Brexit Readiness: Operation Yellowhammer

Clive Betts Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I welcome the hon. Lady to the House and congratulate her on her victory. In the run up to that victory, I had the opportunity to visit her beautiful constituency and talk to farmers, and one of the things that I was able to reassure them of was that vet medicines are part of the category 1 set of goods that are absolutely prioritised for entry into this country because, of course, we want to make sure that we can deal effectively with any threats to animal health.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

A few weeks ago, I went with a parliamentary delegation to visit the port of Rotterdam. That port is trying to recruit more than 100 vets to do checks on animals, food and other related products. We were also shown where they are going to build major lorry parks to deal with the knock-on effects of those checks, and they confirmed that that will result in delays in fresh products getting across to the United Kingdom. If there will be delays in fresh products leaving the port of Rotterdam, how can the Minister say that that will not result in a shortage of those fresh products in UK shops?

[Michael Gove]

It is important to state that it would actually be sanitary and phytosanitary checks undertaken in the UK that would delay those products, and we are not undertaking SPS checks in the UK because of our continuity approach.