Japanese Knotweed

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I must be clear: this plant has been in the country since the 19th century and is very widespread—unfortunately, we sent it from Kew up to Edinburgh, thinking it was interesting. The prospect of eradicating every bit of Japanese knotweed is, alas, not viable at the moment but we hope the psyllid will, if successful, weaken the plant. That is the whole purpose of it. Certainly, where we have had species such as the Asian hornet, we acted immediately to deal with it. There are a number of species on the list that we want to eradicate immediately but I am afraid that a plant such as Japanese knotweed has been here rather too long.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

I thought one of the Bishops might have come in on this Question to help us. However, since we have experts such as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in the House, have the Government thought of appointing one of them as a knotweed tsar to get rid of all this?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My noble friend would make an excellent tsarina. The noble Lord will be pleased to hear that we constantly update officials in the Scottish Government because, as I say, this occurs across our nation. We need to deal with it, which is why where local action groups work together, they have been successful. They use herbicides, injections, glyphosate and all sorts of things, and they are making a difference where they want to.