UK Bee Population

George Eustice Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) on securing this debate on such an important issue. I also commend the work that he does in the APPG on bees. He gave a very uplifting speech. As he said, we Conservatives believe in conservation; we want to leave an environmental legacy, and our pollinators are incredibly important to our environment.

Often in debates on this issue there is a focus on pesticides, but as a number of hon. Members—in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman)—have pointed out, a big role is played by loss of habitat. In fact, a lot of analysis suggests that loss of habitat has been the key driver of the decline in our pollinators. As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, declines have taken place since the 1950s—long before neonicotinoids were invented.

There is no doubt that our bees face many pressures. However, the population data are complex. Many species of wild bee and other insect pollinators have declined over the last 30 to 50 years. A few have increased, but the net effect has clearly been negative. Three of our native bumblebees have been lost from the UK—the apple bumblebee in the 1800s, Cullum’s bumblebee in the 1940s and the short-haired bumblebee in the 1980s. On a positive note, that last species is currently being reintroduced to Kent and has become a real focus for conservation and land management action.

Similarly, there has been a decline in the number of honey bees kept since the 1950s. Again, however, there has been better news more recently. I am referring to the renewed interest in beekeeping over the last decade, with membership of beekeeping associations and the number of registered colonies on the rise. The number of colonies registered with the National Bee Unit increased from just over 100,000 in 2009 to 195,000 this year. Often, those are amateur keepers with a couple of hives in their garden. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle called for Parliament to have some beehives. DEFRA is already doing its bit: we have two beehives on the roof of our building—Nobel House in Smith Square.

Nevertheless, we should not be complacent. Wild and honey bees continue to face many challenges and we must maintain our efforts to help all our pollinators. The area of wild flower habitat on farmland, as well as the presence of clover leys in our rotations, declined substantially after the second world war, as farmers responded to our need for food. Many of the insect pollinators that have seen the greatest declines are those that are strongly associated with these habitats. On our protected sites and through countryside stewardship, we are putting these habitats back into the countryside and I am keen that we continue to do this as we develop our new environmental land management measures outside the European Union.

I turn now to the action the Government have taken in relation to this matter, first, our national pollinator strategy, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) highlighted. This strategy sets out how the Government are taking a leading role in improving the status of the 1,500 pollinating insects in England. It sets out how Government, beekeepers, conservation groups, farmers, researchers and individuals can work together to achieve common goals. It builds on current policies across DEFRA, which support pollinators, including habitat creation and public engagement.

On 9 November we published a progress report detailing the positive progress we have made. I am pleased to report that this included the valuable creation of new habitats for pollinators and improvements in our understanding of the status of pollinating insects. We have supported the reintroduction of species such as the short-haired bumblebee, whose conservation we know to have additional benefits for other species. Over 95% of our sites of special scientific interest and almost two thirds of the total area of our resource of wildlife-rich habitats are now in good condition or have management plans in place to restore them to it.

Secondly, I want to consider farm measures. We have introduced a pollinator and wildlife package to our countryside stewardship scheme, to help landowners provide year-round habitat such as flower-rich field margins. Since 2011, we have established more than 100,000 hectares of land that we are restoring to flower-rich habitat, principally through those agri-environment schemes. Forty per cent. of all 2016 countryside stewardship mid-tier agreements are delivering the pollinator and farm wildlife package. Last year, countryside stewardship applications increased by almost 45% and requests for mid-tier application packs are up this year. We have worked with farmers to make it easier and simpler to apply for the scheme and will continue working to improve it and make it simpler as we go forward.

Thirdly, on the Government estates, the Ministry of Justice planted over two miles of native hedgerows and created over 20 hectares of wild flower meadows in 2016. The Ministry of Defence has collaborated with organisations such as Plantlife, National Parks, the Wildlife Trusts and its own tenant farmers to set up suitable areas for pollinators to thrive, including through the creation of wild flower meadows.

Fourthly, in addition to supporting our pollinators with habitat creation, we have put in place measures to improve our understanding of the status of pollinators in our environment. We have established a monitoring and research partnership with research institutions and volunteer organisations. This partnership will allow us to gather further data on the status of our pollinators and the challenges they face.

[Tony Lloyd]

I do not want to introduce a disagreeable note, but if the Minister compares, for example, the amount of money we have spent, under all Governments, as a nation, on issues such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or bovine TB, with the amount of money we spend, or do not spend, on research into protecting our pollinators, what can we look forward to from this Government to significantly increase those research efforts?

[George Eustice]

First, I mentioned the countryside stewardship schemes. That is a £3 billion programme going to those environmental stewardship schemes during the course of the financial perspective that the EU looks at. That is a large amount of money, and, as I said, a lot of that is focused on those pollinator packages. Specifically on research, we have supported the Insect Pollinators Initiative, a £10 million research programme, which still produces high quality science papers that help us to understand the importance of pollinator populations to UK agriculture.

Awareness raising is also important, as several hon. Members pointed out. It is a key feature of our national pollinator strategy. We have established a “Bees’ Needs” campaign, including public events, talks, best practice advice and award ceremonies to demonstrate and acknowledge people’s work to provide suitable habitat for bees and other insects. This year, my noble Friend Lord Gardiner presented 17 awards to individuals and groups who have shown best practice in all areas of pollinator work. Winners included honey-bee keepers, community groups, farmers and schools.

As a number of hon. Members pointed out, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster, we also have to address the effect of pests and disease on our pollinators. As part of our support for pollinators, we continue to protect our honey bees through the healthy bees plan and the work of the National Bee Unit. Our team of bee inspectors visited over 6,000 beehives last year, looking for harmful pests and diseases. It is through the hard work of our inspectors that endemic diseases such as the foulbroods remain at low levels. They provide advice on good husbandry practices to thousands of beekeepers to help them manage other important pests like varroa. It is pleasing to observe the collaboration between beekeepers and the National Bee Unit. Registration of beekeepers on the National Bee Unit’s voluntary database is on the rise. It has gone up from 20,000 in 2009 to over 40,000 today. To support these beekeepers, we continue to aspire to educate and improve husbandry standards right across the country. This year, the National Bee Unit provided talks at 190 beekeeping events reaching some 9,000 beekeepers.

I want to mention the Asian hornet. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) highlighted this in an intervention. The training we have done has been of great value in detecting the Asian hornet. In 2016, we witnessed their arrival in the UK in an outbreak in Gloucestershire and Somerset. We also, as he pointed out, saw a separate outbreak in Devon earlier this year. Both incidents were reported by beekeepers and, through the sterling efforts of the Animal and Plant Health Agency, both nests were destroyed and no further hornets have been seen.

I want to turn finally to the issue of pesticides. As several hon. Members acknowledged, last week we announced our support in principle for further restrictions on neonicotinoid pesticides. There has been additional evidence in the last two years that they are harmful to bees and other pollinators. We have always been clear that we will follow the science on these matters. The advice from the UK Government’s advisory body, the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides, is that the evidence now suggests that the environmental risks posed by neonicotinoids—particularly to our bees and pollinators—are probably greater than previously understood.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham said that we were initially sceptical in 2013, as a Government, about the initial restrictions that were brought in. That is correct. Our chief scientific adviser’s advice at that point was that he did not believe the doses bees were likely to get would be a problem, but he was always clear that there should be further field trials. The first of those field trials was carried out in Sweden by Rundlof and others, and that concluded that there could be some impacts, particularly on bumblebees, and on that basis we moved to supporting the existing restrictions. However, in the light of subsequent, more recent proposals from the Commission, we asked the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides for its view. In particular, it looked at some evidence from Woodcock and others that concluded that there may be a persistence of neonicotinoids in soils, and that that may therefore have wider effects beyond the immediate impact on pollinators. As a precaution, we have decided to act on that. The committee was clear in its recent advice, which we have published, that the evidence is not that clear at the moment, but it is, it believes, reason to extend the restrictions further and that is why we have taken our current position.

Many hon. Members have talked about some of the unintended consequences and we must be mindful of those. There will more use of pyrethroids—greater use of those applications—which can also have environmental impacts and lead to growing resistance to the dwindling number of synthetic pesticides that we have left. It is also the case that we have seen an increase in the use of neonicotinoids in winter cereals, partly because other products, such as pirimicarb, were withdrawn from the market. This is a complex area. In the long term, we need to look at integrated pest management, with a wider range of approaches to tackle crop protection.