Ash Dieback Disease

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I do not believe the response to this disease will be improved by playing a blame game or by a partisan approach. The seriousness with which Members of all parties take this issue is evidence of how determined we are to tackle it.

It is to the credit of the Secretary of State, who cannot be with us today, that he has acknowledged that his predecessors acted on the advice they received at the time—essentially the same advice as was outlined by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) who speaks for the Opposition—that ash dieback was listed as being absent from the country. When I came into office, the list of serious exotic diseases brought to my attention included sudden oak death syndrome, bleeding canker in chestnuts, red band needle blight, oak processionary moth, as well as Phytophthora ramorum, which has meant that hundreds of thousands of larches have already been felled.

My response was to produce a tree action plan on tree health and biosecurity—so the fightback has started. In the elaboration of this plan, tree experts provided a horizon scan of upcoming diseases, which we could build into our decision making. Members who return to this country from a third world country will have heard the DEFRA announcement on planes, which warns travellers not to import plant material into this country. That is just one of the improved biosecurity measures.

I have heard the argument that the cuts are to blame for the proliferation of ash dieback. I think we have now satisfactorily demonstrated that an extra £8 million was spent—on top of the protected budget for tree health research. I warn the Opposition to be careful with the argument that it is all about money, because no amount of money will stop wind blowing from continental Europe bearing diseases in this direction. That is just a fact.

The importing of ash is a paradox. Growers were supposed to have asked my predecessor, and challenged the Government, to introduce a ban. What I fail to understand is why, if they saw that as a risk, they continued to import the ash. I did not see that letter either.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

I want to avoid misunderstanding. The Horticultural Trades Association wrote to the Forestry Commission in autumn 2009. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) made clear in her speech, I asked DEFRA to check whether I had seen the correspondence, and I had not.

[Mrs Spelman]

I think that clarity is helpful. I had not seen it either.

The crux of the problem is misdiagnosis. Ministers do not have microscopes on their desks, so before we single out some hapless scientist in forestry research for blame, we should consider carefully how many other people failed to spot the problem as well. When the first case of the new ash fungus was confirmed, trees were felled as a precautionary measure, and a voluntary ban was put in place straight away, so there was no delay. The key to tackling this disease, as was argued earlier, is to find the resistant varieties.

Going forward, the EU plant health regime needs reform. Former and present Members of the European Parliament can perhaps help us with that. We stand some chance, as islands, of being able to have better biosecurity, and we need to fight for that now. In parallel with the EU review, the Government updated their own plant health strategy, deploying more inspectors at points of entry to our country to control imports and piloting new tools of detection. Passenger baggage conditions were reviewed; more funding was released for inspection at growing sites; and better co-ordination of research between the Food and Environment Research Association and the Forestry Commission was achieved. Common sense should tell us that, if tree experts, dedicated woodmen and woodland charities all failed to spot its presence earlier, this disease must be hard to diagnose. It is not helped by the fact that there are other forms of ash dieback, and that other tree diseases were listed ahead of ash dieback as priorities.

If ash dieback had been seen as the big threat we now believe it to be, all relevant stakeholders would have signalled that to me in the numerous face-to-face meetings I had with them during consultations on the public forest estate, or on the extreme weather conditions we experienced in 2011 and 2012. Meetings with the chairman of the Forestry Commission did not have this item on the agenda.