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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that supplies of imported food are not delayed at UK ports.

The UK is working with national governments across the globe to ensure supply chains remain open and businesses have access to the information they need to keep goods moving. We have been monitoring the impacts of the coronavirus on supply chains from as many sources as possible, including our ongoing dialogue with business.

Defra and the Food Standards Agency have been developing a range of temporary easements for application in the UK for both intra-EU movements and third country imports to ensure that trade continues to flow during the Covid-19 outbreak. We consider that these temporary measures will not compromise biosecurity and public health. Separately, the European Commission has adopted Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/466 that provides a number of discretionary, temporary official control easements, some of which overlap with the ones we have been developing. We have written to Border Control Posts to confirm the temporary easements that can be put in place, and will keep these under review to ensure that trade continues without compromising biosecurity and public health.