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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of compliance with the Weeds Act 1959 across the UK.

We have not made an assessment of the effectiveness of the Weeds Act 1959 across the UK. Natural England (the delegated authority for investigating complaints about injurious weeds) monitors compliance with the Act through the collection of data such as the number of enforcement notices issued per year.

There were 37 enforcement notices in 2013. However, we encourage communications between landowners and complainants to try and resolve any issues informally. In the vast majority of cases, this approach is successful.