Animal By-Products, Pet Passport and Animal Health (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023

Delaying this uplift further would only increase the gulf between cost and recovery, and the impact of the changes would be even greater because of the impact of compounding factors such as inflation. APHA has continued to engage with business users and business associations on service performance and service fee schedules following the 2018 consultation, and these businesses are aware of the proposed new fee schedules and have engaged solely on service performance, rather than the fee increases themselves.

This statutory instrument applies to England only. The Scottish and Welsh Governments are following a similar approach, as APHA provides the same services to both Administrations. The Scottish and Welsh Governments have laid their own corresponding legislation. I commend the draft regulations to the House.

This is especially important. However, we have had debates over the years, especially since the advent of Brexit, about the availability of adequately qualified vets to conduct this inspection work. This type of work is not high on British vets’ “must do” lists. It is nevertheless extremely important that these border checks be conducted and carried out thoroughly. Is the Minister confident that sufficient trained vets are available to implement the necessary checks?

I note that, in the instrument itself, there is a category on page 7 headed “Animals not covered by any other category”. Can the Minister say whether this includes Camelids—that is, llamas and alpacas? If not, where are they covered in the instrument?

Lastly, the uplift in fees will be implemented over a two-year period, as the Minister said, with some this year and the rest in 2024. The cost will fall on businesses, charities and voluntary bodies that have not had an uplift since 2019. It is to be hoped that they will be expecting this uplift. Whether they have looked at the fees listed in the APHA section of the Government’s website is another matter; I did not find my search of that website a terribly rewarding exercise. None the less, I am happy to support this SI.

APHA can have statutory services only when the service is provided only by APHA and there is no alternative supplier for the customer. If there is an alternative supplier, the service should be charged as a commercial service. It is government policy that businesses benefiting from a service should pay the full cost of delivering the service rather than looking to the taxpayer to subsidise it.

I was asked why we are charging for some activities and not others. We can charge only for services that have primary legislation and allow fees to be collected. Several statutory services undertaken by APHA have a commercial benefit to their users. Decisions on which primary legislation powers to use and which services to start to charge for are based on several criteria, including the cost-effectiveness of fee recovery, availability of data and the impact on the end-user.

The fees are calculated on a whole range of different categories, including the proportion of payroll costs, non-project costs, notional charges and depreciation. Payroll costs include salary, overtime, national insurance contributions, pensions, bonuses and allowances. Non-project costs include the costs required to support the staff in performing the chargeable work: staff support, consultancy, operating consumables, training, information and communications technology, outsourced vet expenditure—a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, which I will come to—and other overheads. The charge-out rates used for calculating the fees are service delivery only. Therefore, the specific costs relating to the science division work are excluded from the costs apportioned across the staff’s production hours. Our approach is in line with the duty to manage public money by demonstrating a clear timeline to the introduction of full fees. That is an accepted method across government.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked about vets. There is a shortage of vets in APHA. Attempts to solve this matter fill my mind, and I am working with the royal colleges and the new veterinary schools, as well as with the Home Office to make sure that the English language requirements for vets from overseas are being fulfilled. We are doing this through the “one health” agenda, making sure that we are not denying people in other countries the veterinary coverage they need but working with them to try to make it a fair system.

The noble Baroness asked about camelids. The requirement to collect fees for bovine and porcine semen approval is a statutory requirement set out in domestic legislation for those species. The APHA fees and charges team is looking at extending those fees in the workstream 2 new fees phase. The animals being reviewed as part of that workstream include deer, goats and sheep. The animals being reviewed are farmed livestock bred for furs or skins, for entering the food chain or for working the land. Horses and camelids will not be reviewed as part of workstream 2. I hope that answers the key point that the noble Baroness raised.

The noble Baroness, Lady Anderson, asked about the level of engagement. I hope I covered that in my comments on the ongoing work that APHA and Defra are doing with the key groups, making sure that it is not just them and that they are discussing it with their customers, because this undoubtedly will have an impact on them.

As I have outlined, the regulations ensure that UK government policy for full cost recovery for our animal health services is maintained and that the costs of providing these services are met solely by businesses using them. With that, I hope I have covered all the points raised and I commend the draft regulations to the Grand Committee.