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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure it can process in a timely manner the increased volume of export health certificates in the event of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.

We will this autumn complete an upgrading of the current system used in Carlisle for processing Export Health Certificates (EHCs). This upgrade will increase the volume that can be processed, as well as the system’s robustness and resilience. It will still rely on manual input and recruitment of people started in July. Stakeholder engagement is already underway. Guidance and training will be carried out before the end of 2018.

As a result we are confident that we will have the ability to process the increase in numbers of EHCs that may materialise.

We are also building a new digital system that will be more automated. This will be completed as close to March 2019 as possible. This will have the potential to be developed into a full e-certification system in time.

We have analysed the capacity of the veterinary market to respond to an increase in demand for export health certificates. Feedback from suppliers of certification services is that they are making preparations and that the market will meet the demand. Private suppliers have a regular pipeline of recruitment and can increase this relatively quickly.