Brexit: Northern Ireland customs rules still not settled six months after EU exit

Ministers have defended a lack of information about what the new sea border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland will look like from next year.

Six months after Brexit the specifics of how goods moving between Northern Ireland and Great Britain will be treated have still not been agreed.

But Northern Ireland minister Robin Walker told a House of Lords committee on Tuesday that "we cannot necessarily provide all the detail that everyone would like on day one".

The implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol is subject to negotiation by a "joint committee" between the EU and UK.

The UK argues it should not have to apply some customs controls it agreed to as part of the agreement – such as exit summary declarations for goods moving across the Irish Sea.

The checks are included in the agreement because they are part of the EU's customs code, which Boris Johnson promised in writing to implement in exchange for a Brexit deal last year.

But during the ensuring election campaign Mr Johnson said would be no checks or exit summary declarations. The British government has since argued that imposing the letter of the agreement would not be a good idea.

The hold-up means that businesses on both sides of the Irish sea still have no detail about what will happen to the border in five months at the end of the year when the transition period ends.

"I absolutely recognise that business will always want as much detail as possible as early as possible and that this is a process where we cannot necessarily provide all the detail that everyone would like on day one," Mr Walker told the Lords EU committee.

"We do have to ensure that the voice of business is heard and fed into the process, and we also have to make sure we don't give any misleading information in terms of things that haven't been fully bottomed out and agreed.

"There are elements of the approach to the protocol which still require agreement at the joint committee and it would be wrong for us to imply that those were fully decided."

Mr Walker added that there would be "more guidance coming in the coming weeks" and that it would be "as detailed as possible.

But he added: "Crucially we have to make sure that the process of the joint committee deciding these things is able to move forward."

"With regard to the issue of exit declarations the approach we've set out is that we don't think exit declarations should be required for Northern Irish goods going into Great Britain because that is trade within the internal market and customs territory as protocol acknowledges. It also has no possible means of undermining the working of the single market so I think this is something that we need to ensure there's a discussion about that the joint committee."

The discussion about the Northern Ireland protocol is running in parallel to talks to sign a free trade agreement between the UK and EU by the end of the year.