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1745 6 JUNE 2013 Pollinators and Pesticides 1746
Pollinators and Pesticides
[Relevant document: Seventh Report of the Environmental
Audit Committee, Session 2012-13, Pollinators and Pesticides,
HC 668.]
3.10 pm
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab): I beg to
move,
That this House has considered the matter of pollinators and
pesticides.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating
time for this debate. Despite the fact that there are so
many conflicting events going on outside the House, we
have a healthy number of MPs here who wish to participate.
I am grateful to everybody for attending.
The debate today is especially appropriate given that
this year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of
“Silent Spring”, Rachel Carson’s seminal work on the
environmental cost of pesticides such as DDT. It is
right that we should revisit the important issue of
ecology and the relationship of plants and animals to
their environment and to one another.
The Environmental Audit Committee, which I chair,
conducted an inquiry on pollinators and pesticides from
November 2012 to March 2013. We extended it because
there were so many new developments as we carried on
with our inquiry. We received 40 written submissions
and we held seven oral evidence sessions. I thank all the
witnesses to the inquiry. It was a unanimous report and
I thank members of the Committee, some of whom are
able to be present today and some of whom have sent
their apologies. I also thank the Committee staff, who
did a phenomenal amount of work helping us to compile
our report, and put on record my thanks to Chris Miles
of cdimagesanddesigns for his generosity in allowing us
to use his photograph, “Pit stop” to grace the cover of
the report. We are often told how accessible or otherwise
House of Commons reports are, and we feel that thanks
to him, the cover on our report is fitting. Bees like to go
to bright, colourful flowers and we thought we would
have the same for our report.
The EAC report was published on 5 April. In normal
circumstances we would have been content to wait for
the Government response to our report, but given that
the European Commission took significant regulatory
action in this area on 29 April, shortly after its publication,
we felt that a debate was urgent and timely, and on
behalf of the Committee I sought the opportunity to
hold the debate today.
Let me put on record the favourable response that we
have had from many who care about nature and wildlife.
I thank Buglife, which affirmed that our report provides
robust recommendations for the future of pollinators
and the agricultural industry, and Friends of the Earth,
whose recent reception in the House was attended by
well over 100 MPs, although I was not able to be there
myself. That testified how much support there is in our
constituencies all around the UK for its bee action plan.
The all-party group on agro-ecology welcomed our
support. It, too, welcomes the recent decision by the EU
to ban three types of neonicotinoid pesticides. The
all-party group believes that to be the right decision,
and calls for decisions on our food supply and environment
to be based on science and not on extreme lobbying and
scare-mongering by those who have an immense vested
interest.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab): I compliment
my hon. Friend for the report and her work on this
issue. While I welcome the decision on particular pesticides,
does she recognise that there is a wider question of
eco-diversity that we have to address? If we do not, that
will be something else that kills off the bee population
in future. We must have a different approach to our
natural environment in relation to agriculture.
Joan Walley: I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention.
Our report clearly states that there is no one solution
and that we need, as he rightly says, a whole new
systemic approach. The core of our report is that we
need to get the balance right between scientific evidence
and the precautionary principle, but there are very
many issues that relate to all this.
We have had further support from many members of
the general public and concerned interest groups, not
least Bedfordshire Beekeepers Association, which said:
“Your work has been an inspirational example of democratic
scrutiny in action…we hope that you will be able to hold government
to account and influence policy making both at national and
EU level.”
This is exactly what we are doing today and intend to
continue doing. This debate is by no means our only
follow-up to the report. We are raising the issue today
to see how the many things that need to be done can get
done, with the direction of the Government.
The Committee decided to conduct our inquiry because
the available evidence indicated that insect pollinators
have experienced serious population declines in the UK
in recent years. For example, we heard—this is quite
shocking—that two thirds to three quarters of insect
pollinator species are declining in the UK. Indeed, the
2013 report “State of Nature” assessed 178 bee species
in the UK and found that half were in decline. For the
benefit of the House, I should explain that insect pollinators
include not only honey bees and wild bees but other
insects such as hoverflies, moths and butterflies. At the
moment, the honey bee is the sentinel species for all
insect pollinators, which means that most scientific
studies involve bees, but given the biological differences
between the various insect pollinators, it is vital that the
Government monitor a wider range of species. I hope
that this is an uncontroversial point on which the
Government will agree with my Committee.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath) indicated assent.
Joan Walley: I am very pleased to see the Minister
nodding. I refer him to our recommendation 13: “Defra
must”—I stress “must”—
“introduce a national monitoring programme to generate and
monitor population data on a broad range of wild insect pollinator
species to inform policy making.”
We felt that that is the bottom line and the starting
point of what now needs to be done. As we went
through our deliberations and came to reach our decisions,
we endeavoured to find as much common ground among
members of the Committee as we could before we
turned to the issue of neonicotinoids.