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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what resources are being allocated to prevent the spread of pests and diseases affecting the natural environment, including trees and woodland, and what assessment they have made of whether they are sufficient.

Protecting our country from plant and tree pests and diseases is important for our economy, the environment and society and is one of Defra’s strategic priorities.

In 2013 the independent Tree Health and Plant Biosecurity Expert Taskforce assessed the threat to the health of our plants from pests and diseases and made eight recommendations to strengthen our approach, which were all accepted by Defra. The Plant Biosecurity Strategy sets out our plans to enhance existing risk-based activity and to develop new and innovative approaches such as the now publicly available plant health risk register.

As part of our risk-based approach, agreed management approaches for pests and diseases are periodically reviewed so that we can ensure our responses are appropriate and lessons are learned for the future.

Defra’s spend on plant health policies is now around £30 million per year, which includes policies to protect tree health.

Defra is the lead department for plant and tree health. We published the Tree Health Management Plan in April 2014, setting out priority areas for action and outlining how the Government is working with others to manage tree pests and diseases. We work with other Government departments and agencies, as well as stakeholders from across industry and non-government organisations to address different plant and tree health issues. This work includes a programme of training and awareness-raising about biosecurity risks for other Government Departments and stakeholders such as food retailers.