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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many staff in her Department have been tasked with reviewing departmental archival holdings identifying EU regulation that had been identified by previous audits.

Defra has the largest amount of Retained EU Law (REUL) of any Government Department, with 1,696 entries included on the REUL dashboard following its most recent update. Reviewing REUL is a priority for Defra and this requires input from all policy areas. This is a cross-Defra effort led by a central co-ordinating team supported by teams from across the department’s five directorates including the department’s specialist policy leads, analysts and lawyers covering all of Defra's policy areas. In addition to Defra’s internal efforts, external lawyers have now been appointed to support cross-Government on delivery of the REUL programme.