Bee Health

Andrew Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I know, for example, that last year beekeepers in Cornwall, like beekeepers all over the country, had to feed their bees in the hives because of the appalling weather. Where we have bees in managed colonies, that is fine, but the wild bees and solitary bees are not receiving that sort of care and attention, and they will be even worse affected by the weather. Without those beekeepers feeding the bees in their hives, we would have seen an even greater loss of bee numbers. Look at the weather outside today. Lots of flowers are blossoming, which the bees would naturally be pollinating, but what with the freezing temperatures and the winds, the bees will, rightly, be huddled up in their hives, relying on beekeepers to feed them until the wind drops and temperatures rise, so that they can venture outside. Undoubtedly, climate change will be having an impact on bees. When I talk about research, I shall mention that as one factor contributing to what is happening to all the bee colonies.

The hon. Gentleman rightly identifies that these are complex problems and only a range of activities can resolve them. We need a holistic approach, looking at the many contributing factors in a joined-up strategy, led by DEFRA and involving other Departments. I am asking the Minister to ask the Secretary of State to consider implementing a British bee strategy that would work across Departments and with stakeholders to develop a holistic action plan, with identifiable outcomes and budget allocations.

Parliament rightly demands evidence-based policy making, so let us start with the science. The Government have committed large sums to the science budget. An annual research spend of £4.6 billion has been ring-fenced in the 2010 comprehensive spending review, with additional investment of £1.3 billion in research budgets over the next three years. The UK has world-class universities of which we are rightly proud, and the science and innovation that they generate are a potential source of prosperity, as scientific discoveries are commercialised by businesses working with universities, creating beneficial products and services.

In addition to the DEFRA budget allocated for bee and pollinator research, I should like to see the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills working with the major research councils to identify a pot of money from the existing, and recently increased, funding for science. This could be used to commission university-based scientists, working in partnership with industry, to create a new generation of pesticides and fungicides that have less harmful effects to pollinators; to develop disease-resistant seeds to prevent the need for chemical treatment; and to explore different methods of crop husbandry to prevent the use of harmful pesticides and chemicals in the environment. All these have the potential to improve bee health, and are areas of science in which we already have a great deal of expertise.

It is important to recognise that the UK’s crop-protection sector has a vital role to play, but as with any market, it can work well to deliver innovation and quality. It is worth remembering that in the UK a pesticide is released on to the market only after an average of nine years’ extensive research. However, as recent news about antibiotics has shown, sometimes Government intervention is needed. The chief medical officer has recently warned that, because antibiotics are relatively cheap and not very profitable to pharmaceutical companies, they have made little investment in innovation. As a result, we face humans becoming immune to current antibiotics within the next 20 years—a risk to our well-being greater than climate change. The chief medical officer has called on the Government to use some of the money earmarked for investment in science to discover the next generation of antibiotics. She has also highlighted the need for international collaboration on the management of antibiotics. We need to think in the same way to tackle declining bee health.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend’s suggestion about creating a British bee strategy; that is vital. She makes the case powerfully for a strong, healthy bee population to ensure pollination in agriculture and biodiversity in our environment. Does she agree that it is important for a focus to be maintained across Government, and to bring together all the different resources from Departments to try to tackle and reverse this decline in bee numbers?

[Sarah Newton]

That is important. As I said, DEFRA has done a huge amount, and this Government should be proud of their track record in tackling the issue, but we need to step it up with more urgency and draw on all the resources of Government, not just on DEFRA. DEFRA is quite a low-spending Department, and it needs the extra sums that are available, particularly in BIS, for science and innovation, so that it can bring those extra resources to bear. DEFRA has done well to be still investing in bee research, having had to make cuts in expenditure—it is to be commended for that—but the scale of the challenge is so great that we should be reaching out to BIS and other pots of science money and commissioning research. Not only would that be beneficial for our bee population, agriculture, farming and the environment, but once these products are developed they could be exported and could generate a great deal of wealth in our country.

All this takes time. Root-cause research would take years—pesticides can take nine years to come to market—so there are things we need to do in the interim. We should listen closely to the calls of Friends of the Earth, which put together a national bee action plan, with some sensible steps that could be taken. I should like the Government to consider that.

We could create bee worlds by encouraging local authorities and the farming sector to work together to increase the availability of good feeding and nesting sites for bees. The mayor of Truro, Lindsay Southcombe, is using her year as mayor to highlight what we can do locally. We can do lots of things at a local level. We need to protect existing sites, conserving the lowland and upland meadows where bees thrive. We should ensure that science-based advice and guidance is provided to farmers and other bodies, setting out how those habitats can be better protected. This advice can be provided only if adequate expertise on bees is retained within Government agencies. For successful delivery of habitat creation and restoration for bees locally, we must ensure that that expertise is available at all levels in local authorities. We do have the bee inspectorate, and that must be preserved, but it must also be built on.

Finally, we need to consider commissioning research on new pest-control technologies and drawing on global best practice, with the aim of developing pest-control methods that maintain farming yields while minimising the impact on pollinator populations. That is the clear call of Friends of the Earth, which believes that stakeholders can be brought together and can help develop best practice, working alongside the Government, that can then be rolled out across the UK.

The evidence that bee populations are declining is clear. We have talked about that in respect of honey bees, but it also applies to wild bees and solitary bees. If we stand by and allow this decline to carry on, it would hit key sectors of our economy hard. The Government’s investment in a range of activities and research aimed at slowing this decline, and better understanding it, is to be welcomed. Now is the time to move to the next stage: to put together a holistic cross-departmental strategy aimed at developing new biodiversity-friendly approaches to crop protection that the rest of the world will welcome. Now is the time to show British bees, British farmers and the British food and drink producers that we are on their side, and will work with them to tackle this significant problem for our health, our well-being and our environment.