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

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the comments by Professor Chris Elliott of Queen's University Belfast in June that a series of threats to food security are converging to create “chaos” because it is "now much easier to get food that is not of the same quality and standards into the UK”; and what steps they are taking to improve border checks and information-sharing to mitigate these threats.

The Government published the UK Food Security Report 2024 last week and remains committed to protecting our biosecurity and will maintain the appropriate level of controls to achieve this in accordance with the Border Target Operating Model. Please also see the Border Target Operating Model web page on gov.uk for detailed information on the rationale for border controls (at Final_Border_Target_Operating_Model.pdf).