Bee Health

Sarah Newton Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

It is a great honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. This year’s Budget quite rightly supports those people who are working hard and contributing to our economy. Life is tough for many hard-working people, and we are doing all we can to support them. Particular focus has been directed at people investing in British businesses and employing more people. The national growth strategy has identified sectors of our economy that are strong, that are growing and that have the opportunity to generate increased wealth for our nation by making more things and exporting them overseas. In the next 10 minutes or so, I would like the Minister to think about another army of workers that needs our support right now—Britain’s bees.

Agribusinesses, farmers, and food and drinks manufacturers are quite rightly identified as significant contributors to our economy and to our future prosperity. In my constituency, this sector is helping to lead the way towards sustainable, export-driven growth. Food, drink and farming businesses employ nearly a third of working people across Cornwall. Local products include the iconic pasty, the native oyster, wine, cider, beer, soft fruit and vegetables, and even tea, which is grown at Tregothnan and exported to China.

Nationally, the agri-food and drink sector contributes £85 billion a year to the UK economy and provides employment for 3.5 million people. Without a strong work force of bees, we will not be able to realise the potential of this sector in the coming years. Nearly all the drinks and food that I have mentioned need bees as pollinators. Bees deliver that service better than anything else in our ecosystem. It is estimated that manual pollination, which is the only option if a catastrophic decline in bee numbers takes place, would cost British farmers up to £1.8 billion every year. Don’t get me wrong—like all wildlife, the bee population is important in its own right, and as part of a balanced ecosystem, which is vital for our health and well-being. However, as we are so rightly focused at the moment in Parliament on the economy, the focus of my speech is on the economic benefits of bee health.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has done much to try to understand why the bee population in Britain, the EU and the USA is declining. In the UK alone, the number of managed honey bee colonies fell by 53% between 1985 and 2005. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs understands that pollinators, including bees, are essential to the health of our natural environment and to the prosperity of our farming industry. DEFRA has estimated that pollination is worth several hundred million pounds every year. Also, bees are among our greatest allies in delivering DEFRA’s twin priorities of animal health and plant health. The Department is implementing the healthy bees plan, working with beekeepers to provide training and respond to pest and disease threats. Within that plan, DEFRA’s national bee unit provides inspection, diagnostic and training services to beekeepers. Before I entered Parliament, I was a trainee beekeeper, and I very much appreciated the helpful advice of those helping me to learn the craft, particularly inspectors.

Work under the “Biodiversity 2020” banner is delivering more and improved habitats for bees and other pollinators. A further bee-supporting project is the entry-level stewardship scheme for farmers, which promotes the growth of beneficial plants for bees and pollinators. Natural England is working hard with farmers to help them to identify areas of land to provide these habitats, and £10 million has been allocated to a range of research projects that will help bees and pollinators.

Taken as a whole, these measures represent a lot of different activities that are focused on trying to understand why bees are declining, and on taking action to reverse that trend. Most recently, DEFRA has been involved at the EU level in considering the restriction of some chemicals that are used mostly by our cereal crop farmers as pesticides. Just last week, the chief scientific adviser told the Select Committee on Science and Technology, of which I am a member, that he did not feel that there was sufficient evidence to ban the chemicals that are under consideration, but that we should keep the decision under review while awaiting more scientific evidence. He also said that we need to bear in mind the impact of withdrawing the chemicals in the pesticides, including the impact that would have on food prices, especially the prices of winter wheat and rape.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I will be brief. My constituent Hugh Sykes, who is the chairman of the Winchester and District Beekeepers Association, and whom I have met many times, has been in touch with me—along with hundreds of other constituents—on this subject, and he contacted me specifically about the recent vote on the issue in Europe. Does my hon. Friend know why our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs abstained on that vote? Also, although I appreciate what she is saying, does she not agree that until the science is proven on this particular pesticide—the Secretary of State said that he was a sceptic on the subject of this particular pesticide, as are many people—we should perhaps hold back from using it, given that there is clearly something greatly affecting the bee populations in our constituencies?

[Sarah Newton]

Like my hon. Friend, I have been contacted by many hundreds of constituents on this issue—I am sure that all MPs have—because many of our constituents take such a close interest in our environment and care for it, which is to be welcomed as it is a really good thing. There has been some excellent campaigning work done by, for example, Friends of the Earth.

As far as I understand from my correspondence with the Secretary of State, the reason for the abstention, which was backed up by the chief scientific adviser, is that the evidence is not clear as to how harmful some of these chemicals are. DEFRA operates on the precautionary principle when making decisions. It has agreed to ensure that the research in this area is kept open and continues, and it has also agreed that if any harmful impact is detected, it will, of course, act. I hope that my hon. Friend, when he has listened to more of what I have to say, will understand that I think we need a more holistic approach to how we are handling this problem. Much as I would love to think that there is one silver bullet, there probably is not, and we need to consider all the different contributing factors that have been leading, undeniably, to bee decline.

I return to the impact of reducing the use of these pesticides. Reducing their use would also reduce the quantity of crops, and that could have a detrimental effect on the bee population because it would reduce some of the bees’ foraging habitat, as well as reducing biodiversity.

Bees have been in decline for some time, as I am sure the beekeepers with whom my hon. Friend is in regular contact have been telling him. We have been hoping to discover a single reason, such as a disease that was causing the collapse of colonies and that could be cured, or one particular chemical that could be identified and banned. However, I think we have come to realise that there will not be a single solution, and that this is a complex problem.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing this matter to the House. I can well remember those halcyon days of the late 1960s and early 1970s when I was a young boy down in Clady outside Strabane. In those days, the sun shone regularly; it does not seem to shine as much now. Does she feel that the change in weather conditions is one of the factors contributing to the decline of bee numbers across the whole of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland? The reason I well recall that time in Clady as a young boy is that bees’ honeycombs were something that we prized zealously and refused to share with anyone. I am hoping that those days will return and that the bees can come back, because they are important for the countryside. There were bog meadows and open land, and there was not the same agricultural intensification that there is now. Does she feel that those things are also important factors, and that perhaps we need to see more land set aside?

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I know, for example, that last year beekeepers in Cornwall, like beekeepers all over the country, had to feed their bees in the hives because of the appalling weather. Where we have bees in managed colonies, that is fine, but the wild bees and solitary bees are not receiving that sort of care and attention, and they will be even worse affected by the weather. Without those beekeepers feeding the bees in their hives, we would have seen an even greater loss of bee numbers. Look at the weather outside today. Lots of flowers are blossoming, which the bees would naturally be pollinating, but what with the freezing temperatures and the winds, the bees will, rightly, be huddled up in their hives, relying on beekeepers to feed them until the wind drops and temperatures rise, so that they can venture outside. Undoubtedly, climate change will be having an impact on bees. When I talk about research, I shall mention that as one factor contributing to what is happening to all the bee colonies.

The hon. Gentleman rightly identifies that these are complex problems and only a range of activities can resolve them. We need a holistic approach, looking at the many contributing factors in a joined-up strategy, led by DEFRA and involving other Departments. I am asking the Minister to ask the Secretary of State to consider implementing a British bee strategy that would work across Departments and with stakeholders to develop a holistic action plan, with identifiable outcomes and budget allocations.

Parliament rightly demands evidence-based policy making, so let us start with the science. The Government have committed large sums to the science budget. An annual research spend of £4.6 billion has been ring-fenced in the 2010 comprehensive spending review, with additional investment of £1.3 billion in research budgets over the next three years. The UK has world-class universities of which we are rightly proud, and the science and innovation that they generate are a potential source of prosperity, as scientific discoveries are commercialised by businesses working with universities, creating beneficial products and services.

In addition to the DEFRA budget allocated for bee and pollinator research, I should like to see the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills working with the major research councils to identify a pot of money from the existing, and recently increased, funding for science. This could be used to commission university-based scientists, working in partnership with industry, to create a new generation of pesticides and fungicides that have less harmful effects to pollinators; to develop disease-resistant seeds to prevent the need for chemical treatment; and to explore different methods of crop husbandry to prevent the use of harmful pesticides and chemicals in the environment. All these have the potential to improve bee health, and are areas of science in which we already have a great deal of expertise.

It is important to recognise that the UK’s crop-protection sector has a vital role to play, but as with any market, it can work well to deliver innovation and quality. It is worth remembering that in the UK a pesticide is released on to the market only after an average of nine years’ extensive research. However, as recent news about antibiotics has shown, sometimes Government intervention is needed. The chief medical officer has recently warned that, because antibiotics are relatively cheap and not very profitable to pharmaceutical companies, they have made little investment in innovation. As a result, we face humans becoming immune to current antibiotics within the next 20 years—a risk to our well-being greater than climate change. The chief medical officer has called on the Government to use some of the money earmarked for investment in science to discover the next generation of antibiotics. She has also highlighted the need for international collaboration on the management of antibiotics. We need to think in the same way to tackle declining bee health.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend’s suggestion about creating a British bee strategy; that is vital. She makes the case powerfully for a strong, healthy bee population to ensure pollination in agriculture and biodiversity in our environment. Does she agree that it is important for a focus to be maintained across Government, and to bring together all the different resources from Departments to try to tackle and reverse this decline in bee numbers?

[Sarah Newton]

That is important. As I said, DEFRA has done a huge amount, and this Government should be proud of their track record in tackling the issue, but we need to step it up with more urgency and draw on all the resources of Government, not just on DEFRA. DEFRA is quite a low-spending Department, and it needs the extra sums that are available, particularly in BIS, for science and innovation, so that it can bring those extra resources to bear. DEFRA has done well to be still investing in bee research, having had to make cuts in expenditure—it is to be commended for that—but the scale of the challenge is so great that we should be reaching out to BIS and other pots of science money and commissioning research. Not only would that be beneficial for our bee population, agriculture, farming and the environment, but once these products are developed they could be exported and could generate a great deal of wealth in our country.

All this takes time. Root-cause research would take years—pesticides can take nine years to come to market—so there are things we need to do in the interim. We should listen closely to the calls of Friends of the Earth, which put together a national bee action plan, with some sensible steps that could be taken. I should like the Government to consider that.

We could create bee worlds by encouraging local authorities and the farming sector to work together to increase the availability of good feeding and nesting sites for bees. The mayor of Truro, Lindsay Southcombe, is using her year as mayor to highlight what we can do locally. We can do lots of things at a local level. We need to protect existing sites, conserving the lowland and upland meadows where bees thrive. We should ensure that science-based advice and guidance is provided to farmers and other bodies, setting out how those habitats can be better protected. This advice can be provided only if adequate expertise on bees is retained within Government agencies. For successful delivery of habitat creation and restoration for bees locally, we must ensure that that expertise is available at all levels in local authorities. We do have the bee inspectorate, and that must be preserved, but it must also be built on.

Finally, we need to consider commissioning research on new pest-control technologies and drawing on global best practice, with the aim of developing pest-control methods that maintain farming yields while minimising the impact on pollinator populations. That is the clear call of Friends of the Earth, which believes that stakeholders can be brought together and can help develop best practice, working alongside the Government, that can then be rolled out across the UK.

The evidence that bee populations are declining is clear. We have talked about that in respect of honey bees, but it also applies to wild bees and solitary bees. If we stand by and allow this decline to carry on, it would hit key sectors of our economy hard. The Government’s investment in a range of activities and research aimed at slowing this decline, and better understanding it, is to be welcomed. Now is the time to move to the next stage: to put together a holistic cross-departmental strategy aimed at developing new biodiversity-friendly approaches to crop protection that the rest of the world will welcome. Now is the time to show British bees, British farmers and the British food and drink producers that we are on their side, and will work with them to tackle this significant problem for our health, our well-being and our environment.