National Pollinator Strategy

Roger Williams Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Without the services of these pollinators, who depend on the sorts of measures my hon. Friend has mentioned, we would see a decline in the variety and availability of nutritious food in the UK, or we would have to introduce expensive mechanical or hand-pollination methods, which would drive up food prices in our country.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

The hon. Lady makes the important point about the role of pollinators in agriculture, and yet we have some difficulty in getting a figure on that. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says in an article that it is worth between £186 million and £567 million, and yet a few inches down the page it says that the services are potentially worth only £500 million.

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point about the evidence base, and that is a key part of the draft national pollinator strategy. I will come on to the importance of ensuring that we are very much an evidence-based policy-making body.

There is a mounting evidence base to show that a huge range of threats is leading to overall declines in the number of pollinators, but with no single factor accounting for those losses. There are numerous factors involved, with habitat loss and intensification of land use probably at the top of the list. Pests, disease, the use of agri-chemicals, invasive species and changes to the weather are all factors as well. Those factors affect different species, wild and managed, to different degrees and in different ways. According to the excellent Library briefing prepared for this debate, there is evidence that the losses in wild pollinator and wild insect-pollinated plant diversity might be slowing. But the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has produced a useful note that provides more detail for Members and for members of the public who are following this debate.

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[Dr Whitehead]

Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman has anticipated what I was going to say. I hope he was not one of the people wearing a bee outfit who stood next to me; I think he probably stood next to somebody else in a bee outfit.

The “Bee Cause” campaign and various others have done well to concentrate on the threats that pollinators face, but we should reflect not just on bees, both domestic and wild, but on pollinators across the board. As the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth has said, they are, collectively, such an important element in the national health of our crops and fruits, and they interact with the natural environment in a whole range of other ways. We do not understand wild pollinators to the extent that we should; indeed, our EAC inquiry found that the general research is very ragged. We need to obtain a deeper understanding, particularly of pollinators in the wild. I hope the Department will take cognisance of that.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the relationship between the evidence produced by those who manufacture insecticides and those who commission it from a more green point of view is one of considerable mistrust? Would it not be a good thing if they could get together and agree on the outcome of their research? Perhaps then we could make more progress.

[Dr Whitehead]

I agree that the research commissioned by companies that have an interest in the outcome, particularly in field trials, can cause considerable mistrust. The research does not need to be done entirely independently, but the process does need to be clear and transparent. The companies should put their hands on the table and follow standards and protocols that can be supervised by external bodies. There is also a question mark in my mind as to whether the Department itself is awaiting a perfect piece of research, as it were, to inform its future findings. The Committee has concluded that there is no such thing as a perfect piece of research in “natural conditions,” because they have already been compromised. We should apply a probability principle to work that has already been done and then add properly peer-reviewed and supervised additional research to it. That might be much better than adopting the tentative but alarming position—which I think still pervades this debate—of simply considering how the research might inform us for the future.

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[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) for securing this important debate. I know that many Members of Parliament have an interest in it, and I also congratulate the Select Committees involved on the work they have done.

Next Wednesday, 22 October, hon. Members are all welcome to come to Brecon and Radnorshire day, and I hope Peter Guthrie will be bringing along some of his honey for us to taste. We live in an area of rather less intensive farming than some of the more arable areas, so I do not think there will be any pollution from insecticides. Please do come along.

When the consultation on the strategy was launched, it itemised five fairly simple ideas, which I still think are very strong as far as pollinators are concerned. The first was to grow more nectar and pollen-rich flowers—we have heard all about that—whether on field boundaries or by local authorities. The second was to let patches of land grow wild. As we travel around Britain, we see lots of land that could be left uncultivated and do a good job for biodiversity. The third idea was to cut grass less frequently and perhaps not so early. That is another message for local authorities. Then there was not disturbing insect nests or hibernating insects and thinking carefully about whether to use a pesticide. I am sure that the strategy will go into more details, but those ideas sit at the foundation of our approach to this problem.

Much has been made of the contribution that pollinators make to agriculture, yet it has been difficult to get a figure or set of figures that anybody can agree upon. I am of the opinion that maintaining biodiversity and maintaining pollinators is a good thing in itself. My fear is that some figures might come forward showing that pollination does not play such a big part in agriculture, which might undermine our argument. In fact, I received a very good briefing from Friends of the Earth, which contained one sentence that I was very taken with:

“A scientific review of pollination services in 41 countries across Europe found that the UK only has a quarter of the honey bees it needs for pollination”.

That struck me as an extraordinarily disturbing figure, so I e-mailed Friends of the Earth last night. They came back with an answer that said, “Well, we don’t know how close we are to the tipping point,” but surely if we have only a quarter of the bees anyway—I am not quite sure about the other pollinators—that puts us in a very precarious position.

That compares with reports in yesterday’s papers that we have had the biggest bumper crop of apples that we have ever had. One thing for certain is that the apple crop needs pollination by insects.

It is difficult to correlate all these issues, which is why I support everyone who has said that we need a well co-ordinated approach to research. People in the agri-chemical industry must work openly and transparently along with others who are commissioning research.

[Neil Carmichael]

Does my hon. Friend agree when I say—or at least assert—that if we get a proper plan that works for bees and is seen to be working for bees in this country, other countries will take it on as a code of good practice? That would be extraordinarily good for them as it would be for us.

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[Roger Williams]

I entirely agree. Co-ordination is needed not just within this country, but in other countries, to ensure that the research is productive and can be applied to encourage more pollinators.

Let me say a few words about the systemic neonicotinoids that have been banned in this country and across the EU for two years. I am not sure what figures are most accurate on the reduction in yield, but I do know that the flea beetle is a persistent offender, which can be detrimental to young crops, particularly to oilseed rape and other brassicas. It has been reported that farmers, rather than have just one application of this systemic neonicotinoid, are in fact spraying three or four times in order to safeguard the establishment of their crop. We believe that some of these sprays, such as the synthetic pyrethroids and the organo-phosphates, can be as damaging to pollinators as the neonicotinoids.

These issues are very complicated, so putting into practice any effective pollinator strategy is going to take money—and most of it is going to come out of the common agricultural policy—so that we encourage farmers to do such things as allowing field margins to remain uncultivated. Even more important is active management of those field margins to ensure that flowers and plants can be used by pollinators, but again that is going to cost quite a bit of money.

Let me raise with the Minister an issue I have raised a number of times before—the measly allocation of pillar two money for the United Kingdom. Normally, in most European countries, the ratio of pillar one money, which is the direct payments, to pillar two is 3:1; in Britain, it is 10:1. Our allocation of pillar two money for the next financial horizon is going to be only about £2.2 billion, which has to be spread between conservation and improving competition and marketing in the farming community and rural areas.

[Bob Stewart]

Is that pillar two money decided in Brussels? Do we have any influence on it? Can we do anything about it, or do we just have to sit and wait for a decision from Brussels?

[Roger Williams]

It is decided in Brussels, but the real problem is that it is decided on a historical basis. We have had low allocations of pillar two money for many years. It is believed that if the allocation were made on an objective basis, such as according to the amount of agricultural land, the number of people involved in agriculture or the number of forests, we would have at least 100% more pillar two money. It is tied up with complex issues such as our rebate and the Fontainebleau agreement. When the CAP was renegotiated, I thought that all these figures would be based on objective factors rather than historical factors. However, we have ended up with a £2.2 billion allocation, while France has £8.8 billion and Germany £7.8 billion. It is no wonder that the farming unions are trying to resist modulation and the green non-governmental organisations are going for higher modulation. If the farming unions had co-operated with the green NGOs and gone for a bigger allocation of pillar two money, we should not have had all that argument.

I am not sure whether anything can be done—it seems that the figures have been agreed to—but I think that that was a real disaster, and one of the programmes that could suffer as a result of it is the pollinator strategy, which desperately needs money. I understand that the new environmental land management scheme that DEFRA is introducing can be used for such purposes, and I hope the Minister will ensure that it is.