Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
52nd Report - Resilience to threats from animal disease
Public Accounts Committee
HC 885
Published 5 November 2025
Recommendations
2
Accepted
Produce a veterinary workforce strategy to effectively address APHA's vet vacancies
Recommendation
Not enough is being done to tackle the high level of vet vacancies within APHA, which limits its ability to respond to an outbreak. APHA struggles to recruit and retain sufficient vets. APHA’s vet vacancy rate fluctuates– it was 20% …
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Government Response Summary
The government is establishing a government veterinary services working group to create a workforce strategy and will consult on reforms to the Veterinary Surgeon’s Act. It also provided specific milestones for digital transformation, including a customer contact form by spring 2026 and a customer portal by 2026-27.
HM Treasury
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3
Accepted
Set out a clear plan and milestones for APHA's updated risk-based surveillance processes
Recommendation
APHA’s surveillance activities to detect disease outbreaks early are not sufficiently comprehensive or risk-based. Surveillance work, or ‘eyes and ears on the ground’, is vital to help detect new and re-emerging disease threats quickly and stop their spread. But APHA’s …
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Government Response Summary
APHA is implementing initiatives including an Animal By-Product Risk Matrix Review and a Private Veterinary Laboratory Project (due March 2026) to enhance surveillance. It will set out a clear plan and milestones within six months and, by February 2027, will review all surveillance activities for a targeted, risk-based approach.
HM Treasury
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5
Accepted
Publish a 10-year plan for Weybridge redevelopment, detailing progress, interim risks, and mitigation
Recommendation
The Department has secured vital funding for the National Biosecurity Centre at Weybridge, but must manage significant interim risks until the redevelopment is completed in 10 years. The Weybridge facility is a critical national asset for managing threats from animal …
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Government Response Summary
The department states it has implemented the recommendation by writing to the Committee on 18 September 2025 with the strategic plan for the Weybridge redevelopment, and committed to providing annual updates on its progress.
HM Treasury
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7
Accepted
Strengthen border controls and public education to combat illegal meat imports into the UK
Recommendation
Controls at the border to prevent a new disease arriving in the UK via illegal meat imports are insufficient to the level of risk. Dover Port Health Authority (DPHA) reported a fifty-five-fold increase in the seizures of illegal meat imports …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees, stating it has stepped up communications for travellers regarding import restrictions and is undertaking research to improve estimates of illegal meat imports, with a new methodology details to be published in early 2026. It is actively considering increased funding for Dover Port Health Authority, taking into account disease outbreak costs, but notes Border Force is funded by the Home Office.
HM Treasury
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12
Accepted
Recruitment and retention of government vets significantly challenged by mental health, pay, and conditions.
Recommendation
APHA explained that difficulties in recruiting and retaining government vets are not unique to APHA or the UK. Key factors include: mental health issues relating to activities such as culling animals; pay and conditions; and working hours. APHA set out …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees to the Committee’s recommendation and will manage vet capacity challenges through pay allowances, consider the Home Office's regulatory reform programme, establish a government veterinary services working group, and consult on reform of the Veterinary Surgeon’s Act.
HM Treasury
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13
Accepted
Outdated Veterinary Surgeons Act requires reform to enable broader professional roles.
Recommendation
The Department set out the work it is looking to do, with support from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, to update the Veterinary Surgeons Act which has not been updated for a long time. Reforming the Act could allow …
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Government Response Summary
The department is establishing a government veterinary services working group to create a workforce strategy and will consult on reform of the Veterinary Surgeon’s Act, which will include regulation for Allied Veterinary Professionals and legal protection for the title of Veterinary Nurses.
HM Treasury
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14
Accepted
Disease outbreaks significantly compromise APHA's routine surveillance activities and performance targets.
Recommendation
Surveillance work, or ‘eyes and ears on the ground’, is vital to help detect new and re-emerging disease threats quickly and stop their spread. The Department’s and APHA’s approach to managing disease outbreaks is through a ‘surge capacity’ resourcing model, …
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Government Response Summary
APHA is undertaking risk-based surveillance activities and will have a clear plan with milestones within six months to track delivery of audit recommendations, including an Animal By-Product (ABP) Risk Matrix Review and a Private Veterinary Laboratory Project. By February 2027, APHA will review all surveillance activities to ensure a targeted, risk-based approach.
HM Treasury
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18
Accepted
APHA's outdated paper-based systems and processes cause significant inefficiency and delays.
Recommendation
APHA acknowledged that its systems and processes are outdated and require modernisation. For example, its vets in the field must complete paper-based forms, which are scanned and manually deciphered before being added to a database. APHA also cited the example …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees to the Committee’s recommendation and outlines the Delivering Sustainable Futures (DSF) Programme, which has a £10.9 million funding provision for 2025-26 and approximately the same year on year until 2029-30, totalling £62.8 million over the six years. The programme provides APHA with a clear plan for transforming end-to-end disease and pest management processes and systems with a target implementation date of February 2027.
HM Treasury
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20
Accepted
Critical National Biosecurity Centre at Weybridge is in poor condition, risking UK disease response.
Recommendation
The National Biosecurity Centre at Weybridge is the UK’s primary science laboratory capability for managing threats from animal diseases. It contains 98% of APHA’s high-containment laboratories. The site is in poor condition, with ageing buildings that need major repair and …
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Government Response Summary
The department wrote to the Committee on 18 September 2025 setting out the programme’s strategic plan and will provide the Committee with an annual update on its progress.
HM Treasury
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22
Accepted
Current UK animal tracing systems are fragmented, old, and fragile
Recommendation
Livestock movements in England are significant. For example, there are around 20 million movements of sheep to or from different farms, livestock markets, collection centres, and to abattoirs each year. These movements increase the risk of spreading disease. Being able …
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Government Response Summary
The government will introduce changes to cattle identification, registration and reporting from summer 2026, including mandatory Electronic Identification (EID) for all new-born calves from 2027 and a new cattle movement reporting system. Expansion to cover additional species is planned from 2027 onwards.
HM Treasury
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29
Accepted
Limited animal vaccine availability is a growing global issue due to production capacity
Recommendation
Vaccines play an important role in preventative health and disease control programmes in animals, reducing disease incidence, and maintaining health and welfare. They also reduce the need for antibiotics, helping 36 C&AG’s report, para 4.13 37 Q 51 38 C&AG’s …
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Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the recommendation and VMD will publish a five-year multi-stakeholder action plan to improve vaccine supply by late 2026; Defra will work with VMD as the plan is developed. Defra has worked with manufacturers and industry to expedite emergency use of a Bluetongue 3 vaccine and supported the joint industry-government avian influenza vaccine taskforce. An application for approval of the Cattle BCG vaccine was made in September 2025.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (21)
4
Conclusion
Accepted
APHA has not made fast enough progress with modernising its systems and processes, to allow it to better deploy its resources. Many of APHA’s systems and processes are outdated and inefficient. For example, its vets in the field must complete paper-based forms, which are scanned and manually deciphered before being …
Government Response Summary
The government has allocated £62.8 million for APHA's modernisation programme, which has a clear plan and specific milestones. This includes developing a digital customer contact form by spring 2026, a strategic licensing platform by spring 2026, in-field data capture by summer 2026, and a customer-facing portal by 2026-27.
6
Conclusion
Accepted
The Department’s progress delivering a multi-species livestock tracing system has been extremely slow and may not provide an integrated system for the UK. Tracing animal movements quickly—to understand where disease may have spread—is key in responding effectively to contain an outbreak. Current UK animal tracing is fragmented, with different systems …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees, committing to introduce changes to cattle identification from summer 2026, including mandatory Electronic Identification (EID) for new-born calves from 2027, and expanding coverage to other species from 2027. It also states that the Livestock Information Transformation Programme is working with devolved governments for an aligned approach.
8
Conclusion
Accepted
The Department does not have a strategy to tackle shortages in animal vaccines. Vaccines play an important role in preventative health and disease control programmes in animals, including managing antimicrobial resistance. However, there have increasingly been 5 supply shortages of animal vaccines in the past two years, affected by global …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and commits to publishing a five-year multi-stakeholder Action Plan for securing adequate animal vaccine supply in late 2026, with Defra working with VMD on its development. It also highlights ongoing efforts like expediting a Bluetongue 3 vaccine and progress on a Bovine TB cattle vaccine application.
9
Conclusion
Acknowledged
The Department does not have an overarching long-term strategy for strengthening resilience to the increasing risk from animal diseases. The Department has several strategic programmes underway to strengthen resilience to animal diseases, including the redevelopment of the National Biosecurity Centre and developing an integrated animal tracing system. However, there is …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees to the recommendation, stating it will examine strategic themes to strengthen long-term resilience to animal disease and integrate interdependencies from other related strategies and reforms. It implicitly commits to providing an update on this strategy's development in 18 months.
1
Conclusion
Accepted
On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG), we took evidence from the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (the Department) and the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) on the resilience to threats from animal diseases.1
Government Response Summary
The government agrees, detailing recent cross-government exercises (Pegasus, ASPEN) in 2025 to test disease response, with reports due by March 2026. From January 2026, APHA will launch a new approach to internal preparedness assurance, embedding exercising and tiered preparedness ratings.
10
Conclusion
Accepted
The government is planning to test its preparedness to respond to outbreaks with two major exercises during 2025. Exercise Pegasus, which is a whole-of-government exercise led by the Department of Health and Social Care alongside the Cabinet Office, will take place this autumn to test preparedness for a pandemic of …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and will apply the lessons from Exercise Pegasus, a cross-government exercise carried out between September and October 2025, and a post-exercise report will be delivered in due course.
11
Conclusion
Accepted
In 2023–24, APHA’s peak vacancy rate for vets was 24% (108 full-time equivalent staff) which had fallen to 20% (99 full-time equivalent staff) in April 2025.13 In correspondence received after the evidence session the Department stated that it has a target of approximately 470 full-time equivalent vet roles within APHA …
Government Response Summary
The department is establishing a government veterinary services working group to create a workforce strategy and will consult on reform of the Veterinary Surgeon’s Act, which will include regulation for Allied Veterinary Professionals and legal protection for the title of Veterinary Nurses.
15
Conclusion
Acknowledged
APHA pointed out that its current surveillance activities are not risk-based or efficient, which results in APHA returning to a location on a regular basis even though it finds no issues. APHA is starting work to move to a more risk- based, intelligence-led surveillance regime and to design its management …
Government Response Summary
APHA's surveillance activities are undertaken in accordance with a defined process, with initiatives underway to deliver risk-based and efficient surveillance activities, and APHA will have a clear plan with milestones within six months to track delivery of audit recommendations. By February 2027, APHA will review all surveillance activities to ensure a targeted, risk-based approach.
16
Conclusion
The Department set out concerns it has about the capacity of local authority trading standards officers to undertake routine surveillance activities. While local authorities have stepped up to provide extra resources during recent outbreaks, capacity to undertake business-as-usual activities such as visiting livestock markets has reduced over the last 15 …
17
Conclusion
The Department explained that following EU exit, the UK lost access to the EU’s Animal Diseases Information System which provided almost real-time intelligence on EU animal diseases. While the UK has access to an international intelligence system provided by the World Organisation for Animal Health, information is received in slower …
19
Conclusion
Accepted
APHA has established its Delivering Sustainable Futures programme as the main programme to modernise its systems and has initially started on smaller projects relating to plant health and bees. Its plant and bee inspectors in the field now have digital technology which allows them to report in real-time. APHA said …
Government Response Summary
The Delivering Sustainable Futures (DSF) Programme has a £10.9 million funding provision for 2025-26 and approximately the same year on year until 2029-30, totalling £62.8 million over the six years and will pivot to commence end- to-end services from 2026-27. It will include a digital customer contact form (spring 2026), a platform for endemic and exotic licencing capability (spring 2026), workforce management (summer 2026), and risk-based determination of disease movement licence applications (autumn 2026).
21
Conclusion
Accepted
In 2017, the Department started a programme to redevelop Weybridge. In the 2025 Spending Review, the government committed £1 billion over the period 2025–26 to 2029–30 to continue the redevelopment, with a total estimated cost of £2.8 billion.27 In correspondence received after our evidence session, the Department stated that the …
Government Response Summary
The department will provide the Committee with an annual update on its progress redeveloping Weybridge.
23
Conclusion
Acknowledged
The Department first started work to create a digital, multi-species, UK-wide tracing system in 2013 and acknowledged that it has been working on this for a long time. It explained that the original concept of using an off- the-shelf solution for a single species and adapting that for multiple species …
Government Response Summary
The government will introduce changes to cattle identification, registration and reporting from summer 2026, including mandatory Electronic Identification (EID) for all new-born calves from 2027 and a new cattle movement reporting system. Expansion to cover additional species is planned from 2027 onwards.
24
Conclusion
Accepted
Between 2019 and March 2025, the Department has spent £181 million on the programme and some services have been developed including a new sheep, goat and deer tracing service.33 However, the Department does not expect to have a fully integrated system in place until winter 2027. It set out that …
Government Response Summary
From summer 2026, the department will introduce changes to cattle identification, registration and reporting including mandatory EID for all new-born calves from 2027. Expansion to cover additional species (sheep, goats, deer and pigs) will occur from 2027 onwards.
25
Conclusion
Acknowledged
Animal diseases do not respect national borders, but the Department confirmed that implementing animal tracing systems is a devolved matter. The Department explained that its livestock tracing programme director meets regularly with the devolved administrations. However, it also highlighted that different decisions are being made. For example, Scotland had made …
Government Response Summary
The government will introduce changes to cattle identification, registration and reporting from summer 2026, including mandatory Electronic Identification (EID) for all new-born calves from 2027 and a new cattle movement reporting system. Expansion to cover additional species is planned from 2027 onwards.
26
Conclusion
Accepted in Part
Illegally imported meat and animal products, which have not gone through checks to confirm they are disease-free and conform to UK health standards, pose a significant and growing threat for introducing new animal diseases, such as African swine fever. Dover Port Health Authority (DPHA) seized 22 tonnes of illegal meat …
Government Response Summary
The government has a plan to address illegal imports outlined in its response to the EFRA Committee, has stepped up communications to travellers, is focusing on its relationship with Dover Port Health Authority, and is actively considering increases to funding for Dover Port Health Authority. APHA will publish details of a new methodology to improve estimates of illegal meat imports in early 2026 with data analysis to follow at the end of 2026.
27
Conclusion
Accepted in Part
Port Health Authorities and Border Force are responsible for seizing illegal meat and animal product imports at ports.38 The Department praised DPHA and Border Force for their work at Dover and confirmed that it has provided £9 million of funding to DPHA to support work on illegal meat imports.39 However, …
Government Response Summary
The government has a plan to address illegal imports outlined in its response to the EFRA Committee, has stepped up communications to travellers, is focusing on its relationship with Dover Port Health Authority, and is actively considering increases to funding for Dover Port Health Authority. APHA will publish details of a new methodology to improve estimates of illegal meat imports in early 2026 with data analysis to follow at the end of 2026.
28
Conclusion
Accepted in Part
The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s recent report on illegal meat imports also raised serious concerns about the threat from illegally imported meat. It highlighted that the authorities tasked with tackling illegal meat imports do not have the necessary leadership, resources and intelligence to do so effectively.42 We believe …
Government Response Summary
The government has a plan to address illegal imports outlined in its response to the EFRA Committee, has stepped up communications to travellers, is focusing on its relationship with Dover Port Health Authority, and is actively considering increases to funding for Dover Port Health Authority. APHA will publish details of a new methodology to improve estimates of illegal meat imports in early 2026 with data analysis to follow at the end of 2026.
30
Conclusion
Accepted in Part
In September 2025, the Veterinary Medicines Directorate published a Statement of Intent on UK Veterinary Vaccine Availability. This sets out a framework for future cross-sector action to address the mismatch between supply and demand for existing veterinary vaccines and facilitate the pipeline of innovative products to address existing and emerging …
Government Response Summary
VMD's Statement of Intent outlines a strategic framework for cross-sector action. A five-year multi-stakeholder Action Plan will be published late 2026, and mitigations for urgent availability issues are being identified and actioned. Defra worked with manufacturers to expedite emergency use of a Bluetongue 3 vaccine and is supporting the avian influenza vaccine taskforce.
31
Conclusion
We are concerned about the future efficacy of policy changes for managing Bovine TB. The badger cull, which we understand seems to have been effective in reducing Bovine TB, has been largely terminated.47 Yet, a new cattle vaccine seems to be years away.48 This hiatus leaves farmers in a very …
32
Conclusion
Deferred
The Department said it is undertaking a range of strategic capability building work that will improve long-term resilience, including redeveloping the National Biosecurity Centre at Weybridge, developing a multi-species livestock tracing system, and modernising APHA’s systems and processes. The Department recognised that there is no long-term strategy that brings all …
Government Response Summary
The government agrees to develop a long-term strategy to strengthen long-term resilience to animal disease, and will provide an update in Summer 2027.