Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of training provided by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) to (a) carrier staff and (b) pet checker staff who operate on behalf of the APHA to ensure that they are able to identify fake pet passports used for animals travelling under the Pet Travel Scheme.

Pursuant to the answer provided on 23 April 2018 to PQ 136010, the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) is responsible for providing carriers and checkers with training information and an overview of the requirements for the approved carriage of dogs, cats and ferrets under the Pet Travel Scheme.

APHA carries out quality assurance checks on carriers and pet checkers to monitor the ongoing standard of performance of the carrier or approved checker when checking that animals meet the requirements of the scheme.

The quality assurance process focuses on overall compliance with the Pet Travel Scheme. This includes ensuring that carriers or checkers can identify animals that do not meet the general requirements of the scheme; identifying suspected smuggling cases; and identifying fraudulently completed or fake passports.

The level of quality assurance checks carried out is established using factors such as the volume of animal throughput, the previous quality assurance checks undertaken, performance of the carrier or checker and any high risk considerations.

APHA field teams are in communication with their carriers and checkers. Where non-compliance is identified, extra checks must be undertaken as part of the recorded follow-on actions, along with any training or action taken with the carrier or authorised checker.