Supply of Machinery (Safety) (Amendment etc.) and the EU Machinery Regulation (Enforcement etc. in Northern Ireland) Regulations 2026
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 20 Jul 2026 · 20 speeches · Official Report
Motion to Approve
Moved by
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 1 June be approved. Relevant document: 5th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
My Lords, this instrument concerns machinery used every day across our economy and in our daily lives. It covers a wide range of products: from cranes and excavators used on construction sites to lawnmowers, leaf blowers and many other workplace and consumer products. The current machinery safety framework is based on legislation introduced in 2006 and 2008, which implemented the then EU machinery directive and was subsequently assimilated into UK law following our departure from the European Union. As noble Lords will know and appreciate, machinery has evolved markedly over the past two decades. Digital technologies, automation, connected systems and software now play an increasingly important role in machinery design and operation. It is therefore right that our regulatory framework evolves alongside those technological developments to ensure it remains effective, proportionate and fit for purpose. This instrument has two distinct and complementary purposes. First, it introduces the domestic enforcement framework necessary to ensure the effective enforcement of the EU machinery regulation which applies in Northern Ireland from 20 January 2027 under the Windsor Framework. Secondly, it amends domestic legislation to ensure that machinery meeting the updated EU requirements can continue to be placed on the market in Great Britain under the CE marking. In doing so, it provides businesses with continuity and certainty while avoiding unnecessary duplication of conformity...
Amendment to the Motion
Moved by
At end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations place a different legal requirement on the supply of machinery in Northern Ireland in order to comply with the Windsor Framework; risk interrupting the Northern Ireland supply chain from Great Britain; and increase pressure for the same EU requirements to be imposed on Great Britain, thereby undermining regulatory freedoms in Great Britain in order to prevent divergence from the EU.”
It is good to see the Minister in his place; he obviously has not had a telephone call today, which we all welcome, I am sure. This statutory instrument covers the regulation of both workplace machinery and consumer products, including excavators, cranes and leaf blowers, and potentially even lawnmowers. It provides an enforcement mechanism for the Government for a law that automatically applies to Northern Ireland because of the dynamic alignment provisions of the Windsor Framework. This regulation was made on 14 June 2023. That date is important, because it is more than two years after we left the EU, and it was made by a legislature in which no part of the United Kingdom was represented. It was made not out of any regard for the people of Northern Ireland or any other part of the UK. It tells us that we have not really left the EU; we have simply made our subjection to Brussels that much more abject, imposing a trade border dividing our own country. The regulation does not come into force, as the Minister has said, until 20 January 2027, so the European Union member state economies have had nearly four years to prepare, but Northern Ireland has not. As the Lords Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee has recognised, dynamic alignment means that businesses do not know all the laws to which they are subject or even when they will be brought in. In addition to introducing an enforcement regime, these regulations amend domestic legislation so that machinery that meets the...
My Lords, the Minister correctly points out that after almost 20 years it is time for regulations to be updated to take account of technological and other developments. Nobody has an argument with that. However, the points that have been made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, illustrate an ongoing problem. We are only at the foothills of this, because with the European reset about to take place, we are going to be confronted with a tidal wave of these SIs that will be going on for a long time. On a number of occasions, I have argued that we have the potential to review this year our relationships with the TCA system and the European Union. We have had honeyed words from Ministers at the Dispatch Box saying, “Yes, we will do that”. I am not aware of anything currently happening. There is no meaningful attempt from government that I am aware of to seriously address what is not only a constitutional issue but rapidly becoming a serious economic issue. The noble Baroness has illustrated, as happened in the other place, the issue of components coming into Northern Ireland to be part of a manufactured product which can then be sold on either to the EU, the world or GB. The Minister is very experienced; he knows business. He knows that to have an economy where you are constructing a product which could have hundreds of components-the form that the European Union produces, with each line with a number, down to washers, is overwhelming-the Government must take these issues seriously....
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. These regulations drive another wedge between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, cementing the gradual disintegration of our union by legislative stealth. Once again, we in Northern Ireland are the sacrificial lambs sent to the slaughter to appease Europe. In my opinion, this is a debate about fairness; it is about having an equal footing within the internal market between the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. It is totally unacceptable that Northern Ireland stands on uneven ground. Businesses have already been fettered by the weight of the Windsor Framework bureaucracy, and now our Government want to apply even more red tape-much to their shame. Companies and consumers based in Northern Ireland who depend on buying in machinery made in Great Britain will be very concerned about what these regulations will mean-certainly from 20 January 2027 onwards until the same legislation applies to Great Britain, although we do not know when that will be. There is no clarity concerning that timeline. Should businesses contact their suppliers in Great Britain now and encourage them to continue supplying the Northern Ireland market, despite the additional costs involved? In other words, are GB manufacturers expected to absorb the cost of having their machinery assessed against EU standards that apply in Northern Ireland, and of obtaining UKNI marking so that Northern Ireland businesses and...
Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to partake in this debate. I thank the Minister for the detail he has provided. I do not necessarily blame just the current Government for this issue because it goes back much further than that. We have to accept that there were very poor negotiations after Brexit that led to the protocol and the Windsor Framework. Who have been the fall people? The Northern Ireland businesses have been the main fall people, which is extremely unfortunate. We need to try to resolve the outworkings of the protocol and Windsor Framework. That decision has had significant consequences for many businesses so far, and this will be another one. I am sure that most businesses in Northern Ireland never thought that, after Brexit, we would be debating excavators, cranes and leaf blowers-let alone tumble dryers. For goodness’ sake: this is way beyond what any of us expected in Northern Ireland and what we expected to see as a reasonable relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland, our businesses have been the fall people for all of this. So, how are we going to resolve it? This is not going to resolve it, because there is no assessment of the financial impact to the people of Northern Ireland and its businesses. Even though this Government have not been to blame for those negotiations, my issue is that I have not seen anything from them either that has tried to resolve the issues. As my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Empey,...
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
My Lords, I am very grateful to be able to participate in this debate and I support the statutory instrument coming from the Government, which is one of many statutory instruments that we have already addressed in relation to the Windsor Framework. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has said, there will be many more coming down the path to greet us in this Chamber which will already have been examined by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It is important to point out that, as a supporter of the Windsor Framework, I feel that the new incoming Government, working with the Northern Ireland Executive, need to ensure that the ability provided by the Windsor Framework in terms of trade within the UK internal market and access to the EU single market is fully availed of, and that Northern Ireland businesses are enhanced as a result of it. That area needs to be examined with the Northern Ireland Executive. On this particular statutory instrument, it is worth pointing out that the Government intend to introduce similar measures to those taking effect in Northern Ireland “as soon as parliamentary time allows”, which could allow regulatory divergence between GB and Northern Ireland. I hope that the Minister can advise on that. I would also like to see accelerated progress on the development of the one-stop-shop by the Cabinet Office to support services for business, including the role of AI in the operation of this one-stop-shop and the UK-EU dynamic database of applicable and...
I am not going to deliver a speech, but the noble Baroness and the Minister have spoken about certainty. Does the noble Baroness not agree that certainty would be a lot more enhanced-and I look forward to the Minister’s reply-if we got some form of timescale for whatever is going to be proposed for Great Britain, to bring it back into alignment with Northern Ireland? Also, certainty is massively undermined by the fact that there has not been any level of financial impact assessment on this. We are left with phrases such as “limited impact” and “not particularly practical impact”, but those things are very vague, and we know from previous experience that there was actually a much greater impact than had previously been highlighted.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I agree that there needs to be absolute certainty in relation to the framework, but I come at this as somebody who supports the Windsor Framework and feels that the Government need to work with the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that access to both markets is fully captured, and it is ensured that businesses can avail of them.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to these regulations. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for allowing us to have this important, if short, debate this evening through tabling her regret amendment. I read the debate on 30 June about these regulations in the House of Commons with interest. I have also listened carefully to the contributions to this short debate this evening. As usual in these debates, the majority of concerns expressed about these regulations are not so much about the content of the regulations themselves but are constitutional and include concerns about trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, and the impact on Northern Ireland businesses. These regulations in themselves are not particularly controversial. As the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, have said, they update the safety standards of machinery under the EU directive of 2006 and the UK’s subsequent regulations from 2008. In the intervening nearly 20 years, machinery has changed quite significantly, and I am sure that nobody is disputing that the regulations themselves needed to be updated. These regulations are quite technical and, in the House of Commons, the Minister for Business and Trade estimated that they will impact 230 businesses in Northern Ireland and approximately 5,380 businesses in Great Britain. The concerns expressed this evening by noble Lords are about the fact that Northern Ireland is being treated differently to the rest of the UK as a...
My Lords, we are grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in this important debate. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for giving us this opportunity. The origins of the Windsor Framework lay in the desire of the previous Government to address the consequences of what was a deeply flawed protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, negotiated in October 2019. Within a short time of the protocol coming into force in January 2021, those consequences had become all too apparent. It disrupted trade, damaged businesses and imposed additional costs and inconvenience on customers and consumers. The Windsor Framework was a serious and, in my view, valiant attempt by the Government led by the former Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, to address those problems. It was motivated by a desire to reduce significantly the checks on goods introduced by the protocol, to protect Northern Ireland’s place within the United Kingdom internal market and to reinforce Northern Ireland’s position as an integral part of the United Kingdom. Taken together with the January 2024 Command Paper, Safeguarding the Union , the framework ameliorated some of the worst effects of the protocol. It facilitated a freer flow of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and contributed to the restoration of devolved government at Stormont in February 2024. We should not lose sight of the importance of either achievement. However, acknowledging those achievements does not...
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this short debate. I will address briefly the concerns and questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, and other noble Lords. This is a time-limited debate, so I will answer as many questions as I can and, if necessary, will write to noble Lords. I recognise, as does the House, that noble Lords have consistently raised concerns about the operation of the Windsor Framework and its application for Northern Ireland. These are legitimate matters for parliamentary scrutiny and debate, which we welcome. However, the question before the House this evening is much narrower and more practical, as was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie: namely, whether businesses, regulators and consumers should have a clear, modern and enforceable machinery safety framework before the new arrangements take effect on 20 January 2027. In reaching their conclusions, the Government did not merely make assumptions; we asked those who will be directly affected by them. As I said in opening, my officials have conducted a comprehensive programme of engagement, comprising a national call for evidence, 10 round-table meetings attended by over 200 stakeholders from across the United Kingdom and internationally, and targeted engagement with businesses in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland. We listened to manufacturers, importers, conformity assessment bodies and representative organisations before deciding on this approach. The...
My Lords, I thank all the noble Lords who have spoken, particularly my colleagues from Northern Ireland. The noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, tends to come in on all these SIs and support the Windsor Framework, but does not really seem to take a detailed interest in what businesses are thinking about this. Generally, I hope the Minister has realised that this is a complex and difficult issue and that the Government have not provided the detailed information for businesses that they could have. Businesses have only a few months before they have to implement, and we are still very unclear about the marking situation. The Minister says that UK(NI) marking will not always be necessary, so how are we supposed to know when it is and when it is not? These are the kind of details that small businesses in particular, which depend on their relationship with GB, will find extremely difficult. None of the detailed questions that noble Lords asked has really been answered, so after the Minister has looked through what was said in Hansard , perhaps we will get a more detailed response, because those questions will come up over and over again until we get real answers and businesses have some certainty. I welcome the response from the noble Baroness from the Liberal Democrats and some of the questions she asked, as I did the Front-Bench spokesman from the Conservatives. Interestingly, the Conservatives in the other place voted against this statutory instrument, and I welcome that. I am...
Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.
Motion agreed.