables the UK to sell shellfish and sausages to the EU, and the EU to sell back in return. 

It’s an extremely good example of the new outlook the Labour government elected in July 2024 brought. We said we wanted a close relationship with the EU. We wanted to make progress on a number of fronts. And I think we've seen that in the deal that was concluded. 

Progress, yes. But the Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the deal only “begins to arrest the decline” in the relationship between the EU and UK. Do you agree there's a long way to go? 

The previous government signed agreements clearly with no intention of honouring them. That was absolutely disastrous for trust. We have to show that we can be trusted once again, because Britain's reputation was frankly trashed by the last government. 

You can just see and feel relations are more positive, just as relations between the UK and the Irish government have been transformed since we came in. The signing of the deal at the summit is a really practical expression of that.

Do you have any sense of when the SPS deal might be struck?

I'm not going to predict a timeline. But what are the two principal tasks? The first is to negotiate the legal text, and that will take a certain amount of time. And then the second is for the UK to make sure that our statute book is fully up to date and aligned with the current EU rules.

Will the Windsor Framework eventually have to be re-opened and re-negotiated to accomodate the 'reset'?

The SPS deal is going to sit on top of the Windsor Framework – that's important to understand. 

Maroš Šefčovič put a huge amount of effort into [the Windsor Framework]. He understands the political sensitivities in Northern Ireland.

[After the Windsor Framework was agreed], Northern Ireland's purchases in 2023 from the rest of the UK went up. So when people say the Windsor Framework is having a terrible impact on the flow of goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, I'm afraid that’s not what the statistics show.

The people saying that come almost entirely from the Unionist community – who are, at best, lukewarm on the deal as it makes more EU law applicable in Northern Ireland. Are you concerned by their reaction?

To those who don’t like the arrangements, it’s really quite simple: When we left the EU, we had the UK with one set of rules, the EU with another, and an open border between the two. 

You need a pragmatic approach to dealing with that fundamental issue that Brexit threw up. And the fact that the Northern Ireland economy is doing well, that we’ve just negotiated the outline of an SPS deal that businesses have welcomed – that's what I call progress, and I believe in progress.