Pesticides: Thiamethoxam

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. A lot of work is being done in organisations across the country—Rothamsted has been mentioned, but also the Roslin Institute and others in Scotland and England—where we are seeing the possibility of great advances, not through GMOs but through using and perhaps accelerating existing plant breeding techniques that will make these kinds of conversations seem very out of date.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, in answer to my noble friend Lady Whitaker, the noble Lord talked about the benefits of urban gardens for pollinators. Of course, he is absolutely right. One of the reasons why pollinators are very well served by urban gardens is that there is the great diversity of plant life there compared with, say, mass agricultural areas. However, there is a problem with people concreting over urban garden space. Could he say what the Government are doing in conjunction with local authorities to discourage this practice? It is a problem not only for pollinators but for flood management.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness’s last point is the one where the Government can be most effective, particularly with building regulations and planning policy. It is hard to say to a householder, “You cannot get rid of a 10 by 10 lawn outside your house”, but we can design in green infrastructure. An enormous amount of work is going on across government to try to make sure that we are greening our planning policies and urban infrastructure to address precisely the point that she raises.