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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to help support farmers export live animals into the European Union.

His Majesty’s Government is working with industry and inspectors to develop digital Export Health Certificates to replace paper certification for live animals, to reduce the administrative burden on traders where possible. We anticipate a staged approach to digitisation of certification for exports to tie in with wider work on the Single Trade Window, which will allow traders to meet all their import, export and transit obligations by submitting information once, and in one place.

EU BCPs can only be constructed with approval given by EU Member States. Defra has regular bilateral meetings with EU Member States where the topic of building BCPs in EU to support the export of live animals in the EU has been discussed.