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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will meet the Sheep Dip Sufferers Support Group to discuss the effects of organophosphates.

My hon. Friend will be aware that I met the Sheep Dip Sufferers Support Group about a year ago and discussed this issue in depth. The Committee on Toxicity has looked at this issue exhaustively, examining 26 different studies over a period of more than a decade, and concluded that in the absence of acute poisoning there would not be meaningful long-term effects.

To the best of my knowledge there is no new scientific evidence available that would alter this conclusion. I am sympathetic to farmers suffering from ill health but at this time I do not feel a further meeting would be beneficial.