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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the funding for the new National Biosecurity Centre is being paid for out of the agricultural budget which was previously committed to go towards farmers directly as public payments for public goods.

The Government has committed to setting up a new National Biosecurity Centre to transform the Animal and Plant Health Agency animal health facility at Weybridge, investing £200 million to improve our resilience against animal disease to protect farmers and food producers. This is funded from a budget separate from the record £5 billion of funding in the farming budget for this year and next.