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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many EU exporters have faced sanitary and phytosanitary checks exporting to the UK since 1 January 2021.

The UK is introducing sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) import controls in a phased manner, supporting businesses as they come through the pandemic and ensuring that we do not disrupt food supply. From 1 January 2022, high-priority plants and plant products and live animals will be subjected to full import controls with checks taking place at destination. We will be introducing pre-notification requirements for all other regulated SPS goods from 1 January 2022 and full import controls from July 2022 onwards.

We cannot break down individual business numbers easily. Approximately 1,400 businesses registered for pre-notification and the following checks have been conducted:

73,401 consignments of regulated plants and plant products have been imported to the UK from the EU: 59,210 (80.67%) were subjected to SPS documentary checks of which 48 failed (0.07%).

49,822 were subject to identity checks (67.88%) of which 12 failed (0.02%).

11,310 faced physical SPS checks (15.41%) and 22 failed such checks (0.03%).

9796 consignments of live animals were imported into the UK from the EU. All were subject to documentary checks and 2122 (22%) were subjected to physical inspection.