Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what monitoring will be taking place to assess the impact of the approved use of thiamethoxam on sugar beet to the wider environment, including on soils, freshwaters, aphid predators, and wild pollinators.

Ministers considered scientific evidence on human health and environmental risks and received advice from the Health and Safety Executive, the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides and Defra’s Chief Scientific Adviser. This advice is available publicly. This advice has informed the overall decision and shaped the strict controls attached to the authorisation which have been put in place to mitigate risks to pollinators and other species.

Industry will be carrying out monitoring activity of aphids, their resistance and infectivity at up to 15 sites in each of the four factory areas. This will provide advice on future control strategies. As a condition of the authorisation, industry will also monitor neonicotinoid-treated sugar beet fields in 2022 to determine any neonicotinoid seed treatment residue levels in soil and plants. The Government will continue to monitor water quality at a number of sites through our Catchment Sensitive Farming programme, with over 30 samples a month across the network tested for presence of all neonicotinoids along with another 350 pesticides.