Good afternoon and welcome to this meeting of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee. We continue our inquiry today on the subject of biosecurity at the border. We are delighted to have with us the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State from DEFRA. Minister, you are very welcome. It is your first appearance with this Committee, so we hope that it will be the first of many and that we can have a good and profitable working relationship. Just for the benefit of those who are following our proceedings and, indeed, for the official record, may I invite you to introduce yourself and your colleagues to your right?

My name is Sue Hayman. As you have just said, I am the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in DEFRA. One of my portfolio responsibilities is biosecurity and plant health, borders, and animal health and welfare, which I understand is what your Committee is looking into. I have Gareth Baynham-Hughes on my right and, further on my right, Spencer Draper, who both work in the Department with me on these issues.

Good afternoon. You are all very welcome to the Committee. Minister, the Prime Minister says that food security is national security. Biosecurity at the border, therefore, attaches a particular importance. You have possibly one of the most important jobs in Government, therefore, outside of the Cabinet. How confident are you in the robustness of the protections that we have at the border to protect the biosecurity of this country?

The biosecurity measures that we have in place are robust. They have been improved since we came into Government. We have made some changes to tighten up biosecurity, particularly around personal imports of certain products. Of course, nothing is ever 100% secure, but I take it very seriously that my responsibility is to ensure that the checks and balances that we have in place are as robust as possible for biosecurity to protect the country while still facilitating trade, because it is getting that balance right that is really important.

Thank you for that. I want to look at some of the evidence that we have heard in the Committee. We went with Gareth to Dover port some time ago to look at the measures taken in relation to the foot and mouth outbreak that we had, first of all, in Germany, and then later outbreaks in Hungary and Slovakia. Have you assessed the effectiveness of your response to these outbreaks?

Yes, of course. Whenever you have any kind of threat, you have to take the correct action at the time. You have to react as swiftly as possible, and we did react very swiftly for foot and mouth. For example, on the very day that Germany announced that it had a case of foot and mouth, we contacted the port health authorities and told them that they were no longer to let the imports in from Germany that were affected by that disease outbreak. We moved as quickly as possible to update the different digital systems that we use. In that small gap, we ensured that there was proper information shared. Port health authorities talked to each other, as did Border Force and so on, to make sure that we were doing our very best to stop any infected products coming in. Again, you have to then review what has happened in terms of, “Are we happy?” and go over it again, because, as far as I am concerned, when you have any kind of risk, you have to then analyse it to see if you can make improvements.

Yes, absolutely. We are mindful of the fact that this is a brand new system required to do something that has not been done. An element of pressure testing, such as you would have had in January at the time of the foot and mouth outbreak and the closure of imports from Germany, is an opportunity to see where there are gaps in the pipes and you are getting some steam coming out. One of the concerns that we heard in evidence was surrounding the operation of IPAFFS, the import of products, animals, food and feed system. You know that we heard evidence on that because we wrote to you about it, not once but twice. We wrote to you on 11 February and again, following your reply, on 11 March. It took three months to get your Department to provide us with the number of German consignments that were able to bypass FMD controls between 10 and 16 January, 10 January being the date of closing to products and 16 January being the date that you told us in your letter of 21 March was when IPAFFS was updated. Why is it so difficult to get information out the Department? Did you not know that information, or did you know it and just not want to tell us?

I would say neither of those things. I would suggest that there have been some teething problems with correspondence in DEFRA that we are currently tackling.

What do you mean by that?

Correspondence has been taking longer to respond to than I have been comfortable with, and we are looking to speed things up.

Are you talking about the correspondence between yourself and the Committee, or correspondence between DEFRA and the various stakeholders and operators?

I mean correspondence between myself and the Committee.

So the fact that we asked a very direct question on 11 February and then had to ask it again on the 11 March is, you are saying, an internal plumbing issue within DEFRA.

Yes, and I apologise for that.

We all understand. Where there is a pressure test on the system, we do not want to be public executioners. There is a public interest in highlighting these issues. That is what we, as a Committee, are here to do, but we do need transparency. If that is a lesson learned, we are happy to accept that, and I am sure that we can move on. We heard evidence about whey products being imported and being brought to the attention of Helen Buckingham, one of our witnesses, after the closure of the borders. The chief vet said that no one informed DEFRA of the cases of German whey and that, as a consequence, they could not have done anything about it. Thinking about it, what does that tell us about the monitoring systems in place for prohibited products?

The report of German whey being imported was unverified. My understanding is that there was no evidence found that it had happened.

The evidence that we had came directly from the public health consultant who gave evidence to us, saying that she had taken a call from people in Birmingham. There was no evidence given directly to DEFRA, but that surely was evidence.

As I say, we were not contacted about it. I would ask anyone who knows of such products coming through to contact DEFRA as a matter of urgency, because, clearly, we rely very much on working constructively with other organisations.

We did get correspondence from the chief veterinary officer—and I do not know if you have had sight of it—dated 2 May, clarifying a lot of these matters. We do not know for certain, but we presume that the information in the chief veterinary officer’s correspondence came from an email that was circulated on 25 April in relation to foot and mouth disease. It was an urgent request for information—urgent, presumably, because you and your colleagues were coming to the Committee, rather than being urgent in relation to the closure of the borders on 10 January. Again, let me ask you bluntly. In terms of the information gathering that you undertook on 25 April, which was good and sensible stuff to do, would that have happened if the Select Committee had not been running the rule over the work of DEFRA on this?

I cannot necessarily answer that. The CVO has been doing work on the response. We have been looking at how we can improve the response. I do not know the timelines that she was working to. It may be that she changed her focus slightly to answer the questions being asked by the Select Committee. It may be that that is what she would have worked on anyway, because we are looking at the whole response in the round and seeing how we can ensure that any further threats are going to be dealt with appropriately and swiftly.

We are all on a learning curve here. Perhaps that is another point to take away from that.

Having said that, the response to foot and mouth in Germany, and then in Hungary and Slovakia, was handled very professionally and effectively by the chief veterinary officer, who called us all together very swiftly to inform us what the situation was. Following the initial German outbreak, she has been looking very carefully to ensure that the system is as robust as it possibly can be following that experience, and understanding how the response worked.

Minister, might I add to that? Would that be okay, Chair?

Yes, please.

It is worth bearing in mind that these are systems that are new for the EU, but operated perfectly successfully and somewhat under the radar for rest-of-the-world trade before EU exit. They are also systems that are regularly audited, for example. Whether it is the EU or other trading partners, they come over and assess our competent authority functions and how we exercise those. What you put your finger on is what levels of knowledge and data we have at each level within the overall central competent authority, but successive audits, where people come over and look at our systems, find that local port health authorities as one layer of the competent authority, or local authorities on food safety, for example, which are another part of the competent authority, are functioning effectively and well. That is the basis on which people are prepared to trade with us. We are learning that, from the EU in particular, adding up some of the “so what” of the data, because the scale of that trade is so much greater, is something that is worth investing in. I do not think that any of the points raised really undermine the success with which each layer of the competent authority system performs its functions.

You lead me on very nicely to some questions around contingency planning. I am told that the pretty limited outbreak in Germany cost the German economy €1 billion. That shows the full extent of the risk that is posed to us here if we do not get this right. In 2002, the National Audit Office reported on weaknesses in contingency planning and communication with stakeholders during the 2001 outbreak. It made various recommendations around contingency planning to be tested on a regular basis. In 2018, you had an FMD simulation exercise called Exercise Blackthorn. There were 55 recommendations to be actioned by the Department, APHA, UK policy teams, the National Emergency Epidemiology Group and DAERA in Northern Ireland. In 2021, you did an African swine fever simulation called Exercise Holly. Can you tell us whether all 55 recommendations from that 2018 foot and mouth simulation have been fully implemented?

Without having the list in front of me, I cannot. Gareth may be able to help with this.

Equally, I could not say what number out of 55, but I could say something about how we typically take those things forward. There is a huge effort now, not least because of the change in the assessment of the risk of incursion of FMD following the events in Europe, to look again at preparedness. That all builds on existing structures. We have an outbreak readiness board. We have a whole series of things that would typically take the lessons learned from that and put them into future planning. We do have ongoing exercises. I never know what I am allowed to say in public about them. There is certainly an exercise due at the end of the year. We are also exercising things such as zoonotic diseases, although FMD is not one of those. There is a regular plan and, as part of that, we typically go back over previous lessons learned, but I cannot tell you to what extent the particular recommendations have been met.

Can you perhaps follow that up in correspondence? Given that the events of January were a bit of a wake-up call for us, would it not be sensible to run the rule over what you have been told previously?

There is a large amount of new work that is happening following the outbreaks in Germany in early January. I know that you took evidence from Emily Miles, my direct boss, the other week. That is all organised within the Department, particularly between us and the Animal and Plant Health Agency, which is dusting off all of its plans. We are reporting to our internal executive committee on that in May. That work is all in hand, so we can absolutely follow up with more details about that preparedness work, if helpful.

Just to come back to Emily Miles, her evidence to the Committee was that she had set up “a relatively small project” to consider our preparedness for an FMD outbreak. How much resource is given to a relatively small project? Is that going to be sufficient?

I do not know the numbers of staff, but we have moved new people into that. There are new people in the Animal and Plant Health Agency. We can look at what documentation we can share from that that gives reassurance about the level of activity. The work is mapped out in three phases. There is some early work that we are doing, which is the absolute priority, no-regrets work. You will see, for example, that we are due to update the FMD control plan, and that will be published soon. Similarly, there is work going on within the agency on things such as procurement readiness and equipment readiness. There are a handful of people drawing all of that work together, but they will be pulling across all of the teams. Specifically on things such as what happens at the border, there are other bits of work going on. For example, having learned that, although it is not strictly necessary for immediate response at the border, it is helpful to update IPAFFS quickly, we now have the list of changes that you need to make for foot and mouth. We have identified the top five disease risks, and we are doing readiness work so that we have, up front, the list of commodities that could be affected by outbreaks of those diseases. There is a whole series of activity that we are currently doing, essentially, all through reprioritisation within my team and within the agency and so on.

Could you share as much of that as you possibly can with us? If I am mischaracterising this, my colleagues will correct me, but I think that it is fair to say that we have had a fairly consistent drumbeat of people from trade bodies, suppliers, transporters and logistics organisations giving evidence to the Committee, saying that they are not given sufficient certainty. Quite apart from the curiosity of the Committee, which you will know is almost limitless, there is a public interest here for rebuilding confidence in the system. You touched on it, Gareth, and I did not quite understand what you said. Are you planning to do any more foot and mouth disease simulations?

We are planning to specifically walk the Secretary of State through a tabletop scenario shortly. There is another exercise, which I do not think is FMD-focused. I honestly do not know the specific plan for FMD-focused exercises. Typically, what we try to do is identify the things that we most want to exercise. Of course, some of the benefits of exercising other diseases will pay off in terms of FMD preparedness. We might need to come back to you with a programme of the planned exercises.

I am focusing on FMD because it is particularly current. You also have African swine fever and blue tongue.

You have HPAI, sheep and goat pox, peste des petits ruminants—

You have avian flu. One that I had not heard of until recently is goat plague. We have a series of different disease threats coming our way. Only one of them needs to get through. If two of them get through, then, my goodness, we could be in catastrophic territory. Helena, you wanted to touch again on Exercise Blackthorn.

We are extremely systematic about this work, but, in the same period, we have also had the largest outbreak of avian influenza. We had Covid affecting the team, both in terms of our operations, of course, but also what we had to do out in the field, including setting up zoo rescue funds. We had to support Ukraine and people arriving with pets. There is a huge amount of stuff that I have been focused on, which means that the system overall is under pressure. The model is that you invest when things are calm, so that, when things are less calm, you are ready, and then you move back. The reality is that we have been contending with successive outbreaks. I am hoping that it is purely coincidental that it has been since I have been in post, but, since 2020, we have not left outbreak mode, which means that that has been a particular focus. There is a systematic element to our work behind the scenes, and regular governance and so on that looks at outbreak readiness assessments and all of that work, so we can provide a pattern of that information. The NAO is going to publish a report on this relatively soon and will make a similar point, essentially, which is that we are all doing the best that we can in the situation that we have. The situation does mean that we need to think about whether, in the long term, that approach overall is sustainable. To the extent that we can, we do all of this work as systematically as we can.

I would say that, of all the things that we should be most confident about, we have really excellent, world-leading surveillance of that sort of risk. We have a particular thing called the veterinary risk group. I get a report every month—fundamentally, they report to the chief veterinary officer—that captures a whole range of risks from all sorts of sources, such as wildlife, vector-borne diseases, movements of animals through trade and so on. It captures all of this in one place and, essentially, asks the question, “Are we doing enough now to understand those forward risks and plan properly?” I know that our Permanent Secretary took part in a veterinary risk group meeting not so long ago and thought that it was a really good example of still being able to do that systematic work and planning for the worst, in advance, while all of these outbreaks and so on are happening. Even within classical disease terms, there are, on average, something like over 1,000 reports to the World Organisation for Animal Health that our teams look at to understand what is being reported internationally, what the risk is, what the risk to the UK in particular is, and whether we need to take actions. It is something like 13,000 notifications per year on average that we look at through those sorts of systems as well. All of that is going on while we are still dealing with the outbreaks that have not ceased to plague us.

We are going to move on to the smuggling of products of animal origin.

Baroness Hayman, you said at the beginning that you want to tighten up on personal imports. I was coming back from an EU country on Easter Monday, at the end of April, but not a single announcement was made, nor could I see any signs, of the ban that was being introduced. Indeed, the tweet that went out on X, which was announcing the ban on all EU products, was subsequently quite quickly deleted and does not exist anymore. I am just really worried, because, when I then followed up and asked the Minister a question about what you are doing at ports and airports, the response that I got, which took nearly 10 days, was just that the Government are engaging with airports, ports and travel operators. What does that mean in practice?

Since then, we have done an awful lot of work to try to raise awareness of this, because there is absolutely no point in banning something if people do not realise that it is banned. We are working with ports, airports and Eurotunnel. I have recently written a letter about this to raise awareness. Beyond that, we are currently about to start a major communications campaign in order to raise awareness. We are looking to work with Border Force. I have had a meeting with the Home Office Minister to discuss how Border Force can support us by having information at their points as well. While we do not own the land that an airport is on, Border Force has its own land, so it can put signage up there. We are working very closely right across the board in order to make sure that people know what they can and cannot do.

When will that come into place? Time is of the essence.

Some of it has already started, and we are going to be pushing very hard very soon.

It would be quite an easy step for the airports to take to make an announcement. If you look at the Australian modelling as well, you cannot even enter. You have the checklist, and it is very clear. I would have expected that, on the flight that I got, there was an announcement saying, “Do check. You cannot bring this in”. Surely, that is something very quick that does not need too much action.

I would hope so.

It does not seem that we are going to get too many more answers here, but, if there is anything else, that is the concern.

All I can say is that we are working very closely with all entries to encourage the airports, Eurotunnel and the ports to be extremely proactive in promoting the work that we are doing in trying to stop personal imports coming in of those products that we do not want to see.

Why did the Government take down their own tweet about it? I then thought, “Hold on a minute. Have they reversed the policy?” I could not find anything more.

I do not know. I came off Twitter some time ago.

That is the only source that I have heard. It may be sensible to come off Twitter, but that would be the big plug.

I am very happy to keep you up to date with the communications. We were looking only last week at how we can do quite a lot more in this area, because it is important. I am more than happy to keep you up to date with the work that we are doing on comms.

Again, does this perhaps point to a deficiency within the Department? Something is important enough to ban it, but not important enough to put up posters and to put out leaflets. Other people noticed this. “Farming Today”, which is compulsory listening for anybody who follows the EFRA Committee, broadcast about it on 26 April. The British Veterinary Association, the National Farmers’ Union and NFU Scotland all highlighted concerns around this. As Sarah says, we do not have to reinvent the wheel here. There are other island nations that do it well.

Yes, absolutely. As I say, I am pushing very hard to substantially increase the communications, and I have been working very closely with a number of different groups in order to be able to do so. Hopefully, next time you come in, you will have all that information at your fingertips. I am travelling out of the country next week, so I will be personally taking a look to see what happens.

Perhaps you can report back to us and tell us if you see it.

New Zealand is as well. I am looking.

If you would like to do that, I would be very grateful.

The first thing that I would say is that there has been a lot of focus on the fact that illegal meat imports have increased. This is nothing new, but what we have done is we have changed the system of checking. We do a lot more checks now than we used to, which makes me wonder how much was getting through before that we were not picking up. It is partly because we are picking up more illegal meat at the border than we used to. We need to send out the message that it is absolutely and utterly against the law to do this. Some illegal meat comes in because people do not realise, which comes back to the comms problem. We also need to look very much at the countries where it is coming in from. We have always done rest-of-world checks, but, while we were in the EU, we did not do checks on EU meat coming in. Now, of course, we are doing that and have cracked down on it. The British Pig Association asked us to ban all imports, which we have now done; we had started off by banning just those that did not conform to EU standards. We are trying to listen to the industry to improve things. Again, I am working very closely with the Home Office Minister. I have been talking to her about Border Force—because it is Border Force that checks and picks up the illegal meat imports—to stress the important role that Border Force is playing here, and that this has to remain a priority. It must not drop down the priority list, because of the huge impact to our farmers and the economy if one of these diseases came through.

That is one of the things that we are working with Border Force on. DEFRA cannot do that. As I say, we are working with Border Force to improve the situation. One of the things that Border Force can do is impound and crush or get rid of the vans, because one of the frustrations is that you see the same vans coming back over and over again. The way to manage that is to take the van off them to try to hurt people at source, if you like. Also, we have been looking at whether there is more that we can do at source in the countries where you have the illegal meat coming in. It is about looking not just at what is arriving but how you can work to reduce the amount arriving in the first place.

Yes, absolutely. Some of it is people just bringing it in for their personal use. That is where the communications come in that this is no longer allowed. Some of it is clearly just bringing in meat in order to make money out of it. The way to manage that is to treat the people bringing it in much more harshly, as criminals. We have probably not done that enough, which is why we are looking to see if we can do something with the vans. Gareth, do you have any information about where it is going to?

Just as a small point, the Food Standards Agency has a food crime unit. We are making that join-up as well to try to see if there is intelligence on any demand this side of the border. As the Minister said, it is a complex mix of people bringing things over that they should not, for a variety of reasons, and they probably all need a slightly different set of interventions. We are trying to capture them all.

As I say, we have been working with the Home Office on this and will continue to do so.

It was also noticeable that some of the imports there had come over the EU border in the first place, which goes to show that it is an international problem as well. Of course, we have been having dialogue with the EU about its own internal controls.

Van-crushing would be eye-catching. Is it necessarily the best way of intercepting meat?

It is part of a suite of methods. You have two things. First, you need to capture it when it comes here. Secondly, you need to look at how you stop it coming here in such large numbers.

Yes, exactly. If somebody who is importing meat in a van is found, details are taken, presumably, and they come back the next week with the same van. Surely, intelligence will tell you that that is a van to target. If you have crushed his van, I suspect that it is not beyond the wit of most smugglers to go and find another one. While it is very eye-catching, is it necessarily going to be that helpful?

It is about bringing in deterrence, is it not? You need to look at a number of ways that you can deter people from doing so.

Some of the vans we saw at Dover port were not that far from being crushed in any event, I suspect.

One of the things that I have noticed when I have been to visit the ports is that some of the vans are illegal anyway, so you have other criminal behaviour going on.

Yes, indeed. Your evidence about more checks being an effective way of finding more meat products is something that we will want to explore in relation to the budget arrangements from Dover Port Health Authority, but I am going to ask Charlie Dewhirst to lead the questioning on that and other personal import checks.

We have talked specifically about Dover. My first question is in relation to the funding of the port health authority. Why did that funding settlement come so late in the day and not allow Dover to prepare ahead of the new financial year?

As you know, we offered Dover a certain funding settlement. When I came in as Minister, there were already discussions going on around that funding settlement, so we were working hard to get an agreement with Dover at that time. Previous to me being the Minister, I do not know what the situation was, but certainly, when I came in, I sat down with the team and we looked at how we could get an agreement with Dover, because the work that it does in tackling illegal meat entering the country is clearly very important. We then signed off the payment that they have been waiting for, and we have now offered them £3.1 million going forward.

Would you accept that, going forward, that is not really the best way to operate, working with them in partnership? That money is paying for human resource to stop things at the border. If they do not have that guarantee of funding in the future, they do not know how many staff they can employ, et cetera, and what their capability will be.

I met with Dover. They came in to discuss their concerns and the issues around funding. Clearly, we need to get to a situation where we have better communications and understanding between us. One of the things that we have tried to do is to pin Dover Port Health Authority down on what we need to be resourcing as well. We need to ensure that what we are paying them for is what we need to be focused on—picking up the illegal meat, for example. We have been working through all of that and, a couple of times, we have asked them to refocus the budget.

The £3.1 million for the coming financial year offers them 20% operational coverage. Is 20% sufficient?

We would suggest that, if the budget was purposed in the way that we are proposing, it would be more than 20%.

Going forward, were there to be an incursion of a major notifiable disease—and fingers crossed that there is not—one would suggest that, looking back, having offered Dover only 20% of operational coverage, were that disease incursion to come via that port, it would look poorly on authorities at any future public inquiry. Would you accept that?

As I say, we are working with Dover Port Health Authority on how to move forward on funding. We are currently looking at what the focus of that funding should be, because we believe that some of the areas that Dover has proposed come out of that money are not necessary—for example, veterinary fees.

Would you perhaps be willing to shed some light on why that communication broke down between Dover Port Health Authority and DEFRA?

I do not know. It was before I was the Minister. When I came in, the communications had already broken down, and I have done my best to talk to Dover Port Health Authority to try to rebuild some of those relationships.

In terms of the importance of Dover and the threat that we know of from illegal meat imports, the fact is that, as we have just discussed, these are often not personal imports in the sense that someone has accidentally brought a sausage into the country, but are organised crime operations. I know that we are going come on to some of the wider strategy of smuggling shortly, but it is really important that we get a grip on this. This is not a reflection on the situation that has been created right now. This is a long-running problem. Our biosecurity at Dover and other ports is not sufficient. Were there to be a major notifiable disease outbreak, I fear that there would be serious repercussions afterwards, because I do not think that the borders are secure.

As I say, we are working very closely with Dover in order to resolve exactly the kinds of issues that you are talking about.

You said that you thought that, if purposed as the Department thinks it should be, you could achieve more than 20% examinations. You then said that you would not include payment for veterinary inspections from that budget.

No, not for meat.

So you think that there should not be veterinary involvement in meat inspections, or that somebody else should pay for it.

What we are trying to do is focus on tackling the import of illegal meat, and Dover working with Border Force to pick that illegal meat up. Our assessment is that you do not need a vet to check a piece of meat. If it is illegal, it is illegal.

Where is your evidence base for this?

If it is illegal, it is illegal.

What sort of saving would that make? What percentage would we get to?

Off the top of my head, I cannot tell you. I can get back to you with those sorts of figures.

I just wanted to touch on the conditions that staff are having to work under in Dover. When we went to visit, we saw for ourselves how, when conducting inspections, many of the Border Force and port health authority inspectors were working under rusty canopies that had nesting pigeons, and no walls. In other places, where they were able to bring the vans indoors, there was really limited space. They are not able to wash anything down if they are dealing with a huge biohazard from meat that has swine fever, for example, going back to the threats that we were talking about. They have no ability to make that biosecure. They had no PPE other than gloves. Contrast that with Sevington. When we visited the BCP there, they had temperature-controlled rooms. They were able to properly wash down. They had full PPE. They were clearly well funded, to the point where, when we walked out, they were giving us branded merchandise from Ashford Port Health. Dover does not have the basic level of equipment. Is that acceptable, given that Dover is, essentially, the frontline of our nation’s border?

I am looking to go down to Dover, so I can look at these things for myself. I have been to Sevington, and I am looking to arrange a visit to Dover, to go to both the APHA site and also the port, because it is important that I am able to assess these things for myself. I have not had any complaints of the sort that you are talking about. Having heard what you said, I need to go down and have a look for myself. The ports are private businesses; it is important to point that out.

Just a few miles up the road, you have the Bastion Point BCP, which has been constructed but never commissioned, at great cost to the taxpayer. That would enable a far greater number of checks to be done in conditions that are much more appropriate and safer for staff. That is still sitting there and we are still waiting for a decision on whether that is going to be mothballed again, at great expense, and handed back to the landlord, or whether it is going to be used. Can you shed any light on discussions?

If Bastion Point was being used, it would be used for the work that they do at Sevington.

It could be used. For example, if somebody was pulled over on suspicion of having a load of illegal meat, they could be directed up to Bastion Point, which would reopen the lanes at Dover. The problem that they have at the moment is that they have to shut the lanes at Dover, which reduces their capacity. It means that that 20% goes out the window, because all of the staff are then working on the vans that are being pulled over. It holds up traffic coming through as well, which causes massive delays and has an economic impact. Bastion Point would give extra capacity.

The traffic that would go to Bastion Point, if it was open, now goes to Sevington, so I do not quite understand the point that you are trying to make. Sevington is open and working. You have to leave the port to go to Sevington, in the same way as you would have to leave the port to go to Bastion Point.

These vans are being pulled over with illegal meat, although it is not just illegal meat. We saw bootleg alcohol and personal possessions in another van. They are being dealt with at Dover and then being asked to make a voluntary surrender. As we said, they are then allowed to go scot-free. The staff are working under such horrendous conditions, and it is holding up traffic. That is the reality on the ground, even with Sevington open. The Sevington that we saw was pretty much empty, so there is clearly something in the system that is not working as intended.

In that case, what you are talking about is a system issue rather than opening Bastion Point instead of Sevington. You would not have them both open.

Yes, possibly, but, if you asked the port health authority in Dover, they would say that it would make a huge difference to their operations if Bastion Point, which was commissioned at a cost of £20 million, was open.

Bastion Point would only be open to do what Sevington is doing.

Could it not be opened to do what is being done in open lines with the poor facilities that Josh and others have described here?

I do not know. Do you want to come in, Spencer? You know more about this than me.

There are a couple of points that we need to work through and understand. One, which you touched on, Mr Newbury, is around the logistics. How would you get the vehicle from the port to Bastion, which is five miles away?

It would be escorted.

It would have to have some sort of escort.

It would be escorted, but we would have to work out how that would happen. The second is around how we would fund the facility. It would be a different funding arrangement that would be in place than that for Sevington, where we have legal trade paying through the common user charge. That would not be the case, so how would we fund the provision?

Given the cost of this going wrong, is there a cost-benefit analysis to be done here?

There is an assumption here that opening Bastion Point would solve a lot of those issues, but my understanding is that Sevington has all the capacity.

Sevington has the capacity for commercial imports. We are talking here about personal imports and the circumstances in which they are examined.

If you are talking about Dover Port Health Authority escorting to Bastion Point five miles away, and yet you are talking about staff pressures at Dover, this would need to be looked at extremely carefully. You are talking about something that is going to take a lot of time and expense, and cause delays. It is not as simple as it sounds.

Things in life never are. Your visit to Dover port, though, would be enormously welcome.

I am very keen to go.

It would be welcomed not just by the Committee, but probably by the Dover Port Health Authority itself. It is fair to say that the Committee was not particularly impressed by the state of relations between DEFRA and the Dover Port Health Authority. Gareth has the distinction of having accompanied the Committee on the visit, and was the first DEFRA official to go to Dover Port Health Authority for I cannot remember how long, but it was quite some time. Dover Port Health Authority has been in correspondence with you about this and the issues around broken freezers and the like, so we would encourage you to make that visit.

It is in the pipeline. We are trying to organise it so that I do not go just to the port health authority, but also to the APHA site, which is why it is just taking time logistically to come together. I have committed to go and I will be going.

I am delighted to hear that, because we are dealing with public bodies here, and it makes no sense for anyone, let alone for the issue of biosecurity at the borders, for relations to be as poor as they are.

I do not see any benefit in having poor relationships with people who I am supposed to be working with. I am always extremely keen, where relationships have broken down, to do my best to repair them. I have every intention of making a visit there and understanding more.

That is very welcome. Thank you for that. Jenny, you are going to lead the questioning on the strategy for POAO smuggling.

Before I do, I am going to carry on a bit of a theme that we have established there. I represent Suffolk Coastal, and the port of Felixstowe is in my constituency. The port of Felixstowe and the port users have sought to engage with DEFRA for quite a while now, predating April last year. They fed back to DEFRA that the port of Felixstowe intercepts goods that would not be allowed elsewhere. There has been an FOI request around the level of interceptions that they have had. They believe, from their data, that their level of interceptions and checks is far higher than that at the port of Dover. I understand that there has not been a response back from DEFRA. That may be because you cannot comment, for a number of reasons. It may be because of the commercial impact that this could have. Can you acknowledge the impact that this does have for not just the port of Felixstowe, but for commercial users of the port of Felixstowe, when there are inconsistencies in checks at the port?

Do you mean between the checks that they are carrying out at Felixstowe compared with those at Dover?

We know anecdotally that there are inconsistencies in national policies being applied locally, with more checks being carried out at the port of Felixstowe than elsewhere. That has a huge impact for port users and for the port of Felixstowe. Do you acknowledge the challenges that that creates?

There are always challenges, of course. One thing is that every port health authority is independent, so how they manage their business is up to them. I have had meetings with representatives from port health authorities around the country, because it is important for me to understand the different challenges that each port faces. Dover, with the short straits, is very busy. Felixstowe will be very busy. Others are not. I am due to visit the port here in London as well. I am more than happy to discuss the challenges that they are facing. If they have suggestions on how we can support and help, I am very happy to do so. I would be very happy to have a visit there as well, if that is helpful.

They would bite your hand off for that.

If they want to get in touch, I would be very happy to look at doing that. One thing that I would just like to say is that this is a really complex area of Government and of policy. I have been working extremely hard since I became the Minister, because I am taking this very seriously, to understand those complexities and challenges. I am always very open to talking to and meeting people, and going on visits, so that I can better understand those complexities, because it is not straightforward at all.

I understand that. I will move on in a moment, but I just want to reiterate two small points. The inconsistencies in how national policies are implemented can have a commercial impact on how different ports are able to react, and can disadvantage some ports over others.

If they would like to get in touch with the detail and the information, I would be very happy to have a look at that.

That is perfect. I will correspond with them on that. Historically, predating April last year and from when these checks started to happen, it is also about the lack of communications between DEFRA and port users and port authorities.

I am happy to take that away.

Moving on to strategy and looking at the future and how we manage some of the challenges that we have discussed here, as well as some wider ones, there are so many Departments, agencies and authorities involved in it. Who is providing the strategic oversight and leadership to drive forward some of the improvements that are necessary?

What improvements do you mean?

I mean in terms of some of the broader issues that we have touched on today. There are clearly some better workings that are needed. This is a cross-cutting issue. There are many issues around broader aspects of biosecurity. Who is convening and leading on the multi-agency approach?

We have regular meetings with the teams at a ministerial level. It depends on what you are talking about. I meet regularly with the devolved Governments, for example, because there are issues that face them. We have APHA, which does an enormous amount of work in this area. We have a really good team that works on borders. You have senior civil servants, Ministers and the devolved Governments really all working together on this to make sure that we are making the right kinds of decisions, because different decisions have different impacts and have to be led by different sections of the Department. I do not know if Gareth wants to put any more to that.

That is right. There have been some changes in the way that Government organise themselves in this space. For example, until relatively recently, there was a team within the Cabinet Office that gave oversight to all borders issues. You are also talking about HMRC presence at the border, as well as Border Force and so on. The reality is that, in each case, there are different circumstances that we work through. Through the operations in Sevington, for example, there has been a fantastic set of benefits from that being a multi-agency site. It means that everyone can pull together and work around computers and things when they go wrong, and all of that sort of thing. That is not fully replicated in the way that we make policy, but we do try to link to the new border command that has been set up within the Home Office. There is official-led governance that goes alongside that, and we are making sure that biosecurity is fed into that. We would see ourselves as the strategic brain, if you like, for biosecurity, but the reality is that, as the Minister said, it is a complex system, both internationally and domestically, that we then have to work with. What we try to do is make sure that we are taking the right evidence to the right meetings at the right time to have that kind of influence.

We also have a one health approach now, which means that I meet regularly with representatives from the Department for Business and Trade, from Health and from other Departments, because this needs to be worked across Departments. It is not just around the work that DEFRA is carrying out.

Helen Buckingham, a chartered environmental health practitioner, told the Committee that national policymakers have “an extreme lack of understanding about enforcement delivery on the frontline”. Given that insight, what mechanisms do you have to engage with teams on the frontline? How does this inform your own policymaking at the moment?

We work with the people who are on the frontline from our own teams within DEFRA. As I said, I recently had a meeting with Seema Malhotra, the Minister in the Home Office who is responsible for Border Force, to discuss how we can work better together, having taken feedback from the people who are working on the frontline. It is important to listen to people and to see how you can improve things. I meet regularly with her and others from, say, the Department for Business and Trade, to see how we can improve things, because you can always improve situations.

When you are having those meetings, is one of the items that you discuss specifically on driving collaboration and improvement?

Yes.

Border Force has told us that DEFRA is responsible for intelligence on meat smuggling. How do you build into the intelligence picture? What are the limitations as you see them?

Do you mean working with Border Force?

More generally in terms of building the intelligence picture for meat smuggling.

As I say, we work with Border Force, but there is other intelligence that goes on. People can get very fixated on digital systems, but what is really important is that people talk to each other and share information, which we encourage enormously. As far as intelligence sharing goes, I cannot say everything, because it is intelligence. Internally, within DEFRA, the Home Office and other Departments, we work very hard to share intelligence together, as well as with the devolved Governments and the EU, and further afield, because this is a global issue, as we have already mentioned. Coming back to foot and mouth, after the discovery of the case in Germany, the farming Minister Daniel Zeichner had a meeting with the German Minister. When we had the further cases in Hungary, I joined him in a meeting with the Hungarian Minister, so we do work quite hard to share information and intelligence internationally as well.

Minister, it is good to see you. There is a big role for inland local authorities. We know about the pressure that local authorities have been operating under financially, et cetera. They have a crucial role in terms of public health and biosecurity. What is your assessment of the demand on them at the moment in the process of supporting the work that you are doing? How are you measuring their performance?

Again, there is always a lot of demand on local authorities. They have been under a lot of pressure in recent years with budget cuts, for example. It is important, as I said in terms of working with the devolved Administrations, to work at a local authority level. However you cut it, it is often local authorities that are delivering on the ground. When you come back to intelligence sharing, it is very important to hear what local authorities are saying. DEFRA works closely with the port authorities and the local authorities to ensure that we have proper joined-up thinking in that area.

I might turn to intelligence and sharing with local authorities in a moment, but are you seeing any trends in particular with inland seizures?

I am not aware of any particular trends.

We have talked about the importance of intelligence sharing. At the moment, local authorities do not have real-time access to IPAFFS, do they?

Port health authorities will have access.

But inland authorities do not at the moment.

No, not currently.

Is that something that you might look at as a Department?

It is something that we can look at. There is a whole host of things that we have to look at in terms of a digital road map, but it is something that we can certainly take away to look at.

Are inland local authorities getting the same access to intelligence that the port health authorities are getting?

I would not know the answer.

It depends on what it is.

The NFU made the point before Christmas that the publication of data is really important in this space to build confidence and understanding of what is being seized, where and in what numbers, so that people can build a picture.

I saw that, and we are looking at whether we can publish more data in good time. We need to do an assessment as to what the data is. Some date is commercially sensitive, for example, so we just have to judge it on its own merits, but I do appreciate that, on certain occasions, we could publish more data.

Is an assessment of what local authorities need in terms of intelligence something that you are working on as a Department?

Yes.

The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health raised a flag with us about the significant shortages of environmental health and trading standards professionals. I wondered what plans the Department had to help local authorities with that, because there seem to be some quite significant shortages.

Yes, this is something that has been the case for some time. When I was a county councillor, going back too many years, we had shortages in those sorts of areas back then. Ultimately, this is for local authorities. We cannot tell local authorities what staff to employ and how to manage their departments, but clearly we would be very happy to work with them constructively to see how we can help support them, because it is an important part of the picture.

That might be a rich vein of work to work with the LGA on. In one of our stakeholder surveys for this inquiry, the FSA used quite strong language. It said, “A lack of new entrants in the pipeline and declining options for education and training are threatening the future security of our food system”. It is a real issue, and it has been building up for some time, as you say.

It is quite interesting, because we obviously have a Minister for Skills now. I know that the Minister for Skills is focusing on different areas where we have shortages that could impact on some of the policies that we need to be delivering and some of the actions we need to be taking. She is specifically looking at things like that.

Baroness Hayman, when you came into office and you looked at the border target operating model, particularly the design and the way it was being implemented, did you identify any issues with that? If so, what were they?

The first thing to say about the BTOM is that it was being phased in. The first thing I had to do was to understand the phasing in and why it was being phased in. Clearly, one of the things that was challenging was working with different groups that were impacted by the implementation of the BTOM, whether you are talking about logistics, supermarkets or producers. Very early on, I had roundtables with all the different groups, so I could understand their specific concerns about the way things were being implemented, which could inform us as we continue to phase in what was going to be most effective, and where we needed to perhaps do some further work. Of course, one of the interesting things about that is that some people thought something was working very well and another group did not think it was working very well. There is always a challenge in finding the best way to move forward. Clearly, there are some challenges. We have delayed some of the new measures that are coming in. That is in order to ensure that trade is properly ready and prepared. We did have some concerns raised by trade. It does need to work effectively for them. They need to be able to manage the costs of getting ready for new systems. There are some ways where it is clearly working better. We have talked about the increased amount of illegal meat that is being picked up, because we are doing more checks, but at the same time it has to be brought in in a way that works well for business and trade.

Yes, absolutely. In particular, a lot of businesses feel that it is quite overbearing; they feel like the amount of time and effort that is required for them to be compliant is very high, but at the same time, they worry that bad actors who are looking to get around the rules can do that quite easily. That is the theme we have.

Of course, one of the things about the BTOM is that we have tried to do it on an evidence-based, risk-based assessment, so that the products that are highest risk are the ones that get checked the most. Again, that seems a sensible way to go forward.

Yes. We understand that the team within DEFRA that was responsible for delivering BTOM has been disbanded. Obviously, you cannot keep groups like that going forever and ever, but does that mean that DEFRA considers the implementation of the BTOM to be complete now?

No. What has happened is that people have been moved to work into other areas that are also involved with borders and trade. It is not as if it has just disappeared; it is just that as the bulk of it has now been brought into place, staff are better resourced and focused in other areas that are still supporting what we are doing, but not just as a separate team.

That is fair enough. You touched on some aspects, such as implementation being delayed because trade will not be ready and you want to make sure that it has its full effect. The National Audit Office and some traders have stressed the importance of the single trade window to realising the benefits of BTOM. Is that one of the measures that you have paused because you do not think that industry is fully ready? Do you know when that is going to be brought forward?

No, we have paused it. Of course, it is something that industry have discussed with us, but we took the decision to pause it because we want to make sure that it is working effectively and in the best way. We are currently assessing that. I cannot really say any more than that. It is paused and we are assessing it. We work very closely with industry to ensure that what we are going to be doing will be fit for purpose.

Have you made an assessment of the risks of not implementing that?

Yes, of course. The risk assessment takes it all into account.

Very briefly, just to follow on from what Jenny was saying about the differing levels of checks at different ports, have you made an assessment of the risk that might be posed by delaying the implementation of controls at west coast ports?

We are working very closely with the devolved Governments on the west coast ports. When I came in, I wanted to find a solution to that. Again, it is actually quite complicated, because of the situation with Northern Ireland. I have been meeting regularly with the Minister from the Welsh Government and the Scottish Government. I also now go regularly to Belfast as well, to meet with the Minister there. We had a specific away day to look at what is going to be the most effective way of managing this, because, again, you want to bring in the right level of checks for business and trade while at the same time protecting the biosecurity risk from the west coast. We have a meeting with the devolved Governments this month where we are hopefully going to make a final decision on that. There have been various suggestions put forward, which we have been getting the final assessments done on.

The FSA report into the BTOM in March stated, “The number of checks completed and issues identified under the BTOM cannot be accurately reported due to limitations in data availability and quality”. Conversely to that, we have had answers to parliamentary questions and the Minister himself has stated that data is not being released for operational security reasons, i.e. not letting potential smugglers know what is going on. Does DEFRA know the number of checks that have taken place in the BTOM, or is DEFRA keeping that information to itself for security reasons?

Clearly, we do keep a certain amount of data. Are you talking about every single check?

Yes, I am talking about data related to the BTOM and the monitoring of the BTOM.

I do not have the details here in front of me. I do not know if you have it with you, Spencer.

APHA regularly receives data from the system, and that is across plants and products of animal origin. That data includes things such as the number of notifications, number of documentary checks and number of physical checks. With Sevington being a Government-run facility, we would also have that data for the facility in Kent.

You would refute the FSA’s claim that there are gaps in the data?

No, I am certainly not saying that at all. There are a couple of things on data. It is a relatively new system. It is a very complex system, as the Minister has highlighted, with a number of digital systems, with a number of different datasets. There is work that needs to be done in terms of data quality. That is a real focus and priority for us. If I can just touch on the four areas that we need to focus on, one is around user capability, so making sure that the right data that is put on the system, both by trade and also through port health. Also, we then need to look at how we improve systems such as IPAFFS, to ensure that we are capturing the right level of data. We have a whole host of continuous improvement planned on our road map to do that. There are some bigger technical innovations that we are looking at, which are around how we link the systems up, particularly between local and central, so that we can improve the data flow. Again, we are looking to improve that data situation that we face at the moment.

It is also worth pointing out that I fairly recently had a meeting with the FSA to discuss these issues as well, and to look at how we can move forward.

Is it therefore DEFRA’s intention in the future, once you have ironed out these issues around data, to produce public performance data? It is not going to risk any security issues in relation to checks, but to give us and the public confidence that the BTOM is working, and that the risk-based percentages are being delivered.

As I said before, we will happily look at what data we can publish going forward, once we are confident that we are not going to be breaking any commercial confidentialities, or causing any issues or anything. We absolutely have to look at that.

My questions lead very well on from those questions, which are around trading fresh produce. I wonder whether you could just confirm what the situation is with the easement of import checks on medium-risk fruit and vegetables, which expires on 1 July. The sector and trade told us that they did not feel they had clarity on this issue.

Yes, we have paused it coming in. It was due to come in in January. We have paused it on those imports until July. We paused it because of concerns about industry not being ready for the new checks. We are expecting for them to come in in July now. We are continuing to work with industry to ensure that they are ready to be compliant with the new checks when they start.

We are going ahead in July.

At the moment, that is what our intentions are.

We had very strong representations from the Fresh Produce Consortium and others. They said that they did not feel that they had enough notice to prepare for the new checks, and they were concerned that a lot of the trade, particularly European trade, is between small businesses that have not been involved in border processes before. They are quite worried that not only is there not enough notice, but that the people involved are not prepared.

This is why we delayed it by six months.

Is your view that business and trade is ready for the implementation of these checks?

As I say, we are continuing to work with them to answer any questions, because obviously it is important that, when we bring in new rules, business and trade are going to be compliant.

There has obviously been a lot of talk of a self‑regulation model in this area as well. Is this something that potentially the Department might consider, so an alternative approach for fresh produce, such as an authorised operator status and the use of control points?

We need to look at why we are bringing in the different kinds of controls that we are. What we are doing at the moment is looking at medium risk, not low risk. For low risk, we can look at different ways of managing imports, but we felt it was important that we should increase checks for medium risk, which is why we are looking to bring it in in July.

We have taken most fruit and vegetables out of regulation altogether, on a risk basis. There has been a lot of deregulation in that area. As you say, there is then the medium risk that breaks into two categories. That is what has been subject to an easement. There are biosecurity risks in relation to that trade, and it is important.

How much trade will be affected come 1 July? Do you know? We have an overall figure of 3.5 million tonnes of fresh produce from Europe, but I presume most of that falls into the low-risk category, like you say.

I am not going to get this exactly right, but the main commodities covered are tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and cucumbers. They are ones we import a lot of, but it is a small number of commodities. The plan is under active consideration in terms of exactly how we set out the implementation, but, as you have seen throughout the BTOM implementation, there is a balance to be struck between introducing it and how you operate that in practice to keep the trade flowing. I remember a few years ago the EU updated its system. It had the opposite problem to us, which was that it had a system in place and it was updating it, and it kept postponing the new system because it could do that, because it had a system. In this case, until we switch something on, we do not have anything. We always run this risk that you switch it on and something happens. We do not have the luxury of just not switching it on yet, because that just prolongs a gap. In everything we have done through the BTOM—I am not very close to the implementation; that is why Spencer has answered all those questions so well—there is something around turning it on, preparing people, trying to get a landing zone, but then being very proportionate and pragmatic in the way that the immediate implementation steps are taken, so that you can get to a level of compliance, but also confidence from traders using the system in a pain-free way.

I agree with the confidence point. Is trade right, though, when they have told us that border control posts are already at capacity, and that they are worried about BCPs meeting the additional demand that will now be created post July?

I am not close enough to know exactly how that is being modelled, but I know that the work is under way. All of the steps that are due to come in are ones that can be effectively resourced within the system.

We have worked quite a lot on resourcing, because obviously you need things to be properly resourced if it is going to be effective.

Can I suggest that there is more work to be done with the sector? As we heard on 25 March, which is not that long ago, being here on 6 May, they did not feel confidence in knowing what they had to do, and as to what will happen and when. That is something the Department could look at quite urgently, with this deadline approaching us.

I just really wanted to make a push on that, because it is actually very unnerving that, eight weeks out, we do not know for definite. Everything you have said is, “We think”, or, “We believe”. You either have to make a decision now or postpone it again. You have had long enough. You have postponed it since January; it is now July. It is fast-approaching. When is the definitive answer going to be made, because they need certainty?

In January we said we were postponing it until July, so they should be working on the basis that it is happening in July.

They have said that they have had no communication, and July is only eight weeks away. Are you going to postpone it again or not? It is fair to say that now you should know, and they deserve to have that certainty.

There is a need for a collective agreement on that decision across Government of some kind, because of wider circumstances. There are other interests outside DEFRA, and those are being actively worked through. The legal position is that the easement has not been extended and will end.

We have had a hint at European negotiations. Is that what “wider circumstances” mean?

All of the arrangements that we are talking about are about EU trade, so of course they are relevant to discussions around the EU-UK.

You have the EU meetings on 19 May, then there will be further discussions. What is happening?

Sorry, I am not trying to say it is all tied up in that way, but we are actively working through it. That is the reason why DEFRA has not come out to say, “This is what is happening”.

What is the feeling amongst the other Departments? You must have a feel or a steer at this moment in time as to whether it is likely or not. I know you may not want to commit outright.

Can you say that again? Sorry, I did not catch that.

It was in terms of the indication with the other Departments. It is across Departments, so I am asking what the feeling of other Departments is at the moment? Are they happy that they are ready to start on 1 July?

At the moment we are discussing it with the other Departments. Beyond that, I am unable to provide any more information, because we are actually waiting to hear back.

Again, you are cutting a bit too close and too fine to time for this. We cannot keep saying as an excuse that you are having other discussions. The market needs to know.

The sectors are saying they need this information and this certainty. Surely it is not acceptable that that should be held up until the internal agreements between Government Departments are settled, for something of this consequence.

I will take these concerns back and see what we can do to get in touch with the sector sooner rather than later, because I do appreciate that July is coming up fast.

Presumably you factored all these considerations in when you made a six-month delay in January, so nothing has changed to affect that timetable.

No, not at the moment.

No, notwithstanding what might come on 19 May. Can I take you to some of the commercial trade burdens that we have heard evidence about? It moves on rather naturally from what we have just been talking about. Nigel Jenney from the Fresh Produce Consortium said, “Everybody is desperate to avoid using Sevington because of its costs, delays and inefficiency”. Do you recognise that, and what are you doing to improve it if that is the case?

That is not the impression that I have been given by a lot of people I have been speaking to.

Nigel Jenney did tell us of Sevington, “It may well be covering its costs, but it is just not competitive”. He said that “there is huge inefficiency” at Sevington, and that an importer paying about a common user charge fee of around £14,500 for a 3% inspection level could receive “exactly the same service” for £500 or less from a commercial control point. You can see why they would need some assurance that their fees are being used effectively.

Yes. The common user charge is set to recover costs, because clearly we have to recover costs, and we review it to look at whether or not the costs are being covered and whether or not that needs to be adjusted. Certainly the information I am getting back from the work carried out at Sevington and the efficiency is not matching that assessment.

This comes to the point about stakeholder engagement, and the ability of organisations to make their voices heard and to be listened to within DEFRA. I have to say that we have had some fairly worrying evidence in relation to that, in relation to finding implementation for solutions for BTOM issues. Both the HTA and the FPC said that at the BTOM design phase their solutions were “outright rejected and are continually ignored”. The FPC also said that the common user charge consultation was “on a fundamentally different subject from how the fees are actually applied”. This again paints a picture of a Department that is not really focused on the outcomes for the people that are required to use it. Does that concern you?

If you are talking about the design of the BTOM, that was some time ago.

You have inherited the same officials.

Yes, but, as I have said, one of the first things I did was to have roundtables with the different groups who use the BTOM, some of whom use Sevington, to discuss with them how they felt it had been brought in and how the implementation was going, to listen to different concerns, in order to start looking at what we could do to improve things. You cannot make everybody happy, because some people wanted something to happen and the other group wanted exactly the opposite. We have to work out what we think is the best way to move forward, on the basis that we need to have biosecurity right at the forefront of what we are doing with the BTOM, but at the same time not putting too great a burden on trade. That balance can be quite difficult, which is why it has been important for me to talk to people and listen to people. As I say, you are never going to please everybody.

Here is something that probably could please everyone.

Please give me something that could please everyone.

We have evidence from Logistics UK, which says, “We have been asking for a single liaison contact for industry, where you put in your query, it is fielded to the appropriate authority and you get a comprehensive and timely response back about what consignment has been held, why it has been held and when you can expect it to be released”. That does not sound like rocket science.

That is for a single contact. Do we have a single contact? You also have Border Force as well, so it is slightly complex. I do not know if anyone can help with that.

We would have a single contact for Sevington, but for the other commercial ports it is quite tricky.

Of course, they are commercial ports.

There are a couple of things. One, of course, is that, with the restructure that was referenced earlier, some of these resources have now moved into the Animal and Plant Health Agency, and it has its wider system. It has a centre for international trade. One of the advantages of doing that is that we ought to be able to draw on those systems. I know from my own visits to Sevington that there is a question about, where there has been a consignment held and maybe something has gone for a diagnostic test, people losing sight of where that test was. It has gone off to Fera, which is up in Sand Hutton. There were questions around long it was going to be and what the driver was meant to do. There were some specific actions taken by the team at Sevington. One of the things that I was worried about was the particular amount of trade in young plants, tomatoes and peppers in particular, that comes through Sevington, or would come through Sevington, around December, January and February. I was at Sevington with members of the HTA, the NFU and others. First of all, they were quite impressed by the surroundings, but then they were very keen to understand how those would play out in practice. It was absolutely great to see, in particular, the plant inspectors leaning into that set of challenges from the industry. We had some really fantastic feedback from the responsiveness of the APHA staff to making sure that that trade flowed. I was getting quite a lot of lobbying from contacts in the NFU and elsewhere, all of which dried up, in practice. There were not so many letters of thanks afterwards to the team, though there were some, but certainly lots of concerns were put to bed through that assiduous focus that the people on the ground give. That is not unusual. That is how they have been operating, in particular for rest-of-world trade, for a while. Part of what is going on is a concern because the change is so enormous for people. It has all happened quite quickly. These are new systems, and they are bedding in. That gives rise to its own problems. In practice, there is a lot of investment to try to work through those. That is a good example of where a concern did not come to pass. Separately, of course, there is the policy about control points, which has been put in specifically so that businesses can work through control points if it works better for their model. I know that the process of designating those control points is quite complicated, quite drawn out and has taken time. What should happen over time is that you get more businesses able to make use of all of these things. These are designs within the system. They are not accidental quirks, but they are naturally taking time to work through.

That leads on very nicely to my next question. The Horticultural Trades Association said that BCPs really are not suitable for plant inspections. We have heard lots of stories of trees and other plants being damaged at the point of inspection. As you say, it is looking for expanded use of control points and place of destination checks. What consideration have you given to that?

Clearly we have improved some of the checks for plants. For example, we have increased the height of some of the checking areas, in order that taller trees will not get damaged. Simple things such as that can help support the way that the checks are done. It is important to work with industry to see if there are any practical things that we can do. People do not quite appreciate the enormous number of plant diseases that are out there, some of which could cost our economy enormous amounts of money.

I am pretty sure the HTA appreciates that.

Yes, but I am just thinking more broadly in the general public, which is why it is really important that we do the checks and we do them effectively. Now, we are very happy to work with industry to look and see if there are ways that we can make improve those checks. We do not want to be damaging anybody’s stock, for example, which is why we have increased the height for trees to be inspected. At the same time, we do not want things coming into this country that should not be here. Again, it is getting that balance right.

It is getting that balance right, but, again, it is not all just about broken trees and damaged plants. Sally Cullimore of the Horticultural Trades Association told us, “Previous to BCP operations, there was a lot of direct contact between businesses and inspectors, and a lot of exchange of information”, as you think there would ought to be. “We have lost that connection now … inspections are happening at the BCP behind closed doors”. Given the cost that they are paying and the service that they are getting, we are seeing a familiar pattern emerging here, are we not? There is a poor relationship and communication between the Department and the people that we are there to serve.

I am not aware of how inspections were done previously. I was not aware that all inspections were necessarily done behind closed doors, and that there were concerns about that. Again, on the basis that I am trying to improve communications and relationships that have previously broken down, I am very happy to look at how we can work with the team to improve that. Inspections have to happen, but they need to be happening in the most effective way possible. That needs to be working with industry as well.

Moving on from that, where are you in the evaluation of the authorised operator pilot that you have been running? When might we see the scheme being rolled out?

It was always intended to be a pilot, as you pointed out. What we are currently doing is evaluating how it worked. Part of that evaluation is looking at the benefits to trade, and also value for money. I cannot give you a date when we will have finished doing that evaluation, but it is currently taking place.

Thank you, Baroness, for allowing us to sneak this issue in at the end of the session. The previous Government consulted on fairer food labelling, and the consultation ended a whole year ago tomorrow. What is the Government’s current position on introducing animal welfare labelling?

We have had a meeting fairly recently. I am doing this alongside the farming Minister, Daniel Zeichner, and we have had a roundtable both with industry and with animal welfare organisations to look at options for implementing labelling. It is actually quite a complicated area, because there is an awful lot that you could do and, if you are not careful, you are going to end up with every packet being the size of a newspaper, just to fit all the labelling on. It is important that what we do is effective, but also really clear for consumers. That is a critical point. One thing that has recently worked really well is the labelling on eggs. That has been very effective and, because it has been very easy for consumers to see exactly what they are buying, it has actually changed purchasing behaviour, to the advantage of animal welfare. Any decisions we make about any further labelling has to have that same impact. We are actively looking at that at the moment, with a view to seeing what the most effective way would be to introduce something going forward.

The consultation proposed a five-tier labelling system, which would initially just be for pork, chicken and eggs. That would obviously differentiate between products that fall below, meet or exceed the baseline animal welfare regulations for the UK, so that consumers can make an informed choice and they can see the goods that have been imported from abroad, and perhaps are not held to the same standards that goods produced in the UK are. I know that you have to make sure that it is not overly complicated, as you said, but they have a similar system in Germany and it has worked pretty well.

We are looking at it. Waitrose is doing something interesting at the moment as well, with its colour coding and everything. We are looking at different kinds of labelling that we think have been effective, in order to see what is going to work best.

Obviously it is not just about animal welfare concerns; it is also about making sure that our farmers, who are held to a higher standard than those importing goods, are getting recognised for meeting those standards. Do you think that this would go a long way to making sure that farmers are paid a fair price, in that consumers can see, on the packet, the value of that high-quality food that our farmers are producing?

It is important that consumers know very clearly exactly what it is they are buying. It is not just about new labelling; it is also about existing labelling. One of the things we are also considering is whether existing labelling is actually giving a clear picture to the consumers, because some food that may be labelled as being British has only been packaged here, for example. Again, it is about ensuring that any labelling that comes in is not just clear but is actually properly accurate and gives a fair picture to a consumer who wants to know exactly what it is they are buying. You are absolutely right: it is really important that our farmers are properly protected when looking at imports that may have been produced to lower standards. Labelling can clearly be an effective part of that, as we have seen with eggs.

That is encouraging to hear, but, given that the consultation ended a year ago, what has been the delay to getting to this point?

I would suggest it has been the general election.

Yes, but that was nine months ago.

Yes, but when you get into Government, one of the things I asked for in my Department was a list of all the things that the previous Government had started within my portfolio, to look at what we needed to continue to work on. It was an extremely long list. I am not trying to make excuses in any way; all I am saying is that we are actively working on this. We have held some roundtables to discuss it with industry, and we are going to be doing some follow-ups as well.

I really appreciate that. Finally, do you have any indication on timescales for when we might see something?

I cannot give you any timescales, but I am personally very interested in it.

This current consultation followed one that was almost a year before, which was rejected under Mark Spencer when he was farming Minister. I worked on some of the industry roundtables on that. It was a very rare subject that managed to unite the entire food supply chain, from farmer to retailer, because farmers rightly pointed out that it is not necessarily true that a production system equals a welfare outcome; the processors, as I am sure you have heard, have concerns about complexity and the potential added cost to the food through this welfare labelling; and the retailers think it is confusing, because consumers are not necessarily demanding this. The egg one is an interesting example, because retailers followed consumers, actually, rather than telling consumers what to do. It was something that consumers felt particularly strongly about. In this instance, would it not be better in this instance to look at that country-of-origin issue that continues to come up, and actually allow the retailers to work with their supply chain, to come up with their own labelling system in relation to production systems, should they choose to do that?

As I say, we are actively looking at all the different options at the moment. I am aware of the concerns you have raised. When we met with both industry and animal welfare organisations, they both acknowledged that the labelling of eggs has actually worked very effectively, and there are also other options that are being looked at by other supermarkets. As I said, Waitrose has its particular labelling option. The main thing for me is, first, to give proper information to consumers, because we all want to know what it is that we are purchasing. Secondly, we need to make sure that farmers have that protection for animal welfare, because it is a really important part of what our farmers do. That does not happen in every country. As I say, we are looking at it right across the board.

First of all, on puppy smuggling, we are supporting Dr Danny Chambers’ Bill, which we hope will go through—fingers crossed. It will also help with things like ear cropping, of course, which we have also committed to doing. On the manifesto commitments around banning trophy imports and trail hunting, tightening up the Hunting Act, both of those are in my portfolio. I am currently working with officials on how best to bring in legislation to deliver on those two manifesto commitments. More broadly on the animal testing, David Hanson from the Home Office, Patrick Vallance from DSIT and I are working together to deliver the manifesto commitment on phasing out animal testing. We are currently producing a report that should be released fairly soon on the steps that we intend to take to do that. That will be then for consultation for people to input into. More broadly on animal welfare, we are developing an animal welfare strategy that has four pillars coming down from it: companion animals, non-companion animals, international animals and farmed animals. We have done an enormous amount of work with stakeholders on developing those pillars, with a view to having an animal welfare strategy published later this year. We are also looking at other options for supporting other specific areas where we have said that we were going to take action, such as snares, for example. The legislative timetable is tight, but we are very keen to look at how we can improve animal welfare through different mechanisms, including looking at how different organisations can support and help. You do not necessarily need animal welfare legislation to do everything. It is also looking at what we can do without legislation in order to improve animal welfare outcomes.

They are red lines and no-go areas, as far as I am aware. I have met with the Trade Minister.

That is a very helpful note on which to end. Minister, thank you very much indeed for your engagement. We are particularly pleased, if I can perhaps just reassert this, about the news that you will be going to Dover port. That is something that is of enormous importance. I am sure that the APHA will be keen to ensure that it does not become a block to that. It would be in everyone’s interest, because, as I said right at the outset, this is an enormously important part of Government business, for so many different reasons. It is everything from the mental health of farmers right the way through to the confidence that we have in the integrity of the food that lands on our supermarket shelves, quite apart from the cost implications for the public purse. We thank you for your efforts. We thank you for your attendance here and for the candour of your answers. We shall no doubt be in contact with you again further, but, for the purposes of the day, we have concluded the session.