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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if her Department will respond to the findings of the report entitled Oilseed rape and neonicotinoids, by 38 Degrees, published in September 2015.

The report by 38 Degrees questions the need for neonicotinoids to protect oilseed rape and argues that no emergency authorisation for this use of neonicotinoids should be granted in 2016.

Emergency authorisation is a procedure set out in law. All applications for emergency authorisation in the UK, including those for neonicotinoids, are decided according to the criteria in the legislation following an expert assessment of the scientific data. Two recent applications were assessed on that basis and were found not to meet the criteria for authorisation.