Following the Windsor Framework (a proposed post-Brexit legal agreement between the E.U. and the U.K. announced on February 27, 2023), Lord Richard Benyon, Minister of State at the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra), stated that plants, seeds, and trees remaining in the United Kingdom (U.K.), including previously prohibited seed potatoes and other shrubs and plants, will be able to move from Great Britain (G.B.) to Northern Ireland (N.I.) as they do in the rest of the U.K., increasing access.

Plants, including seed potatoes, will be moved without the need for routine inspections or time-consuming certification, with the only requirement being an industry-issued plant label, in line with other intra-UK transfers. Those transporting seed potatoes will be inspected and certified annually by a competent authority, allowing traders to print and affix the plant label themselves.

Regarding the timing for implementing these seed potato rules, legislators anticipate that the new criteria will go into effect later this year, in autumn 2023.

Before the UK’s exit from the EU, Scottish seed potatoes were an important import for markets in Northern Ireland and throughout the continent.

Scotland accounts for more than 75% of Britain’s seed potato exports, with the country selling seed to 18 EU countries in 2020/21. However, due to changes in trade restrictions, Scottish farmers have been unable to export seed potatoes to Northern Ireland and the EU since January 2021.

Gordon MP, Richard Thomson, who is spearheading efforts to reestablish access for Scottish seed potatoes, called the new development ‘welcome progress.’ However, according to British media, he stated that exporters would continue to seek resumption of exports to their previous EU and rest of Ireland customers, where ‘progress has been limited.’

“I’m delighted that at long last, after so much lobbying and cajoling, we now at least have a definitive answer to when Scottish seed potatoes can be exported to Northern Ireland. While it is undoubtedly good news for exporters that they will once again be able to get their product into NI, no one should be in any doubt that this is just a first step along the road to where Scotland needs to be, and that is to have our export markets in the EU fully restored. The disruption of not even being able to get seed potatoes into another part of the UK… is something that should not be forgotten nor that neither Scotland nor Northern Ireland voted for this chaos in the first place,” the Scottish National Party MP concluded.