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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of whether export costs have increased and revenue has been lost due to the time taken to resolve export health certificate administrative problems for products of animal origin at Border Control Posts; and what plans he has to speed up the UK’s administrative processes to make the delivery of goods to the EU more efficient for UK distributors.

We do not routinely track the costs of export certification, which is a commercial matter between certifiers and exporters. We have always been clear that new processes would apply for exports of products of animal origin to the EU, from 01 January 2021. Before then we introduced efficiency measures for exporters, including guidance for logistics hubs and consolidation of loads. These measures have reduced exporters’ administrative requirements and through consolidation the total number of export health certificates required for EU exports. We are working to improve the online process of applying for export heath certificates to reduce errors and speed up certification.