The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (EFRA) has recently published a report responding to the political commitment made at the May 2025 UK–EU Summit to negotiate a common sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) area, with an ambition to conclude negotiations by early 2027. Entitled ‘UK–EU agritrade: making an SPS agreement work’, the report sets out recommendations aimed at ensuring that any future SPS framework is economically beneficial, constitutionally accountable and operationally workable.

At its core, the report accepts the economic case for closer regulatory cooperation with the European Union. It recognises the potential benefits of reducing border friction, supporting supply chain resilience and strengthening food security. However, it does not endorse alignment without qualification. Rather, the Committee advances what might be described as an approach of alignment, with limits and safeguards: supporting the negotiation of a common SPS area while seeking targeted exemptions in sensitive areas; calling for robust parliamentary oversight; and insisting on mechanisms to ensure that UK scientific evidence and domestic policy choices are properly reflected in future regulatory developments. Crucially, as a precondition for achieving these safeguards, the Committee urges that the scope of the negotiations is clearly defined and published at an early stage. This would enable meaningful consultation with relevant stakeholders and allow for public and parliamentary scrutiny before positions become entrenched.

The Committee characterises the expected dynamic alignment on SPS rules as a significant constitutional development, noting that the prospective reception of evolving EU rules into domestic law would require a clear and durable system of parliamentary scrutiny and transparent public communication.  It stresses that SPS policy is devolved, while the negotiation of international agreements is reserved, thereby creating a structural tension that must be carefully managed. It also highlights that a future common SPS area would necessitate legislative and administrative adjustments across all four nations of the United Kingdom, requiring meaningful and formalised engagement with the devolved administrations. Additionally, the Committee underscores the need for adequate resourcing of frontline agencies — including the Food Standards Agency, Food Standards Scotland and port health authorities — to implement a substantial and ongoing programme of regulatory adaptation.

Due to this constitutional and institutional complexity, as well as the regulatory divergences that have already emerged between the UK and the EU in areas like plant protection products, the Committee emphasises that realignment cannot be viewed as an instantaneous legal adjustment. Agri-food production operates on biological cycles, long supply chains and established compliance systems that need time to adapt. Drawing on evidence from industry bodies, port health authorities and regulators, EFRA notes that sectors may need extended transition periods to revise production practices, exhaust existing stocks, amend labelling and adjust border procedures. While the Government has expressed an ambition to conclude negotiations by early 2027, the Committee cautions that implementation must be realistic and carefully phased. It therefore recommends securing transition periods of at least 24 months for sectors affected by new SPS obligations.

The EFRA report also recommends some  targeted limits on dynamic alignment. Most prominently, it recommends that the Government should seek specific exemptions from alignment for animal welfare standards and precision breeding. In these areas, the Committee is concerned that automatic alignment could constrain domestic policy choices or undermine regulatory innovation. By contrast, in areas such as plant protection products and mycotoxin limits, the report stops short of recommending formal exemptions. Instead, it calls for calibrated alignment: new EU rules should be adopted only where UK scientific evidence, climatic conditions and production realities have been fully considered.

These recommendations are not abstract institutional concerns. They reflect regulatory tensions already visible across the agri-food system, particularly in sectors characterised by cross-border integration and complex approval regimes. The pig sector provides a particularly instructive example. As explored in Pig Health and Welfare: Cross-Jurisdictional Insights on Regulatory Convergence and Divergence in England, Northern Ireland and Ireland, regulatory convergence and divergence coexist across animal health and welfare domains in England, Northern Ireland and Ireland, including in areas such as veterinary medicines and precision breeding. Authorisation procedures for veterinary medicines now operate through distinct regulatory systems, with separate scientific assessments and batch-testing requirements. This institutional separation has generated concerns regarding continuity of supply, particularly in Northern Ireland, where the risk of product discontinuation led to transitional arrangements and internal market schemes to safeguard access. In the field of precision breeding, England has introduced a differentiated regulatory framework that removes certain precision-bred organisms from the traditional genetically modified organism regime, whereas the European Union is only recently advancing its own revised framework for new genomic techniques. Although this may narrow aspects of divergence, differences in scope and implementation remain.

These sector-specific dynamics illustrate the broader institutional challenge identified by EFRA. Alignment within a common SPS area is not simply a matter of adopting identical rules; it involves the interaction of distinct regulatory systems, administrative practices and scientific assessments across jurisdictions. Where divergence has already occurred — through innovation, procedural separation or evolving standards — the design of any SPS agreement must accommodate this complexity rather than assume uniformity. In this respect, the Committee’s emphasis on clearly defined scope, calibrated alignment and institutional safeguards reflects the practical realities of regulatory governance in a post-Brexit agri-food landscape.

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This publication has emanated from research conducted with the financial support of Research Ireland, Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) via the International Science Partnerships Fund (ISPF) under Grant numbers 22/CC/11147 and BB/Y012909/1 at the Co-Centre for Sustainable Food Systems.