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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the impact of the proposed 70 per cent cut in funding from DEFRA from April 2024 for the inspection team of Dover Port Health Authority, and (2) how this will affect the action of this team to maintain UK food safety and security.

On the 31 January 2023 we introduced the first stage of the Border Target Operating Model (BTOM) which balances the need to protect biosecurity with the impact on trade. All port health authorities (PHAs) and local authorities (LAs) undertaking the new sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks on EU goods from 30 April 2024 will be able to issue charges to recover their costs in the way they do now for Rest of the World goods. In 2022, Defra began providing a temporary financial support package to PHAs and LAs to retain staff until the introduction of the BTOM. In that time, these staff were focused on supporting wider biosecurity work. This included supporting Border Force with enforcing the temporary African Swine Fever (ASF) safeguard measure on pork and pork products from the EU, in place pending implementation of a new SPS policy for goods intended for personal use.

Defra remains committed to protecting biosecurity and we are confident that this will not negatively impact UK food safety and security. We are working closely with all border stakeholders in the lead up to all implementation dates of new SPS controls. We are working with them to train and upskill staff to ensure that any new controls that are brought in are enacted in an efficient manner so as not to disrupt trade, but which crucially will maintain our high biosecurity standards.