Ash Dieback Disease

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Many Members are seeking to catch my eye and I am keen to accommodate them, but to do so will require brevity from those on Back and Front Benches alike. I am sure that we will be led in this process by the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I welcome these proceedings and congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister. Will he pass on our thanks to the Food and Environment Research Agency in my constituency for its work and to the Forestry Commission? Will he explain to the House that this disease was already treated as a quarantine pest under national emergency measures? That would help to show that it was already high on the political agenda. Will he ensure that resources are put into urgently investigating the age profile of the disease? Saplings are deemed more likely to die from the disease, but are mature trees equally at risk? Will he also assure the House that none of the other plants that are being inspected by FERA and the Forestry Commission are causing the same concern?

[Mr Heath]

I can certainly confirm that we are taking all measures possible to deploy colleagues in the Forestry Commission, those working in forest services and people from FERA to identify the incidence of disease wherever it can be found. We will look closely at a suspected further case in a mature tree. It is important to realise that there is a national forest inventory through which symptoms of disease are looked at across the board all the time. There were 8,000 inspections of ash trees under the inventory last year and it was found that the trees were, in fact, in very good health. Only 61 cases of any signs of ill health in ash trees were discovered, and none of them was due to Chalara.