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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to publish the National Action Plan for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides.

We will publish the National Action Plan for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides (NAP) shortly. It will set out Defra’s ambition to minimise the risks and impacts of pesticides to human health and the environment and the actions that need to be taken to deliver those goals.

We have not waited for the publication of the NAP to move forward with work to support sustainable pest management. Defra has recently funded a package of research projects that will bring together scientific evidence underpinning Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a sustainable way of managing pests, in order to look at ways of further encouraging its uptake. This work will support farmers’ access to the most effective IPM tools available and ensure that we understand changing trends in pest threats across the UK.