Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Ferguson): I welcome Roger Pollen, head of the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) here; Rachel McCorriston, head of policy; and Lorna Muldoon, policy adviser on the Windsor framework. When you are ready, please brief the Committee. Thank you.

Mr Roger Pollen (Federation of Small Businesses): Thank you, Chair. I put on record our thanks for the invitation to come here to share aspects of our recent 'Windsor Framework Realities' report, and to tell the Committee how we believe that some of its findings may assist it in its work. I will start by declaring an interest as an appointed member of Intertrade UK.

I will take a few minutes to set the scene and explain the background to the report. The FSB is the largest membership organisation for self-employed, micro and small and medium-sized business owners across the UK. In Northern Ireland, we have 6,000 members, covering every business sector. As such a large representative body, we are frequently invited to present evidence from our members. In that context, we were invited to contribute to two inquiries by the Committee, one at the end of last year and the other at the beginning of this year. It immediately became clear that the process was not one through which business could have any meaningful impact on your work. We recognised that the situation was deeply unsatisfactory for you as a Committee and for the FSB as the organisation to which businesses look to ensure that they are effectively represented.

In order to try to assist and improve the situation, we had a meeting with you, Chair, the Deputy Chair and Clerks at which we made some suggestions that we thought might support the consultation process and assist you in your work, specifically your work on examining and considering new and replacement EU acts. Shortly after that meeting, the UK Government undertook a consultation on the operation of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, but they specifically excluded the Windsor framework from the scope of the consultation. In parallel, we started to get a lot of contact from our field staff across GB highlighting the increasing enquiries and problems that businesses on their patch were expressing to them about trading with Northern Ireland. We also saw a marked uptick in calls from Northern Ireland members, all of which related to the Windsor framework and its operation.

A lot of anecdotes were provided that suggested that there were increasing problems, but neither the UK Government nor the Northern Ireland Executive, nor any Departments or agencies, asked businesses about their experiences in order to establish the facts behind the anecdotes, and, as I said, the consultation on the UK Internal Market Act specifically excluded the Windsor framework.

The FSB operates right throughout the UK, so we felt that it was our responsibility to undertake a survey of members in order to understand their experiences. We had really good engagement from across England, Scotland, Wales and here in Northern Ireland, receiving a total of 778 responses, which you will have seen. Aside from the survey's findings, the process also clarified some of the challenges with establishing a robust evidence base from which to contribute to your inquiries in the future as you pursue your statutory functions to examine and consider new and replacement EU acts.

We recognise that Brexit, the Northern Ireland protocol and the Windsor framework have been immensely emotive issues. The FSB is agnostic on the politics of the issues, instead focusing on understanding and, ideally, improving the operating environment in which business finds itself. For the Windsor framework, which replaced the Northern Ireland protocol, we mapped our entire membership and identified five clear cohorts: those businesses for which it works well; those that are largely unaffected by it; those that are largely unaware of it; those that are protected by grace periods; and those that are badly affected by it. All businesses fall into one of those cohorts. Some may sit in more than one, but there is no sixth cohort: the entirety of our membership sits in those five cohorts. For the FSB, and I suspect for others as well, we should be outraged that there are any businesses in that fifth cohort: those who are affected badly. Good businesses have been laid low by a political construct that, as our report illustrates, is simply not working as it should. It would be utterly unacceptable, simply because there are examples of businesses that are unaffected by the Windsor framework, or even prospering because of it, for us to ignore and condemn the minority of businesses that find themselves in that fifth cohort.

'Windsor Framework Realities' identifies barriers and perceived barriers, as well as the lived experience of respondents. It also reflects on the issues raised and proposes a range of recommendations for improvements and solutions, through which I hope that we will find ways in which to improve the situation for businesses and, importantly, ways in which to assist the Committee in its work on future regulatory changes. That is the context for how we got to where we are. We recognise that the focus of this Committee is different from that of others. Hopefully, what we have found by engaging with our members and building the evidence base here will be useful in assisting you in your future work.

Dr Aiken: Hi, Roger and everybody. It is good to talk to you again. I have a couple of issues. It is a well-recorded and well-researched report. My first question is about data. We spend a lot of time talking to Europe and Westminster about the political process. Everybody comes out with various statements, but it is very difficult to tie down the data on what is happening. The only organisation that has the real data about what is happening and its economic impacts is HMRC. Is there any way in which we can see that data? We are making lots of assumptions about the impact of the Windsor framework. This is the first properly researched document that we have seen. Unless we get that data from HMRC, how will we be able to establish the true impact of diversion on trade at the moment?

Mr Pollen: I will defer to colleagues in a second, as they are the ones who crunch all the data and understand what is going on. Our frustration was with the fact that, because there are so many different parts of government that are disconnected, it is very hard to establish a true picture. We have the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, HMRC, the Trader Support Service (TSS) and other Northern Ireland Departments: a panoply of bodies that all own a little slice and do not seem to be connected, so it is very hard to understand, interpret and extrapolate what the figures that we see may mean and therefore what problems they are either masking or addressing.

Ms Rachel McCorriston (Federation of Small Businesses): I assume that the issue with the HMRC data is that it cannot disclose it, because, if it did, you could look at it and say, "That's such-and-such a business", and you would then be privy to sensitive information. The UK Government, like everyone who looks into issues with the economy, struggle to measure what is happening on the ground. Our work is just one piece of evidence. We decided to undertake it so that we had some numbers to back up what we were hearing, and in particular to understand whether the issues that GB-based businesses were having were the perceived issues.

We have had a lot of engagement with the UK Government and the Department for the Economy. What is useful in the report is the qualitative analysis, which gives examples of what businesses are thinking. About 20% of respondents took the time to provide more information about their issues. There is real value in providing that extra information about what businesses are experiencing. A survey is good, because the situation can be assessed at that moment in time. Obviously, things change, and certain grace periods have ended since the survey was conducted. We had planned on purpose to issue the survey on 1 April, because there was to be a deadline on the parcels side on that date, but it was then moved, so we did not get to capture anything from that side. [Laughter.]

There is real value in the survey, but we will always encourage more data to be shared. One of our key recommendations is that the UK Government share more data on what they are seeing. It is, however, also difficult to measure impacts, as anyone who has ever worked with statistics or collected data will know. One always has to act with caution, but we would welcome any further data from the likes of HMRC, and we will definitely be calling on HMRC to provide data.

Dr Aiken: You mentioned grace periods. You have taken a snapshot of a point in time, but more grace periods have ended, and we now know that it will not be until 2027 at least before the Small Business Standards (SBS) discussions even begin. We have a period now in which, in the words of the Secretary of State, he and, indeed, some of our Ministers here are going to push for full and faithful implementation. Are you going to repeat that process at yearly intervals in order to continue to get a snapshot of where we are at and what the implications are for the business community?

Mr Pollen: It is a piece of work that ought to be repeated. The question is whether the FSB does it, because it was a massive exercise for us. After our meeting with the Committee, we realised that there was a problem here with how we go about informing the Committee. For us to engage with our membership, we need to consider what we want to know from them, so we need expert input to shape the questions. We go out to our members, get their responses, analyse them and share the information. The timelines within which you were being asked to respond to in your work made it clear to us that we could not assist you in doing that, because it was a bigger piece of work. We therefore hijacked a lot of time to map out that work earlier this year. It took us from April until June to go out and do that. The question is whether it needs to be done again in exactly the same way or whether better harvesting of existing data will contribute more knowledge to the process. A regular repetition of the survey, however, would be valuable to see whether things are getting better or worse and in what way they are changing, if only simply to inform the process and what needs to be done by whom to address the situation.

Dr Aiken: I acknowledge the cost of that for the FSB, but the beauty of your doing it is that you represent your members. You do not have political bias, you do not have to spin anything and you do not have to follow a particular process. You are therefore following a true track of what is happening on the ground.

Mr Pollen: Colleagues will speak to some of the anecdotes that we harvested that led us to think that we really needed to get the evidence and data behind the anecdotes. We always caution that people respond to surveys if they have an interest in them, and we therefore accept that there is a degree of self-selection involved. Nonetheless, there was a big sample size, and members took the trouble to share their lived experiences with us, so a repetition of that would be a valuable contribution to the wider discussion and to your work.

Dr Aiken: One of the big things that is happening at the moment is the changes that are being to the Union Customs Code (UCC). Significant changes will be made to how everything is analysed. Data sets and all the processes are being changed. The Windsor framework was devised for a set of regulations from the past. We now have a new set of regulations about to come from the European Union that will apply to us at which the Windsor framework never looked, because it was previously a set piece.

We will therefore have a much-evolved situation over the next couple of years. Is there any indication amongst your members of what the coming tsunami is going to be like and what the implications of it are likely to be?

Mr Pollen: Entirely coincidentally, I was talking to one of our members this morning on the way here who is developing some really smart technologies to assist with that to make sure that businesses and trade can be on the front foot, not on the back foot. There are therefore technologies, and there is ambition. There is also an opportunity for simplification of the various datasets that are collected. That, however, probably requires a degree of coordination and conversation between the UK Government and the EU to see whether they can find a common set. That may be slightly at odds with pursuing full and faithful implementation of the old set, if you like, whilst a new set is evolving in parallel. There is an opportunity there, however. Do you want to add to that, Lorna?

Ms Lorna Muldoon (Federation of Small Businesses): Yes. The issue with changes to the UK Customs Code is that businesses do not know about them until they are right upon them. The scenario is similar to UK internal market scheme (UKIMS) declarations, the import control system 2 (ICS2), which is upcoming, or the EU certificate exchange system (CERTEX). A lot of our members know about it now because it is in front of them, so they have to deal with it. If there were more information coming out beforehand, they would be a lot more proactive. A lot of businesses, however, are not in a position to seek out the information prior to its arriving on their front desk.

Dr Aiken: It would be good if we were to have a bit of curiosity about that as well. Thank you very much for the job that the FSB has done. It has been a first-rate piece of work.

Mr Brooks: All of us on the Committee can relate to the idea that we could do with more information on the front desk. Thank you for your presentation. I have forgotten what I was going to say first. I will quote from the report, about which I have a few questions. It states:

It goes on to state:

Do you believe that dual market access, which, as framed by some political parties, is full access to both markets, is feasible? Roger, you said that the UK market is increasingly closing. Is that the reality, and how does what I have asked play into that?

Mr Pollen: I will pick that up, and my colleagues can come in after. The concept of dual market access ought to be really exciting and enticing. It should give Northern Ireland a strategic edge as a difference, and it therefore should be embraced. The reality, however, is that businesses here have had dual market access since the end of 1992, when the Single European Act came into force. They have therefore had that access. To tell them now that they still have what they have always had is not a very exciting or enticing offering.

Mr Brooks: Is it not worse than that, Roger? We keep talking about dual market access, but it is not dual market access to the full extent that people would like to portray it to be. That is perhaps the reason that we have not seen a wealth of international businesses jumping on it, as people suspected would happen.

Mr Pollen: There are two parts to that. I do not think that dual market access is a big thing for businesses here. It is what they have always had, and it has just got a bit more difficult. I can therefore understand the response in that regard. The reality, however, is that dual market access should be a really exciting opportunity for Northern Ireland to seize business from businesses in the rest of the world that want to access the UK and EU markets. There are 500 million consumers, so this is the place for manufacturing businesses — people who are creating goods — to be based, because, in the main, this affects only goods.

We are in the foothills of articulating that offer, getting it out and really promoting it. We have been calling on the UK Government to put it at the front of their international trade deals and so on by saying, "We want to do a deal, but there is a special place where we can give you access to the EU market, not just to the UK market". They have that in their locker, but they are not necessarily on the front foot when it comes to using it.

I said in my opening remarks that we are agnostic on the politics of the issues. We try to deal with the situation as it is. The situation that we find is that access to the rest of the UK is, broadly speaking, fine. It is bringing stuff from GB into Northern Ireland that is the problem. If a business is bringing stuff in, processing it and sending it back out, it encounters an awful lot of problems here. Our focus is on reducing the frictions. How do we bring forward ideas that will give a reality to the UK internal market so that it can operate in its own right, as it is intended to do? Furthermore, how do we, as a separate exercise, harness dual market access in order to boost our inward investment. That is where we sit. Do you want to add anything, Rachel?

Ms McCorriston: A lot of the frustration with dual market access that came through in the survey was that businesses face issues with getting their goods from GB. They are losing suppliers and do not know what they need to do in order to be compliant with the rules. The frustration expressed by our members was that they are hearing about dual market access but face issues.

Mr Brooks: There are barriers. It is not full dual market access.

Ms McCorriston: It is barriers to getting goods from GB. GB suppliers are either saying that there are barriers or saying that they perceive there to be barriers and just decide not to supply businesses. Much of the issue is to do with how information is shared. One of our key recommendations is that businesses should have access to clear and concise information so that they know what they need to do or what their suppliers need to do. Having that information would address so many of the issues that come through in the report. It is therefore down to the lack of information that is available to businesses. Businesses are frustrated at having to go on to websites and click 10 or 15 times to try to get an answer, and the answer is often not there. Addressing that information gap would improve business sentiment a lot.

Dual market access is a huge opportunity to promote Northern Ireland, and that is what we have been doing. Roger has been promoting it to companies in the US that have asked about dual market access. There is a real opportunity here.

Mr Pollen: There is. We need to get everybody saying, "We need to set aside any political differences and get behind dual market access. There is an opportunity here. What are we going to do? How will we shape it? How will we push it?". As Rachel says, we will hopefully take a delegation of businesses to the States and bring others back with us as part of that process. We have used some of the material that the Department for the Economy has produced to support doing that, but we have applied our own narrative to it.

Belfast is the second-largest English-speaking city in the European single market for goods. Who knew that? Who has put that out there? It is an asset that we ought to be able to make use of. It is therefore a work in progress.

Mr Brooks: In theory, dual market access is wonderful. It is wonderful if everything works swimmingly well and in the proper context, with that context being costs. No one disagrees in theory with the benefits of dual market access. I understand that you are politically agnostic. My thought is that you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig. We therefore need to do some work on how dual market access works before we can publicise it properly, because a lot of businesses are seeing through it.

Another quote from your paper on Windsor framework barriers is:

How does that impact on consumer choice for parts, components and goods? You commented on that slightly in your previous answer.

Mr Pollen: It is happening in two ways. One is that there will be a reduction in choice, while the other is that it creates a distortion in the market, because people will still get stuff. They will turn to bigger businesses that have the capacity to work with customs clearance agencies and so on. Operational friction therefore ends up damaging small businesses disproportionately. We are aware of one particularly large wholesale operator with several different outlets — many outlets here, but under different brands — that has seen a large uptake in its sales here. It has obviously been able to take some market share away from smaller businesses that have backed away from the market because of actual or perceived difficulties.

To your earlier point, Dr Aiken, if you look at the data behind that, you may see that trade is, broadly speaking, still at the same level. The detail behind it, however, shows that damage is being done that is not necessarily visible, and, unfortunately, nobody has been looking for the damage. That is part of the problem.

Mr Brooks: We know that more of large businesses' money tends to go outside Northern Ireland rather than stay here. That is not the case with many of our small businesses' money.

Another quote from the paper is:

Do you agree with the Road Haulage Association (RHA) and others that a lot of the protocol's problems stem from the future arrangements to deal with the perversity that all trade and goods coming from GB to NI are deemed to be at risk of entering the EU single market? Do we not need to turn that situation on its head? Is doing that possible without Brussels making changes in law?

Ms Muldoon: The sentiment behind that is the cumulative burden of those things. A lot of the declarations can be duplicated as well. If businesses try to go through the UKIMS and not the red lane, they need to do an ICS declaration or a text declaration for something different. A lot of that involves duplicated effort and resources that SMEs do not have. It is possible to turn that on its head, but it comes back to the need for streamlined, simplified guidance — a one-stop shop — because, as I said, a lot of the effort can be duplicated, regardless of whether businesses go through the Trader Support Service, the reviews of which are mixed, as you can see from the report. We need one area to which small businesses can go. In some instances, it is a simple question, or what is deemed to be a simple question, but there is not a very simple answer to it, or there is not a simple way in which to obtain the answer. If we were to have a one-stop shop for getting guidance on how to carry out the procedures and make declarations, it would be a lot simpler, and we could turn the current situation on its head.

Mr Brooks: Thanks very much. I have one more question, and it is about what it was that I forgot at the start. I sympathise with what Steve said about understanding whether the FSB has the capacity to continue to doing such reports and where responsibility for doing them should sit. The Committee agreed during previous discussions that the UK Government need to put much more resource into this and that there needs to be much more engagement in Brussels, as well as at Whitehall. Most of us agree on that point at least. I share some of Steve's concerns. I am not sure that I entirely trust the Government not to have their own narrative. Would doing such reports sit well with Intertrade UK? Where else might responsibility sit if it were properly resourced by the Government?

Mr Pollen: There are several issues involved there. On your earlier point, there is frustration amongst businesses that they are trusted to trade and then report retrospectively through their tax return and their VAT return on what they have done, yet, under the arrangements, there is no trust. Everything has to be verified and documented up front. Otherwise, trade does not happen. That is where there is a real frustration, and it is where we need to move things on to a more mature footing. The Windsor framework, when all is said and done, is for the law-abiding only. Why therefore do we make trading so difficult for proper, law-abiding businesses that have all their records? That came through in our report.

You asked about the Government's role. The UK Government are a signatory to the deal, along with the EU, so they have to take responsibility. They also have the capacity. The need for a one-stop shop is not just about having an easy place to get advice but about having a single source of the truth on which businesses have legal certainty. If they take a decision on the basis of advice that they got from some part of government that is not consistent with another piece of advice, on which piece of advice will they have legal certainty if they end up in court, before a tribunal or whatever? It is really important for businesses to get the accessible front end of what is a huge operation behind the scenes in order to understand where regulations are evolving and changing and what that means for them here. The UK may choose to follow an EU regulation when it learns what is happening, thinking, "That is a good idea, so we will follow it".

Alternatively, the UK may choose to diverge from it. If there is divergence, what are the implications for Northern Ireland. It is therefore about how we manage it. I again go back to the point about how the Committee should be informed in its considerations about whether the issue will impact on communities. The Committee needs a lot of knowledge from upstream in order to make such an assessment. You therefore need to have input from people such as us and from other sectoral organisations in order to inform your process.

Mr Brooks: Thank you, Roger. You are singing all of our song about what we need to push back to the British Government to get the information that will allow us to do our job, as well as organisations such as yours to do theirs.

Dr Aiken: I have a very small point to make. What you said about the trusted trader was interesting. Quite a few businesses have said to me, "Why am I a trusted trader for everything else, but I am not trusted for this? I am trusted to deal with the United States and Australia. What is the difference?". That has caused a lot of frustration, as well as resulted in a lot of costs.

The Chairperson (Ms Ferguson): Before we move on, I will say that I want us to use our time as productively as possible, so I remind members that we should ask only questions that are specific to the Committee's remit. I am conscious that pertinent issues are being raised, but it is the role of other Committees to address the implementation issues.

Dr Aiken: My apologies, Chair.

The Chairperson (Ms Ferguson): It is my role, as Chair, to ensure that the Committee gets as much advice and information on our statutory role as possible. I will move on.

Mr Martin: Thank you very much for coming in, folks. I put on the record that you have produced a brilliant report. It is really good. The value of it is in its agnosticism. Roger has stated that it is non-political. I would not be so agnostic, however, either politically or theologically.

Before I ask a question, I will read out a couple of figures from the report. It states:

The report also states:

we have just talked about that pressure and the barriers to trading from GB to NI —

I will give an example. My mum, who will be appalled that I am using her example, as she sometimes watches the Committee meetings, gets a very specific hair conditioner. She is 88 years old and has better hair than I have, as well as more hair. She asked me to get her some more of that product, which I get her yearly, but, this year, I could not get it from GB. There are a number of suppliers in GB, but the product was not for onward sale to Northern Ireland, or whatever the message is that comes up on eBay or Amazon. I therefore had to get it for her from Australia. I had to get 10 wee items from Australia, because nobody in GB would send them to me. I do not know whether that is Windsor framework-related, but what I do know is that, every year up until this year, I have been able to get the product for her. It is useful to give that one example of a real impact on consumers in Northern Ireland who want to purchase products from GB.

On the question of onward impact, your report states:

We have talked about the fact that some microbusinesses do not have the capacity to look at what is coming down the track. They are relying on others to do so.

There are 12 recommendations in your report. How confident are you that they will gain traction, with either the Government here, the Government in Westminster or in Brussels?

Mr Pollen: I will ask Lorna to answer that, because she can conflate all the regulation that is coming down the track that may contribute to the statistic about people's concerns that the situation is going to get worse with a nice mental record that she has of the people with whom we have engaged in order to try to make sure that they do get traction.

Ms Muldoon: Sorry for your mother's troubles. We do not want that for her.

Mr Martin: We got it from Australia in the end, and it was expensive, but a mother's love is the absolute priority. [Laughter.]

Mr Brooks: Our hair troubles are probably worse.

Mr Martin: They are significantly worse than mum's.

Ms Muldoon: I will use one of my own mother's anecdotes. She was not able to get a tumble dryer from GB.

Mr Martin: We should get our mums together sometime, Lorna, for a cup of coffee. [Laughter.]

Ms Muldoon: We should. We have spoken to the Consumer Council for Northern Ireland (CCNI) about those issues as well, and they share a similar sentiment to that expressed our report, which is that it is something that is not just coming down the track.

A couple of months ago, or this time a year ago, we were talking about the potential future impacts and how this could potentially be a problem because consumers in Northern Ireland would not be able to get goods. We are now in that era. It is not a future thing any more. As you said, 57% anticipate future frictions, and there is still more to come, which is very unfortunate.

You asked about traction for our recommendations. We have had significant correspondence with different strains of government. We gave initial findings to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which has been engaging on our report since it was published. We have met representatives from the Department for Business and Trade, who said that they have been looking at the report at length. We have also met the Economy Minister, InterTradeIreland and HMRC, and there has been significant debate on it in the House of Commons. It is getting traction in various ways. We are yet to see whether there are buttons being pressed on that, but the majority of people we have spoken to have formed a consensus on the findings. When we met the Committee for the Economy back in July, there was consensus on our recommendations, which was really nice to hear. Everyone we have spoken to is on the same page. We just need to get more traction and movement to push these things forward.

Mr Pollen: The Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee in the House of Lords also did a lot of work on this. It met the Secretary of State and Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds and used the report for a lot of the questioning. I understand that that Committee is due to report imminently on the inquiry that it has been carrying out. Hopefully, with all these small steps, we will move forward to some degree.

Mr Martin: OK. I have one other question, and then I will come back to that.

One quote from the report is:

You cited a couple: HMRC, DEFRA, DAERA and the Trader Support Service. The report continues:

Is that still the situation, or has that improved since the report was written?

Mr Pollen: My sense is that, since the report was written, it has probably got worse, because a few extra things have come in since then. Phase 3 labelling came in on 1 July, and the changes to postal services also came in. There was also a comment by the Minister that the Government were aware of lack of compliance in certain areas. We took some exception to that because, if the Government are aware of lack of compliance, the Government must be complicit in that lack of compliance. We thought that that was a signal that there was going to be a tightening of something that had been allowed to happen and that things were going to get more difficult. We continue to engage and try to get the advice and guidance early enough to assist people through the processes that they are having to clear.

Mr Martin: OK. They have moved from a C to a D-, then, in where they are at. That is fine.

I have a final thing, Chair, if that is OK. I will take you back to the recommendations and what the Chair made clear — she was completely right — about this Committee and its role. Clearly, your recommendations are quite comprehensive, and there are 12 of them. Would you be able to strip through those and pull out specific points that the Committee could help with? The report is not written for this Committee; it is written for a wide range of audiences. You do not have to comment now unless you want to, but I am very keen for you to look through those recommendations and strip out stuff that we can take on — we will, as long as there is Committee agreement to do so — and see what we can do regarding those 12 points. Are you able to do that? You do not have to comment, but you are very welcome to.

Mr Pollen: The short answer is yes, we will. The overarching one is the one that we talked about earlier in the year, namely the idea of an office of regulatory divergence. There would be commonality with this Committee's specific brief, rather than Committees in Stormont generally. This Committee would, I think, be greatly enhanced in its work by having an office of regulatory divergence, with all the heft of the UK Government and proper resourcing. From our perspective, bolted on to that is what we think of as the shiny front end: the one-stop shop where that knowledge can then inform businesses to give that single source of the truth and the legal certainty on which they can then proceed. That is a quick answer, and we will do a piece of work on that.

Ms Muldoon: I will put on the record that we are going to work with the Department for the Economy on the dual market access recommendations. There is correspondence coming up very soon to get some actualisation on those recommendations.

Ms McCorriston: Recommendation 10, which Roger mentioned, is on the office for regulatory divergence. We have written a paper on that, and we shared that with the House of Lords NI Scrutiny Committee. It requested that we draw out more information on that, and we are happy to send that to the Committee.

The Senior Assistant Assembly Clerk: There is a link to that paper in your pack.

Mr Martin: Brilliant. Thank you.

Mr Kearney: You are all very welcome. Thanks for coming along this morning and for sharing the report. You were previously before the Economy Committee, and our party representatives said at that stage that we fully supported all the recommendations in your report. I reiterate that today. As other colleagues have commented, it is a very useful report. It is very focused.

I will begin by making the observation that you have brought a pragmatic and solution-focused approach to the issues. I did not expect anything less, but that is clearly codified in the report. Ciara made the point that we are restricted by our remit. Not all the recommendations are within the remit of the Committee, but, nevertheless, we have to see this in holistic terms. I note the comment in the report where you make the point that it is not a case of inevitable decline, but it is a call to action. For that reason, your report is very timely in that respect.

Roger, you and Lorna commented on the simplification process. I was going to ask specifically about that, but, earlier in your comments, you spoke about the one-stop shop idea, and Rachel talked about the regulatory divergence office. My first question overlaps to some extent with some of the earlier conversation. To what extent are you detecting a reception from the British Government for the establishment of that type of one-stop shop that could become the clearing house to optimise simplification, to deal with particular issues that are coming in from different businesses and sectors, and to address them in a complete way in one centre?

Mr Pollen: There is a general recognition that this is a reasonable and reasoned assessment of the challenges and proposal of potential solutions. Everybody, therefore, is reasonably warm to it. The challenge, though, is that it needs to come right from the top of Government. It needs to have input from all the various agencies and Departments to be able to give you as a Committee, and your functions, a single overview and fully comprehensive assessment of regulatory changes, and then what we think of as the shiny front end, which is the one-stop shop, with the advice that it can then provide to businesses. It is two sides of the same coin.

There seems to be no great resistance to it, but no great momentum to it. The Economy Committee is endorsing the recommendations. I think that it said that it was going to write to the Secretary of State about that. If this Committee almost demanded it in order for you to be able to fulfil your functions, it would greatly assist our efforts. We are just a business organisation trying to articulate the needs and wishes of our members. However, the part of it that helps you to do your work should, hopefully, mean that you can get behind those recommendations, and then, collectively, we may have a greater chance of advancing them.

Mr Kearney: I see the wisdom of that. It takes me back to the earlier days of the post-Brexit landscape when I was a junior Minister in the Executive Office. At that point in time, as we navigated that landscape, we talked with our officials about the importance of trying to grip this, bring it into one house and, in a very coherent way, make the case to the British Government to make the necessary changes. I think that that is an important suggestion being made by FSB to us so that we see Committees speak with one voice, that we have a TEO that speaks with one voice, and that that is escalated to the highest level of the British Government to ensure that the policy intent is cascaded into practical action.

My last comment and question, Ciara, if you do not mind, is to ask what specific sectors are most impacted on by the communication and logistical problems that have been identified.

Mr Pollen: I will come back to that in a moment. To finish on your previous point, there is absolutely no disrespect to the Stormont Departments and structures about saying that this needs to be done at Westminster. It is because Westminster was the signatory to the agreement and it controls HMRC, DEFRA and so on. It has the resource and the heft to do the job there. Whilst Departments here are doing a good job with the information that they get, they are further down the chain and they cannot control and direct and give that legal certainty. That is why we have landed in there. One of the really powerful interventions at the time that you referred to was when the First Minister and deputy First Minister wrote in August 2016 to Theresa May to set out what Northern Ireland wanted in the subsequent Brexit negotiations. That intervention on a cross-party basis, if you like, is where we think that we can get traction and leverage again, with these Committees coming together and saying, "This is what we need for our businesses to work and our consumers to be able to access what they need, and we are coming together to make that demand". I think that that would have huge leverage way beyond anything that any of us can bring individually to it.

Mr Kearney: To respond briefly to that, Roger, I agree. That is the kind of momentum that I think can advance this kind of proposal. This is a subjective observation, but, based on past experience, I think that, if we can bring that type of unanimity and momentum to bear, there will be a reception on the side of the European Commission in relation to practical, pragmatic, solution-focused processes to which it can add value to ensure that we do, in fact, have frictionless opportunities for local businesses.

Mr Pollen: We are very much at a common purpose on that.

On your second question about specific sectors, it is probably a movable feast, because it depends on which regulations have kicked in at what point. The one that always feels particularly difficult is SPS and anything related to that, which includes food. You see the issues that the big supermarkets are having. Marks and Spencer has been very vocal about the challenges that it faces. You then think about what a small business — for example, a delicatessen with a broad range of products — is having to navigate to try to keep on making sure that the availability of unusual things continues. It is the unusualness of its product range that is its unique selling point, so to be able to navigate that as a small business and ramp up the capacity is a huge ask. That, I suspect, is probably the sector that feels the greatest pressure, but there are other ones, and it does ebb and flow depending on how the regulations are being changed, amended or postponed.

Mr Kearney: That is very helpful. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Ferguson): Jonathan or Emma, do you have any questions?

Mr Buckley: Most questions have been covered, but I want to touch on something with Roger. Following your presentation to the Economy Committee, it is important that other members have had a chance through the remit of this Committee. There were some dismissive comments towards the report about it not being representative. Do you have any comments on that, given the length of time that was put into designing such a report?

Mr Pollen: We stand over it. That is the first thing. I was looking at interesting parallels and thinking that we all extrapolate what might happen at the next general election. Typically, based on polling of about a thousand people, we estimate what 48 million people might do at the subsequent election. We had 788 businesses engage with us, with all the caveats that we put in, such as saying that the results are based on those that responded to the survey, recognising that there is a degree of self-selection. Nonetheless, it is far too big a sample size, taken right across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, of businesses that took the trouble and time out of their working lives to share their story, to say that it is anything other than robust, reflective and important to the debate.

Mr Buckley: Thank you for that. One of the most frustrating aspects for the Committee has been gathering that bit of knowledge from GB businesses in particular, because the information flow is very difficult for us in Northern Ireland making decisions to understand how that might affect trade for GB businesses into Northern Ireland. That is important, and this survey is a first real in-depth effort to extrapolate that and give us a greater understanding. With your different hat on — it is related to dealing with some of these issues — how are things going so far with Intertrade UK, and will findings such as this report help to inform GB businesses and help them in lobbying the UK Government to ensure change that enables free and unfettered trade within the United Kingdom?

Mr Pollen: Thanks for the question. I am here with my FSB hat on. We engage with any organisation or body that might be able to move forward or give oxygen to the issues that businesses are experiencing. Intertrade UK is one of those. We have also engaged with the Office for the Internal Market and, as Lorna said, the Department for Business and Trade. Whoever needs to have this on their radar and might be able to move it forward, we have engaged with. There is a work programme in place with Intertrade UK that includes engaging with the Secretary of State on the issues. Intertrade UK had a briefing on the report, as did many others. The knowledge and the information that it brought out are well recognised.

Mr Buckley: I am not attempting to draw you into making remarks from purely an Intertrade UK perspective. I am just trying to understand. It received the report from the FSB. How does it communicate and interact with an organisation such as Intertrade UK that can help with some of the issues in the report?

Mr Pollen: There are other business members on it, such as the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the CBI and the Institute of Directors, so there is representation from business organisations. Having been the lightning rod with this report from April to June — people were aware that the research was being done — we have now seen a lot of other business organisations identifying the same issues and stresses and strains within their memberships. There is a lot of frustration around, and we are hearing that on the various joint fora that we sit on now with agencies such as HMRC. Those other bodies are bringing in a lot of lived experience from their members that echoes what we have been finding. I do not think that our report is an outlier. We just happened to be in the vanguard, and others are now adding to the debate, the discussion and the information.

Mr Buckley: We have raised continually in the Assembly issues that have had a direct impact on consumers and small businesses in Northern Ireland, whether it is access to the supply chain for small businesses and how that is affecting their viability or how the consumer has been denied access. Peter mentioned one specific example in relation to his mother, but you can extrapolate that across many sectors where people are facing barriers in accessing the GB market, which often costs greater amounts of money. How does this report interact with the Murphy review? Also, what is it going to take for GB businesses to gain confidence again that they can trade freely into Northern Ireland? What action is that going to take?

Mr Pollen: I will ask Rachel to touch on the correlation with the Murphy report.

Ms McCorriston: And I will pass to Lorna, who did all the work in analysing it. I am not going to take any of the credit. [Laughter.]

Mr Buckley: That is good coordination, guys.

Ms Muldoon: Thank you for your question. We welcome Lord Murphy's report, and we see it as a stepping stone in the right direction. It mirrors a lot of our findings and recommendations. Lord Murphy's report calls for an all-in-one service, which we have called a one-stop shop. It also calls for a trusted scheme of sorts, specifically for hauliers, but we would like to open that out for all traders. It also wants more capacity and resources for yourselves and the Stormont Departments to interact with the Windsor framework. We would like to see more tangible recommendations that we can all hold in both hands and go forward with, but we do welcome Lord Murphy's report and its similarities to our own.

Mr Buckley: OK, but do you accept that, whilst EU law continues to apply to large swathes of our economy, trade divergence and barriers will ultimately continue to exist?

Mr Pollen: I mentioned our agnostic approach earlier. We deal with what we find; it is for politicians to change what is there. We try not to get drawn into that. If that is the situation that exists, the appetite amongst business is to say, "How can we turn that to our advantage?" That is where dual market access ought to be a factor, because there is a difference, and we should be looking to squeeze that difference to our advantage. At the moment, that is not happening as much as it could be, so there is an opportunity. Equally, if we see the convergence of the SPS deal that we heard about earlier, you will see a reduction in those differences, and it will be easier to trade between GB and Northern Ireland. However, that will also correspondingly reduce our advantage through dual market access. This is a moment in time to maximise the situation that we find ourselves in. We need to look at how we change that situation to the better, improve it and make sure that this Committee can do its work so that, as you say, Mr Buckley, if the agreement between the UKG and the EU is as it is now — if we are subject to those rules — the Committee can at least have serious engagement in making sure that those rules do not negatively impact on businesses here.

Mr Buckley: I sense that there is a greater appetite for businesses to tackle this issue. I understand that there are political dimensions to this, and that people will have different political viewpoints. It is not for the business sector to involve itself in that. However, it has, with increasing voice, demonstrated its ability to speak out and make tangible change. Look at the car dealerships, for example. I hear constantly that dual market access is the best of both worlds. At Committee, we heard that it was the worst of both worlds. It is not just car dealers that are facing that. Other sectors are facing increased bureaucracy both ways as a result of the deal that prioritised European access over the GB market that was integral to their business models. That challenge still exists. Are you of the view that, with increasing voice, businesses in Northern Ireland are having the bravery to speak out on the issues that are affecting their businesses from a business perspective? Does the Stormont apparatus, be that the Economy Committee, Infrastructure, Agriculture — we deal with them all at this Committee, because of our broad remit — have the understanding of how to navigate that to ensure that its voice is heard?

Mr Pollen: The fact that business is becoming more vocal and increasingly putting its head above the parapet to raise concerns should be a signal to everybody that there is a big problem here, if it is different from what has gone before. Business generally does not like to get into that mix — it gets on with what it does. Business is raising concerns about not just the Windsor framework, and you see it in other places, not just here. You see it in AI and cyber in other places, you see it in financial regulation and you are seeing it in the water service in England. There are lots of times when business finally gets to the point at which it has to get into the political sphere and raise concerns. That is what we are seeing here. The concern is that, because of the politics, people will shoot the messenger. We want to make sure that that does not happen. That is why we had to go out and get evidence, rather than rely on anecdotes, of which we were picking up a lot. That is what this report is about. If the anecdote was the canary in the mine that showed that there was something wrong, the report is the evidence that lies behind that.

Mr Buckley: Thank you, Roger, Lorna and Rachel, and thank you, Chair, for giving me extra time.

Ms Sheerin: I was not going to come in, but I felt that I had to respond to Jonathan's very clear comments regarding me when he referred to members having been dismissive of the report. That is not what I said, and it is not reflective of anybody's reaction to the report when it was presented to the Economy Committee. We wanted to reference that you concluded the report with:

and that you:

so, potentially:

I feel that, with all the evidence that we gather from businesses and affected communities, it is important that the perspective is always included and that the context is referenced. That is important. Our business community does not need uncertainty, scaremongering in any way or panicking. It is really important that we hear the challenges. As my party colleague outlined, we are supportive of your recommendations. Most of them are, obviously, not within our gift, but we will do whatever we can to promote that with all the Governments involved. It is just important that that is included, and it is vital that we remain mindful of that context. You have outlined it very explicitly in your report.

Mr Pollen: I will respond to that. There is always stuff that goes on in debates and discussions. We were very encouraged by your comments in that other Committee, Ms Sheerin, about the fact that there was general agreement in the Committee on the recommendations. That is what we are trying to achieve. We are trying to take the politics out of it and say what we can do to make the situation that is evidenced in the report better than it is now. The more people that we can get behind that, the more we can get that sense of momentum. We always enjoy a good discussion about the veracity and accuracy of things, and I always turn to Rachel when it comes to matters of weighting or other interpretation of data. The report is what it is, and it is moving the dial. The ambition is to get everybody behind these recommendations to move it a bit further forward.

The Chairperson (Ms Ferguson): I thank Roger, Rachel and Lorna for their presentation this morning. From the questions that have been asked, you can see that we really appreciate the work that you do on behalf of small businesses across the North and GB and the ongoing work that you do on the level of engagement. Since February, it has been really good, as you are aware. It is about how our businesses can be more informed and have a place where they can find information that they can stand over, a one-stop shop that can enable and support them to navigate issues that they either perceive or have. We really appreciate your highlighted it. The Committee thanks you for your work and coming along here this morning. It is much appreciated.

Mr Pollen: Thank you very much.