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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason the (a) number of staff and (b) operating expenditure have increased at the Animal Plant Health Agency since April 2017.

The increase in expenditure is mainly due to variable costs for the Animal and Plant Health Agency’s (APHA) response to exotic disease outbreaks, principally avian influenza.

When the UK left the EU, staff and costs increased in APHA to resource additional trade and border responsibilities including the management of Sevington which transferred from Defra to APHA in 2025.

APHA required additional operational resource to support the introduction of the new ‘green lane’ schemes, as part of the Windsor Framework in 2023, to simplify requirements for moving goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.