Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the (a) budget for and (b) number of staff in the Border Force CITES team was in each of the last two years.

Border Force’s indicative budget, for this and future years, is published as part of the Home Office’s publishing of the Annual Report and Accounts. This information can be found at gov.uk. (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-office-annual-report-and-accounts-2016-to-2017 )

The ever-changing and complex challenges Border Force faces means its workforce is becoming increasingly multi-skilled, dynamic and flexible. Border Force has a workforce model clearly setting out roles and skills coupled with a strategic workforce planning process enabling effective identification of resourcing needs, training requirements and the effective deployment of staff. Staff can be deployed to areas of greatest need at short notice.

Border Force uses an intelligence led approach to detecting illegal CITES trade. This is a proportionate and risk based approach taking account of all available intelligence to inform targeting activities and deployments at the frontier.