Japanese Knotweed Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Sharples
Main Page: Baroness Sharples (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Sharples's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(10 years, 7 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress is being made in eliminating Japanese knotweed from the United Kingdom.
My Lords, we are in the fourth year of the controlled release of the psyllid Aphalara itadori as a means of controlling Japanese knotweed. No non-target impacts have been observed by the monitoring programme but, as yet, the organism has had difficulty establishing self-sustaining populations. This year, therefore, we will conduct caged trials releasing larger numbers to establish higher population densities.
Will my noble friend agree to holding a publicity campaign so that this plant can be easily recognised, especially by landowners and, even more importantly, by people seeking to buy a house with land, because in some cases they are being refused a mortgage?
My Lords, in returning regularly to this question, my noble friend is almost as persistent as the weed itself. I am not sure whether she is a hardy annual or a perennial. We need to spread public awareness of a number of non-native species including, of course, Japanese knotweed. The website nonnativespecies.org is our central point. Other awareness-raising measures include nearly 70 identification sheets, including one for Japanese knotweed, the Environment Agency’s PlantTracker mobile device app, which I recommend to your Lordships, non-native species local action groups, and the Be Plant Wise and Check, Clean Dry campaigns, which target aquatic security and non-native species more generally. Awareness-raising is a key focus of our current review of the GB strategy on invasive non-native species.
My noble friend mentioned mortgages. Two years ago, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and the Council of Mortgage Lenders agreed that a less draconian approach was needed.