Speeches by Smith.

“I disagree. I am afraid I do not agree with that and I do not think Lucy would either. We work in very close collaboration with our colleagues in Dover and around the country to do as much as we can in this space.”

“Yes, to do as much as we can in this space, given the model that I have explained to the Committee with the resources that we have available to do what we can do.”

“The collaboration is not the issue. We work collaboratively with port health authorities—”

“We are always there. It is port health that are not with us as often as they would want to be. My officers are on duty in places like Dover, Harwich and Felixstowe 24/7. We are always on duty. Should we detect products of animal origin that are illegal, we always deal with those products. They are a prohibition. We mus…”

“This is fundamentally a very resource-intensive activity. We are talking about huge quantities of meat that need to be detained, processed, bagged and tagged, and then we have to get rid of it in a safe and secure manner. Of course, more resources of any kind, whether that is Border Force resource or my colleagues from…”

“I cannot comment on whether organised crime is involved in illegal meat importations. That is a question for DEFRA. It owns the intelligence on illegal meat importation, so I cannot comment, I am afraid.”

“Good morning and, again, thank you for the opportunity to come along today and talk to you about the issues at hand. My name is David Smith. I am a regional director with Border Force and I am responsible for the south-east region. The south-east region includes the port of Dover and the inland border facility at Sevin…”

“I am afraid I cannot, no. I cannot comment.”

“It is because it is a matter for DEFRA to answer, I am afraid. I do not have any information that I can share with you.”

“DEFRA shares with us appropriate information through the intelligence-sharing gateway. Whatever it understands about illegal meat importation is shared via that gateway. We then have a Home Office intelligence team that takes data from a range of different organisations and they plough that into our frontline service t…”

“I do not know enough about illegal meat smuggling, because it is not my area of responsibility. We are responsible for detecting it and referring it to other agencies. We are not responsible for the strategy or the intelligence-gathering. It is not part of Home Office’s responsibility to gather intelligence on illegal …”

“No. We do not do any of that end‑to‑end assessment.”

“Data from all of the detections and seizures goes on to our database, which is available for analysis. Yes, there are obvious trends that you see in Dover.”

“The countries that export meat will be the countries that we see vehicles from—those that export meat that have restrictions. Lucy is probably better placed to answer that question specifically, but eastern Europe is one of the source areas for this meat.”

“A long time ago, yes.”

“That is not really a question for me. That is a question that would be appropriate for DEFRA. I do not know what level of intelligence it shares with port health. I know what it shares with Border Force, but I do not know what it shares with port health. All I can say is that our relationship with DEFRA is collaborativ…”

“Border Force works with DEFRA as its strategic partner to apply the controls that are currently in place on personal imports. Border Force is responsible for the frontline interdiction of personal imports. We do that as part of our wider role. There are a whole range of prohibitions and restrictions that we manage at t…”

“We are talking specifically about Dover, but I will cover more generally as well. I recognise everything that Lucy has said. While my colleagues from PHA are not available all the time in Dover, Border Force maintains its levels of checks. In that process, we detect meat that we deal with. There are two ways to deal wi…”

“I cannot answer that question.”

“Let me try to explain. ASF checks were introduced in 2022. We work really closely in Dover together. We found a fairly significant increase in meat importations. That gives an indication, data and more intelligence that then leads to further success. You are actually right that more activity leads to success, but some …”