Neonicotinoids on Crops

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)]

I am pleased to be speaking today. Like many here, I am a new boy when it comes to learning about bees. However, I followed a wild bee nest at home for about 20 years. Every year it was there; every year it was buzzing. Then, suddenly, it was gone—a badger had climbed up the tree and cleared it out. That is another risk. However, at least that taught me the importance of bees.

I wish you happy birthday, Ms Vaz; I hope you have a more exciting time this evening than you are perhaps having at the moment. I am pleased that those behind the petition have raised the issue before us.

Like everyone else, I want to call for a balanced approach. At home, many farmers come to me saying that the pesticides they use do not work, and that they cannot get the growth they need. On the other side, I have 25 beehives at home—they are not mine—and the man who looks after them is complaining about insecticides, but also about many other things. The neonics are not one of the things he has complained about, although he has complained about the varroa mite among many other issues. We need to concentrate on a whole approach.

I hope the Minister will find a way of balancing what the EU and all the groups here are doing. Equally, I hope he will look at the joint Irish approach being taken north and south of the border; in that way, we will be learning all the time. I am really looking for us to take a dynamic approach so that we are constantly looking at everything, learning all the time, making decisions and, as the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) said, taking no risks. We should make our decisions based on the knowledge we have—if we do not know enough, we should not make the decisions.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a passionate speech. Does he agree that this is one area of public policy debate that unites urban and rural? In Stoke-on-Trent, I have a lot of correspondence, particularly from people with allotments. They live in a highly urban area, but they are just as passionately concerned about this issue as people in more rural communities.

[Danny Kinahan]

I certainly agree. I know that both a rural and urban approach are needed, and there are ways of doing that. If we consider what we know today, we can make decisions and move things forward.

I was keen, as a new boy in this place, to set up an all-party group on bees, so I am fascinated to hear that that has been done. I knew very little about the subject, so I started exploring it. When I went to one of its events in September, people from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds said to me, “Please don’t just go on bees alone; go on all pollinators—the butterflies and everything else. Fine, call it the ‘all-party group on bees’, but we should be looking after all the different insects involved in pollination.”

I had never heard of the solitary bee; what intrigues me about it is that it apparently covers itself in an oil so that it can hide in damp ground. I come from Northern Ireland, where we have lots of damp ground, particularly at the moment, so I imagine we have plenty of solitary bees. The more I got involved in this issue, the more I realised there was to learn.

It has been mentioned today that we have lost 20 species of bee. Let us all learn from that. We need a system that teaches everybody, so that we are all learning about this—children in schools, parents and people in later life, in clubs and in community groups. Let us get everybody involved and learning. That might mean getting councils to use more of their land for beehives and planting the right plants, perhaps at roundabouts and in verges. There are plenty of places we can use.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

8. What progress her Department has made on the establishment of marine conservation zones.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

My Department is awaiting formal advice from Natural England and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, which is due on 18 July. We will then examine all the evidence before us and work towards a public consultation, which we plan to begin in December, with the first tranche of sites being designated in summer 2013.

[Tristram Hunt]

Although it is always best to draw on the widest evidence base for policy, the Department’s guidance is clear that that is not a good enough reason for delaying site selection. We are an island nation and these marine habitats are an extraordinary natural resource. Let us get on with establishing these conservation zones.

[Mrs Spelman]

To refer to an answer I gave earlier, it is clear that policy needs to be made on an evidence base. Therefore, the science advisory panel—an independent body of expert marine scientists—was established to support the four regional projects in selecting marine conservation zones. It offered the objective scientific advice that we need to make decisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paice]

I have explained several times why not. We believe that such a ban would be wide open to judicial challenge, which we might well lose, hence we are using ethical grounds. That will be done as soon as parliamentary time allows.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

My Department takes responsibility for safeguarding the environment, supporting farmers and strengthening the green economy.

In the light of the weekend’s forecast, I urge people to heed flood warnings and follow the advice of the Environment Agency, which has played a remarkable role in difficult circumstances. I will arrange a briefing for all Members in flood-affected constituencies so they can be aware of the full range of help available from the Government before the House rises.

[Tristram Hunt]

Thanks to the Government’s disastrous cancellation of the housing market renewal scheme four years early, my constituency is dotted with derelict brownfield sites. At the Emma Bridgewater factory in Hanley, sunflowers and an urban meadow have been planted. What plans does the Secretary of State have to sit down with colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government to ensure that some of our poorest inner-city communities have access to the natural environment?

[Mrs Spelman]

That is principally a question for the Department for Communities and Local Government, but a close reading of the natural environment White Paper, which was produced by my Department a year ago, will show the attention that we pay to making space for nature, particularly in proximity to urban areas, where it is of disproportionately greater benefit.

Public Forest Estate (England)

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech), who, along with the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), has laid out some of the problems confronting the Government’s proposals. It is a source of legitimate confusion that a party whose new symbol is the oak tree is involved in this extraordinary sell-off of our forests. It was chosen as a symbol of the Tories’ newly discovered environmentalism, belief in British strength and protection of our heritage, but that all seems a long time ago now.

The Government seem to have been taken by surprise at the outburst of concern about their proposals. I think it was Harold Macmillan who said:

“First of all the Georgian silver goes. And then all that nice furniture that used to be in the salon. Then the Canalettos go.”

This Government have surpassed Mrs Thatcher and are now selling the wood that built the furniture that was in the salon. In my view it is a grave error, for which there is no support or mandate.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will recall that a previous Conservative Government sold off the playing fields. This is phase two—selling off the trees and woodlands.

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. The Conservatives have, as they say, previous in this field.

Since the announcement of this Opposition debate, the internet and other social networking sources have come alive with people hoping to save their local forests. Cannock Chase, near my constituency, now has a Facebook site with 2,500 supporters. A YouGov poll suggests that 84% of people oppose the sale. The Secretary of State says that people simply do not understand the proposals and have been misled by the media, but we do understand the Government’s plans and we do not like them, because they will limit public access. The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington spoke about access being allowed to a forest in his constituency, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) says, that was because of principles and legislation that Labour put in place to make sure that access was preserved.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

The issue is not only the potential private ownership of woods, but the nationality of the private company that might own those woods.

[Tristram Hunt]

The matter becomes difficult when we think about where many of our trees have come from. I take my hon. Friend’s point, but the forests and woodlands have come into this country from many sources across the world .

I shall touch briefly on something mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman): the forests and woodlands are a great matter with regard to our national identity. The Government are striking at something very particular to English identity and British identity. In the 18th century the idea of the British heart of oak recurred on pub signs and in pamphlets. It was a bulwark against Catholic absolutism. According to Simon Schama the very idea of Britain, which was new in the late 18th century, was planted with acorns. In 1763 Roger Fisher—a disciple of John Evelyn, the great 17th-century arboreal enthusiast —published “Heart of Oak, The British Bulwark”, in which he argued that empires rose or fell depending on the dearth of the sovereign hardwood.

As Government Members have pointed out, this Government are not the first to try to offload our national forests. King Charles I, in the 1630s, tried to do the same. Again, it was an attempt to limit public ownership: with the forests went the common lands, the moorlands and the wetlands of East Anglia. This is a tradition in Toryism that Opposition Members recognise and do not like. The point of this history is to suggest that this is a shared inheritance, and we are particularly worried about access in the context of the Government’s plans.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

What my hon. Friend is saying is fascinating and excellent. Does he recall that the Forestry Commission was established because of the loss of so much forest cover in this country, designed to recreate the environment that had been destroyed by previous generations and their greed?

[Tristram Hunt]

Absolutely. I do not accept the idea that the state intervening in the control of forests is somehow an evil. I regard it, in many situations, as a virtue.

Let me move on briefly to the situation facing Cannock Chase, which is the woodland that my constituents in Stoke-on-Trent Central like to enjoy. We have heard Ministers provide special securities for the heritage forests, but Cannock Chase does not fall into that particular category. However, it contains precisely the kind of forest that the Woodland Trust is most concerned about—that mixture of ancient habitat, conifer and recreation. Over the past few years the Forestry Commission has opened up access to it, with more and more enjoying it. The idea that local community groups will be able to compete at market value for the same amount of land is simply not credible. There is a lot of talk about community groups having special provision, but history simply does not show that. When we look back at previous Conservative-led Governments, we see that hundreds of thousands of acres were sold off.

The debate points to the core of the Government’s notion of the big society, and there is a hole in the middle of it as large as that in which King Charles II hid from the forces of republicanism. It will take investment—a belief in social capital and in capacity—if those community groups are to be built up to manage our woodlands. Nothing in the consultation or the Public Bodies Bill suggests that that is anywhere near the mind of this Government.

British Waterways

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Thank you for allowing this Adjournment debate, Mr Speaker, on the future of British Waterways. May I also thank the waterways Minister for his presence here tonight?

This topic might seem a rather limited one, of interest only to narrowboat enthusiasts, barge owners, dog walkers and lock-keepers, but it is of profound importance not only for canal-side communities in villages, market towns and cities across the country, but for the intellectual validity of this Government. For what we have before us tonight is a test case for the big society in action. That, in case you missed it, Mr Deputy Speaker, is the Conservatives’ big idea: a commitment to society, not the state, and to people power, not market dogma. My message to the Minister is very simple: we are here to help him. As he begins his grand battle with the Treasury on the future of British Waterways, I want him to know that he has my support against the plunderers and privatisers who work alongside him.

We are an inland nation as much as an island nation; a country shaped as much by our great rivers and historic canals as by our by encircling seas. Take, for instance, my own wonderful constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central. In Simeon Shaw’s 1829 classic, “History of the Staffordshire Potteries”, he writes of how

“in the vale below Burslem, July 26, l766, the first clod was cut of the Trent and Mersey Canal, by the late Josiah Wedgwood, Esq., then recently appointed Potter to the Queen Consort of George III.”

Wedgwood’s interest in canals was driven by profit rather than pleasure. He had already petitioned this place in 1763 for a new system of turnpike roads to allow for the easy carriage of the raw materials needed for his Etruria pottery works as well as the safe delivery of his finished ceramics, but still the road network let him down. So in 1765 he personally subscribed £1,000 for a new canal to connect the Trent with the Mersey and to allow his firm to export both nationally and internationally. The great engineer James Brindley was commissioned for the task and soon his entire network of canals criss-crossed the country, with Staffordshire as their box junction.

To allow for the transport of limestone and coal into Stoke-on-Trent, a new canal was added—the Caldon canal—that stretched from Etruria up into the surrounding moorlands. All that underpinned the boom days of the Potteries. “Pro patria populoque fluit”—it flows for country and people—was the Trent and Mersey’s motto, and the money certainly flowed for Wedgwood.

No wonder the great Adam Smith felt moved to praise canals for

“diminishing the expence of carriage”,

and putting

“the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of the town”.

As a vehicle for the investment of new provincial capital flows and for easing the transport of goods, canals were an essential feature of the first industrial revolution, but by the 1840s, the canal boom had given way to railway mania. Indeed, the consequence of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation meant that the canals and waterways of Britain were soon in danger of becoming open-air sewerage systems.

In 1847, the Scottish novelist Hugh Miller described the Irwell in Salford as

“a flood of liquid manure, in which all life dies, whether animal or vegetable, and which resembles nothing in nature, except perhaps the stream thrown out in eruption by some mud-volcano.”

My old friend Friedrich Engels was equally disparaging about the state of Manchester’s Irk,

“a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream...out of whose depth bubbles of miasmatic gases constantly rise and give forth a stench that is unbearable.”

Railways took over from the canals, canal companies went into liquidation or were run down by railway owners, and local authorities declined to pay for canal upkeep.

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

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s general point about railways taking over from canals, but does he accept that because the Glanusk estate refused to have the dreaded railway across their land, the Mon and Brec canal persisted for a lot longer than most canals?

[Tristram Hunt]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. I bow to his superior knowledge on the specificities of that point and I agree with it. However, there was a broad concern about the control railways had over canals in the late 19th century, which led to their being run down and to a collapse in infrastructure. Tonnage levels fell, canal miles collapsed and locks crumbled.

Eventually, the tide turned. The first stirrings of preservation can perhaps best be traced back to L. T. C. Rolt’s masterpiece, “Narrow Boat”, which described a journey taken in 1939 and expressed a terrible fear that

“if the canals are left to the mercies of economists and scientific planners, before many years are past the last of them will become a weedy, stagnant ditch, and the bright boats will rot at the wharves, to live only in old men’s”—

and we should add women’s—

“memories”.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend speaks eloquently about the history of canals. Does he not agree that the Olympic legacy in east London involves a future for our waterways and that the future of British Waterways, among other bodies, is therefore very important in ensuring that the renaissance of canals continues into the next century?

[Tristram Hunt]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I do so as I shunt towards the future and get away from the past. Having seen the Prescott sluice along the Lea valley, I know the wonders of the valley.

Unfortunately, in the mid-19th century, the Government failed to rise to the task of looking after the future of the waterways. A cash-strapped British Transport Commission could not provide the investment needed to open up the waterways and still focused on freight traffic, rather than on the leisure potential of the waterways. Only with Barbara Castle’s great Transport Act 1968 was British Waterways given a specific mandate to focus on exploiting the enjoyment potential of our rivers and canals. Since then, of course, the transformation has been dramatic. All hon. Members will have witnessed in our constituencies the transformation in water quality and amenities brought about by the new British Waterways strategy. In Stoke-on-Trent, the Caldon canal has been rescued from closure and now provides a stunning route from the urban gothic of the Potteries to the stark beauty of the Staffordshire moorlands. Indeed, we even have our very own Hanley regatta based on the canal.

By the early 2000s, some 200 miles of new and restored waterways were added to the 2,000 mile network—a faster expansion than at the height of the industrial revolution. Moreover, we now have an unprecedented 34,900 licensed boats on the network and some 11 million people visit its waters and banks every year. According to Her Majesty’s Treasury, out of the £330 million total value of inland waterways managed and owned by British Waterways, the amenity and recreational use amounts to £230 million and the use for freight £700,000—but that £700,000 is not to be sniffed at, and it was with great pleasure that we learned that Tesco has begun to move much of its wine stock by canal.

Yet a revived canal network has also proved a highly effective vehicle for some £10 billion-worth of urban regeneration. Whereas once we in this country sought to deny our industrial inland heritage, with buildings jutting up to the canal edge, offering no space for waterside walks or civic space, canals are championed today as placemakers and urban signifiers.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing such a fascinating topic to the Floor of the House. I am delighted to listen to the eloquent things that he says about the value that canals bring to our localities. In my case, the Kennet and Avon is the longest in-water canal in the country—if I may make that proud boast—but I submit that its restoration had much to do with the volunteer activity of the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust, plus a hefty dose of lottery money, delivered not coincidentally under the last Conservative Government. Of course, British Waterways had a part to play in that, but it is much more a reflection of the local love, enthusiasm and energy that the volunteers in my constituency feel for such an important asset.

[Tristram Hunt]

I am in full agreement with the hon. Lady. The wonder of canals is the civil society, the volunteering and the ethos around them. I was a trustee of the Heritage Lottery Fund in a previous life and followed with interest the Kennet and Avon’s progress. We have seen in all sorts of communities along the Kennet and Avon the regeneration aspects brought by canals.

[Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important issue before the House. Does he agree that British Waterways has had most success in promoting regeneration when it has brought its own property, land and buildings to the table with partners and has led those partnerships, and that, if it were to lose control of that property and land and those buildings, it would be very much enfeebled in its ability to promote regeneration?

[Tristram Hunt]

I am in full agreement with my hon. Friend, who brings me to the dark spectre of Her Majesty’s Treasury, which is where we fear that forces are at work that want to access that property in not the most progressive manner. The capacity of British Waterways to use volunteering, to bring in all sorts of other funders and to have that property asset inspires regeneration.

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the way in which he is introducing the debate. As a former waterways Minister, may I tell him that what is striking is the nature of the cross-party consensus in respect not only of canals as a vital part of our heritage, which he has illustrated so well, but of their importance to tourism, regeneration and the environment? Will he invite the Minister to embrace the proposal made in the last Parliament to create a national trust for canals, to secure their long-term future and viability, using the assets to which he refers for the benefit of the long-term future of the canal network and therefore balancing the strengths of the system with the resources to deal with the repair and maintenance requirements, without which the canals will not be much of a heritage for long?

[Tristram Hunt]

I am in full agreement. First, I would like to say what the Minister should not do, which is listen to the Adam Smith Institute, which is keen to privatise British Waterways, and in the process hopes to realise £400 million—a rather low price, I think, for the centuries of heritage as well as the property assets.

There is no doubt, however, that a change in governance is needed. Currently, the nation is underspending by around £30 million a year on its waterways, and, in the words of the British Waterways chairman,

“without the required spend on canal maintenance and repairs the overall physical state of Britain’s waterways will once again go into decline.”

As my right hon. Friend makes clear, the Labour party fought the last general election on precisely that message of reform.

In December 2009, the then Government published details of its asset portfolio and promised

“to consider alternative models for the British Waterways business as a whole, such as mutual or third sector structures.”

That is what my right hon. Friend has described as the National Trust model, whereby British Waterways’ property endowment will be placed in a charity-locked mechanism to fund future maintenance. But this means more than just establishing an effective financial footing. It also means mutualising the governance system by extending democratic control to waterway licence holders, employees, volunteers, partner organisations such as local charities and the lottery, as well as members of the general public. That third sector model will give energy, activism and public buy-in to the sector. We in the Labour movement call it the co-operative principle.

So it was with great delight that I read in the coalition agreement that the Government

“will support the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises, and enable these groups to have much greater involvement in the running of public services.”

I was equally impressed by the Minister’s statement on 21 June where he highlighted the role of civil society in creating what the Government call the big society, and his commitment to look at a third sector model for the future of the waterways.

[Meg Hillier]

Does my hon. Friend, like me, tremble at the thought of the alternative to the model that he proposes—that this asset will be sold off and thereby, once and for all, be out of public control and away from where it should be, which is in the hearts of the public?

[Tristram Hunt]

I am in full agreement. We do not know what would happen were British Waterways to be privatised, in terms of fees, uses and common access, and that sense of heritage, of a past coming down to us. The worry is that the Minister has decided to take no decisions until after the forthcoming comprehensive spending review. My worry is that by the time we reach the CSR, his colleagues in the Treasury might have decided that flogging off the property portfolio was too good an opportunity to miss. We might find ourselves in the awful position of watching the Chancellor stand at the Dispatch Box and sell our national heritage down the proverbial Kent and Avon, in the classic Treasury manner of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

In my constituency, I have a huge swathe of the Grand Union canal, with fantastic marinas such as Braunston and a huge interest of the populace, who spend much of their leisure time around the canals. Given the hon. Gentleman’s analogy that the dark spectre of the Treasury is lurking all around, will he remember that in the dark days of the last Labour Government, when European fines were levied on the Government, money was moved away from the British Waterways budget into other areas to cope with that funding black hole? I would like to think that there is definitely cross-party agreement on the idea of mutualisation in the future.

[Tristram Hunt]

The hon. Gentleman confirms the point that the traditional model of funding is really no longer credible, not least under this Government’s rather aggressive approach to the public finances.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we are in some form of agreement, and that is why we have come together this evening to support the Minister in his lonely pilgrim’s progress against the big beasts of Whitehall. He might call it the big society, we might call it the co-operative spirit, but what we must seek to establish is a modern national trust for British Waterways, and a financially secure, democratic and sustainable future for the inland waterways that made our wealth and now help to shape our national identity.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that very important question. There is a huge amount of concern that some EU countries are less vigorous in enforcing regulations, and it is one of the issues that the taskforce will want to look into. I would just add the caution that when one looks closely at a matter on the ground, it is not always as clear-cut as it appears. If he has a particular case in mind, I will be happy to look into it.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

25. What plans she has for the future of British Waterways.

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

I made a statement on Monday 21 June on inland waterways policy for England and Wales. The Government consider that civil society has a valuable role to play in delivering public services as part of the big society. We will be looking in detail at options for a third sector model that will be appropriate for British Waterways, including the possible inclusion of Environment Agency navigations. No decisions will be taken until after the spending review.

[Tristram Hunt]

The Minister will know that Stoke-on-Trent is blessed with many things, and among them are the great canals of England: the Trent and Mersey and the Caldon canal, where we recently had the Hanley regatta. In order to become a proper third sector organisation, British Waterways needs an appropriate financial settlement following the comprehensive spending review and a longer contract with Government to replace annual grants. Can British Waterways’ property endowment be put in a charity-locked mechanism, so that the Treasury does not sell it down the canal, and we can be assured that, as an example of the big—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I think that we have the gist of his question.