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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is the estimated timetable for producing electronic certification to replace paper documentation for foodstuffs being exported from the UK to the EU.

The majority of export health certificates have been digitised so can be completed online and they are now hosted on EHC Online, replacing the manual process that was previously required to request and certify a certificate. Further progress in the digitisation of EHCs will be made later this year with electronic signatures and the removal of Crown Gold paper being phased within EHC Online. As part of the broader strategy for 2025, we want to work towards full end to end development of electronic signatures and certificates, including the exchange of these with trading partners' IT systems.