General Election Campaign: Abuse and Intimidation

Debate between Sarah Newton and Bob Stewart

Thursday 14th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. Hate crime is totally unacceptable. No one —whether they are a journalist, police officer, nurse, or anyone else in our country—should be subjected to hate crime.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

It gets worse than that—it goes to children. All my four children have been hassled by other kids in their local schools because of the job of their father. There is little that can be done about that, because they are children. My kids are robust enough to withstand it, but such behaviour is taken to a new level when, during the last general election, a teacher tells the class of my 13-year-old boy that nobody should talk to him because he is the son of a Conservative MP.

Hon. Members: “Shame!”

[Sarah Newton]

I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for sharing with the House such a personal and deeply upsetting and troubling incident that has happened to his son. That is simply unacceptable. It is a noble thing to stand for election; and it is a noble thing to want to represent your community, whether as a councillor or as an MP in this place. People such as teachers who are in a position of authority and influence should be supporting and upholding the shared values of our country. It is most disappointing to hear of somebody in such a powerful and influential position letting themselves and their profession down.

The Government are absolutely clear that this abusive and threatening behaviour that we are increasingly seeing online is totally unacceptable—whoever the target.

National Pollinator Strategy

Debate between Sarah Newton and Bob Stewart

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to volunteers the length and breadth of our country who are doing so much to protect and enhance natural habitats, for pollinators and for a wide variety of species.

I would like to share with colleagues some of the feedback from the bee summit and ask the Minister to consider incorporating the following points into the final strategy. I am very appreciative of the fact that DEFRA’s bee policy lead, Richard Watkins, came to the bee summit—he is also here today—and I pay tribute to the work he has done. He will be able to give the Minister a full briefing on the summit.

I urge the Minister to put at the top of his to-do list the need to integrate pest and pollinator management on farms and to ensure that there is support to enable farmers to do that in the forthcoming changes to CAP payments. Once he has tackled that, there is an urgent need to ensure that all farmers and land managers have access to education about the pollinator strategy and new ways of managing pest control and their crops.

When we consider research on the management of honey bees, there needs to be a clear understanding that the needs of native honey bees will be different from those of their imported cousins, because many of our commercial beekeepers rely on imported bees. However, the native honey bees are very much part of the solution, particularly when looking at how to tackle well-known diseases that pose a threat to our managed bee colonies, such as the varroa mite. I point the Minister to the excellent work of Rodger Dewhurst of the Cornwall Bee Improvement and Bee Breeders Group to encourage the breeding and use of the native Cornish black bees.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

May I ask my hon. Friend, who knows lots more about this than I do, whether there is a risk that the imported bees will attack and kill off our native bees, just as the grey squirrels have done to our red squirrels? Have we got a real problem from abroad?

[Sarah Newton]

My hon. Friend, perhaps without realising it, has hit on an important point, and one that was discussed at length at the bee summit. Importing bees may well have health implications for our native species. One of the things that I will ask the Minister to consider today is conducting research into the relationship between imported farm bees and wild pollinators. It is a serious matter. There are also food security issues, because sadly we have seen some new problems arising in continental Europe, such as a new disease that is being introduced to hives by a type of beetle. Although DEFRA has that under control and we do not believe that it poses a huge threat to our bee hives at the moment, the introduction of disease is always a threat when importing bees. That was one of the findings of our summit, and it is on the list of things I will ask the Minister to consider. Also on that list is the need to ensure that we focus not only on honey bees, vital though they are, but on pollinators that are more difficult to monitor, such as bumble bees, which play an important part in pollination.