Oral Answers to Questions

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

We have received the Elliott report and we are looking at it at the moment; it is something that I am absolutely working on. We have made a priority of biosecurity and of ensuring that our food is safe, and we are working hard on that area.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

5. What steps she is taking to reduce the threat of disease to the UK's plants and trees.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dan Rogerson)]

On 30 April, we published a plant biosecurity strategy, which addresses the recommendations of the Tree Health and Plant Expert Biosecurity Taskforce and sets out a new approach to plant and tree health. We have also produced a prioritised plant health risk register, the first of its kind globally; published a new tree health management plan; undertaken work on contingency planning; continued to commission high quality research; and recruited a senior chief plant health officer.

[Mr Jones]

Given the importance of trees to our economy and environment, not least in my constituency of Nuneaton where we recently lost a number of trees to disease, what action are the Government taking when specific threats are identified?

[Dan Rogerson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this. We have produced a prioritised plant health risk register to identify risk and to agree priorities for action. We have also produced new contingency plans for plant diseases and we will be testing them in an exercise later this year. The measures in the new tree health management plan set out clearly the approaches that we are taking, for example against chalara, phytophthora ramorum and oak processionary moth. As soon as we were aware of a threat to plane trees, we moved quickly to impose an import restriction on them.