here - United Kingdom Parliament
here - United Kingdom Parliament
here - United Kingdom Parliament
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
1767 Pollinators and Pesticides<br />
6 JUNE 2013 Pollinators and Pesticides 1768<br />
The Government are set to publish planning practice<br />
guidance on biodiversity. That is an important opportunity<br />
to give councils guidance and impetus to protect and<br />
restore bee-friendly habitat through the planning system.<br />
However, so far t<strong>here</strong> has been no evidence that the<br />
Government are planning to take that opportunity or<br />
even to issue the guidance for public consultation. Has<br />
the Minister spoken yet with his colleagues at the<br />
Department for Communities and Local Government<br />
regarding this matter, and if so, has he impressed upon<br />
them the importance of the issue?<br />
Labour will continue to work with farmers and<br />
horticulturists and with bee and environmental<br />
organisations to create a future of secure and affordable<br />
food produce from a natural and farm environment that<br />
minimises the risk to our pollinators and enhances our<br />
countryside, wildlife, habitats and biodiversity. In order<br />
to do that, I urge the Government once again to use the<br />
moratorium period to fill the gaps in scientific knowledge<br />
of the effects of pesticides and to bring forward urgently<br />
a comprehensive national bee action plan to reverse the<br />
awful decline in bee health.<br />
4.40 pm<br />
The Minister of State, Department for Environment,<br />
Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath): This has been<br />
an extremely good debate and I thank the hon. Member<br />
for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) and her Committee<br />
for their report. She knows that we have had a short<br />
delay in responding to her, for the precise reasons that<br />
she had a short delay in producing the report. The<br />
circumstances have been changing quickly and we want<br />
to get it right, so I apologise to her and her Committee<br />
for that. My noble friend Lord de Mauley is responsible<br />
for this area, but the hon. Lady will appreciate that it<br />
falls to me to respond to the debate in this House.<br />
I also thank the hon. Member for Glasgow South<br />
(Mr Harris) for his balanced remarks, which showed<br />
that this is a complex issue. I am interested in it, not<br />
least because as Minister for agriculture I know that<br />
bees and pollinators are crucial. I cannot underline<br />
sufficiently how important pollinators are to agriculture<br />
and horticulture, so of course I have that interest.<br />
I also have an enormous personal interest in the issue.<br />
I spoke from the Opposition Benches about bees for a<br />
very long time. I spoke on the subject right back in June<br />
1998, when I said:<br />
“We need a step change in investment in the investigation of<br />
bee disease if we are to stem a worldwide phenomenon that is<br />
lapping at our doorstep and has the potential to become a crisis,<br />
both for the insect population and in economic terms”.—[Official<br />
Report, 17 June 2008; Vol. 477, c. 204WH.]<br />
That is what I said in 1998, so people are now free to<br />
quote that back at me, but I meant it. We were arguing<br />
then in the context of very little work at Government<br />
level on bees. It took the best part of a decade before we<br />
pressed the previous Government to start taking the<br />
issue of bees and pollinators seriously, which they did:<br />
we now have the national bee unit and I think we now<br />
need to go one step further in our approach.<br />
I welcome the opportunity to highlight what the<br />
Government have been doing in relation both to pollinators<br />
and pesticides and to our future plans. We take this<br />
issue extremely seriously. It is crucial. Contrary to what<br />
some have said, specifically in relation to neonicotinoid<br />
insecticides, we have kept the evidence under close and<br />
open-minded scrutiny and we continue to do so. We will<br />
restrict the use of insecticides. Obviously, neonicotinoids<br />
are now dealt with under the moratorium, but we will<br />
deal with others as well, if the evidence shows that t<strong>here</strong><br />
is a need to do so. I will come back to that point later.<br />
The hon. Members for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and<br />
for Glasgow South pointed out that pollinators face<br />
many other challenges. It is critical that one issue, such<br />
as the use of particular pesticides, does not dominate<br />
the debate, because so many other individual factors,<br />
when taken together, have a complex effect on our<br />
pollinator population.<br />
Joan Walley: The Minister has said that the Government<br />
will take action if the evidence shows that they need to.<br />
Will he explain how that relates to the moratorium<br />
delivered by the European Commission?<br />
Mr Heath: I will come back to the specific issue of<br />
neonicotinoids in a moment. The moratorium is in<br />
place, so we will, of course, fully comply with it. We do<br />
not not comply with decisions of that kind. I will return<br />
to the evidence, because it is a critical issue.<br />
I repeat that bees are essential to the health of our<br />
natural environment and the prosperity of our farming<br />
industry. The “Biodiversity 2020” document has been<br />
mentioned. We have set ourselves the challenge of achieving<br />
an overall improvement in the status of our wildlife and<br />
preventing further human induced extinctions of known<br />
threatened species. We have put a landscape scale approach<br />
to biodiversity conservation at the heart of “Biodiversity<br />
2020”. It is vital that that approach is effective in<br />
helping to conserve our most threatened species.<br />
Nature improvement areas are beginning to make a<br />
difference for species on the ground. The 12 Governmentfunded<br />
NIAs are by no means the sum total of our<br />
ambitions. We want to see that approach rolled out<br />
more widely by enthusiasts across the country. The hon.<br />
Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) is seeing<br />
exactly that in her city. We want that to be extended and<br />
it is clearly already happening.<br />
We want to make environmental stewardship more<br />
effective. As the House knows, we are in the process of<br />
negotiating CAP reform. It is not clear what the outcomes<br />
will be. We do not know the extent to which greening<br />
measures will be in pillar 1 or pillar 2, or the exact recipe<br />
that will emerge from our decisions on agri-environmental<br />
schemes that derive from pillar 2 or voluntary modulation.<br />
This matter is a key consideration in that context and<br />
I will certainly be pressing for it in the outcome.<br />
Nia Griffith: The European Scrutiny Committee has<br />
requested a debate on CAP reform. Will the Minister<br />
say when that is likely to be scheduled?<br />
Mr Heath: I am responsible for a large number of<br />
things in my Department, but the scheduling of House<br />
business is not one of them. In my previous post, I<br />
might have been able to give the hon. Lady an answer,<br />
but in my current post I cannot. To be honest, now<br />
would not be the best time to have that debate because<br />
we are just reaching what we hope will be a conclusive<br />
meeting of the Council of Ministers. After that, we will<br />
have a much clearer idea of the outcomes and how they<br />
will be effected in the UK.