On Wednesday 15 May, the House of Lords will debate the EU Energy
and Environment Sub-Committee’s report Brexit: plant and
animal biosecurity. The Committee’s report concluded that the
UK’s biosecurity could be at risk if the UK loses access to EU
alerts on animal and plant pest and disease threats.
As geographical proximity means that the EU will always
be a key source of biosecurity risks to the UK, the Committee
stressed the need to maintain swift and effective information
sharing mechanisms, as well as the need to increase veterinary,
inspection and audit capabilities to meet the demand for additional
plant and animal health checks post-Brexit.
Since the Committee published its report, the
Government has stated that in a in a ‘no deal’ scenario they will
allow most imports from the EU to enter the UK without any
additional checks. While this decision removes much of the concern
about capacity to conduct biosecurity checks, it raises questions
about how the Government will safeguard the UK’s
biosecurity. It is therefore likely that during the
debate members will ask the Government:
-
How long they envisage this regime of minimal
checks on EU plant and animal imports to be in place
for
-
What assessment they have made of the biosecurity
risk of such an approach
-
How long they think it will be before the UK has
the resources necessary to check all EU imports with the same
rigour as third country imports
The debate is likely to start at some point
after 7:00pm and is available to watch
on parliamentlive.tv.
For an up to date list of speakers, please
click here
Notes to
Editors
-
The Committee’s report, Brexit: plant and
animal biosecurity was published in October 2018 and
is available to read here.
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For the purpose of the inquiry, “biosecurity” is
defined as preventing and containing the spread of pests,
diseases and pathogens. Animal health, plant health, food
safety and invasive species are within the scope of the
inquiry; human health and bioterrorism are not, as they fall
outside the Sub-Committee’s remit.
