Defra consulted on changes to reflect the new EU Equine Passport Regulation in spring 2017. The legal provisions are fundamentally the same as those that have been in place since 2009. One of the key changes is the requirement that all Member States have a national Central Equine Database (CED) containing important information about the identity and status of equines.
Since the consultation closed, Defra has made good progress establishing the CED. This will contain up-to-date information from all Passport Issuing Organisations allowing enforcement bodies to verify the food chain status of every animal and help locate owners of horses that are abandoned, lost or straying. I am pleased that usability testing of the CED has been successfully completed and, at the time of writing, two thirds of all PIOs have provided data. Enforcement bodies including local authorities and the Food Standards Agency are already able to search records. The database should be fully operational for PIOs soon.
In addition, we now have the Control of Horses Act to tackle fly-grazing. Enforcement of this law is the responsibility of local councils, which are also responsible for upholding the horse passport regulations more generally, mostly through their Trading Standards or Animal Health Officers. As you might be aware, all horse passports issued since July 2009 must include a microchip number. Recent reforms have included a new requirement for a central database. The Equine Sector Council described these efforts as "a triumph for Britain's horse sector and Defra", so I am confident that this will go a long way further towards improving the situation.