“I will keep that decision under review until the final details of the agreement with the EU are known,” he added. “We will then be able to make longer-term plans for the Holyhead site. In the meantime, it is crucial that it remains ready and available as a potential BCP facility.”
Speaking in the Welsh parliament in June, Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth said Wales needed “an assurance from Westminster that the Welsh government will be compensated for its contribution to the project and that any funding that’s required to repurpose this site for future use will also be paid in full by the Treasury.”
In June, just one month after the U.K.-EU summit, Wales’ Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies said they would not proceed with the final commissioning and staffing of the BCP after all. | Matthew Horwood/Getty Images
Across the Irish Sea in Northern Ireland, similar concerns are being raised over the future of the region’s BCPs in Belfast, Foyle, Larne and Warrenpoint, where food and plants shipped from Great Britain are inspected. The British government has committed funding of up to £192.3 million to build the facilities, with at least £111.3 million spent to date.
Unlike the BCPs in Great Britain, the construction of these facilities is a result of another Brexit-related quirk, known as the Windsor Framework, which controls the flow of goods through Northern Ireland.
Traditional Unionist Voice MP Jim Allister is among those raising concerns. “The government is now proposing to do a deal with the EU to subject Great Britain as well as Northern Ireland to EU SPS rules that they say will make having BCPs unnecessary,” he said “That is odd given that over £190 million of taxpayers’ money was set aside this year to construct these BCPs that will soon become white elephants.”
But for Allister and other Unionists, the expense is just one of their objections to the facilities, which they see as a physical manifestation of the Irish sea border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.