No doubt the right hon. Gentleman will have a chance to speak shortly.
The outcomes here will pose an existential threat to the Northern Ireland dairy sector. We are talking about potentially 800 million litres of milk that need to be accommodated somehow. The cows, of course, still need to be milked, and that begs the question as to where the surplus milk will go; that could pose considerable environmental challenges. It is simply not sustainable for farmers to retain animals that no longer have an economic purpose, so we could face a brutal cull of healthy cows. It would cost between £200 million and £250 million to create alternative processing capacity in Northern Ireland, and could take three years. Even if it made any sense to do so, by then the markets for Northern Ireland products would be long gone.
It is worth stressing that the island of Ireland has always been treated as a single unit for animal health. That makes huge sense, but dual regulation undermines it; there has not been dual regulation in the recent past. The same dynamic that applies to the dairy sector also applies to other aspects of agrifood, such as Northern Ireland’s very successful meat exporting industry. Any dual regulation in relation to feedstuffs and medicines undermines the ability to access the European Union in accordance with EU regulations.
Again, it is not realistic to segregate certain fields or farms for domestic Northern Ireland or Great Britain markets from those for EU markets, because—this may address the point by the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson)—we will not have a situation where one farm says, “We’re only going to do Northern Ireland and Great Britain forever.”, and one says, “We are going to do the European Union.”