Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will publish the (a) number, (b) geographical breakdown of callers and (c) issues of concern relating to calls made to his Department’s Brexit helplines on (i) fishing, (ii) Catch App and (iii) export certificates.
To support industry with the new requirements introduced following the end of the Transition Period, Defra has introduced contact centres to directly support businesses. The two main services managed by the department are Export Health Certificates, led by the Animal Plant and Health Agency (APHA), and Catch Certificates, led by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO).
APHA does not hold a breakdown of calls received relating to queries about seafood exports specifically. The information requested is therefore not available.
For Catch Certificates, a 24/7 helpline has been introduced to support exporters in obtaining a digital catch certificate. There have been 273 calls to this helpline since 1 January 2021 and no geographical location of the caller is recorded. 204 of these calls relate to the categories requested:
179 of the calls received were to assist users in applying for digital catch certificates. The reason for the calls are set out below:
Topic | Volume |
Queries about the Catch Certificate service | 99 |
Catch Certificate system registration or account management issue | 16 |
Queries relating to failed validation checks on the Catch Certificate online system | 15 |
Assisted digital support for the Catch Certificate online system | 8 |
Other Catch Certificate queries | 41 |