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

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that the introduction of import controls on 30 April does not result in significant delays or backlogs at the border.

DEFRA will gradually increase changes in controlled stages to balance biosecurity risk and maintain trade flows whilst minimising disruption at the border.

This will allow the level of goods inspected at the border to be operationally manageable over the introductory stages.

Current check rates applied to rest of world consignments will be maintained, or set to agreed BTOM levels, and will not be impacted by this incremental approach.