The Animal and Plant Health Agency leads the Government’s monitoring of animal disease control and carries out routine surveillance of disease risks in the UK and globally, to help the Government anticipate future threats to animal health.

We remain vigilant to changes in risk and continue to use our established systems to monitor for new and emerging threats to our biosecurity through our Veterinary Risk Group and the Human and Animal Infections Risk Surveillance Group.

The Animal Health and Welfare Common Framework (Provisional Framework Outline Agreement and Concordat), published as a Command Paper in 2022, has been produced to explain how the UK Government and devolved Governments propose to work together in key areas of animal health and welfare law and policy. It explains how the principles of devolution continue to apply to animal health and welfare policy after the UK’s exit from the EU.

The separate Animal Health and Welfare Framework published in 2018 has been produced to help county councils, unitary authorities and metropolitan boroughs in England deliver their statutory duties in relation to the health and welfare of farmed animals.

Neither Framework in its own right establishes nor introduces any changes to the monitoring of animal health.

The proposed review of local authority licensing of animal activities will encompass the Pet Animals Act 1951 which regulates the selling of pet animals, including the sale of animals on-line.

The UK Government is committed to working to help the conservation of biodiversity worldwide. The UK works closely with African and other countries to promote the conservation of the world's wildlife through our active membership of key international agreements, notably the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and the Convention on Migratory Species. The UK chairs the CITES Rhino Working Group, tasked with investigating the drivers behind, and possible solutions to, the dramatic rise in rhino poaching in parts of Africa. We have also worked within the EU to introduce stricter controls on the importation of hunting trophies of certain species such as lions and elephants.

The UK has played a leading role in galvanising international action to combat the illegal wildlife trade. We hosted the London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade in February 2014, actively supported the Government of Botswana in its hosting of a follow-up Conference in March 2015 and have committed financial support to Vietnam in hosting a third international conference in 2016.

Defra manages a £13 million Challenge Fund to help combat the illegal wildlife trade. On 5 August we launched Round 2 of the Fund to support practical projects around the world that aim to do this. Details of currently-funded projects in Africa and elsewhere can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/451392/iwt-existing-projects.pdf

In addition, we fund species conservation projects across Africa through the Darwin Initiative, a UK Government scheme that helps to protect biodiversity and the natural environment. The Initiative has funded a wide variety of projects in Africa ranging from a £240,000 contribution towards the development of innovative anti-poaching strategies in Cameroon, to over £299,000 to improve the conservation of Tanzania’s large carnivores: leopards, lions, cheetahs and wild dogs.

The UK also supports the African-led Elephant Protection Initiative, launched in the margins of the London Conference, through which nine African countries have committed to a ten-year moratorium on domestic ivory sales and to put their ivory stockpiles ‘beyond economic use’, in exchange for support and funding for their National Elephant Action Plans. The UK committed to match fund the first tranche of private sector funding, amounting to around £1 million.