Caroline Lucas – 2023 Speech on Bee-killing Pesticides in Agriculture

The speech made by Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2023.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on—once again—securing this important debate, having also secured last year’s Westminster Hall debate on neonicotinoids in response to the Government’s previous so-called emergency authorisation.

I am deeply sorry that we keep needing to have this debate, particularly when the Government’s rhetoric should mean that greenlighting highly toxic pesticides is unthinkable. Yesterday the Government published their environmental improvement plan, which aims to provide

“a comprehensive delivery plan for the Government’s approach to halting and then reversing the decline in nature.”

That goal is very welcome and should align domestic policy with a commitment in the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework, agreed by almost 200 countries in December. However, it is in precisely that context that last week’s decision on neonics is so utterly incoherent and inconsistent.

Sadly, this is not an isolated case of Ministers failing to live up to their own greenwash. Just last month, the Office for Environmental Protection reported that not one of the 23 environmental targets examined was on track to be achieved, and 14 were clearly off-track. We also have the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill risks, under which we risk scrapping a staggering 1,700 environmental regulations overnight—vital laws that cover areas such as pesticides, food, nature, air and water quality, to name just a few.

Now we have the so-called emergency approval in England of this banned pesticide—a type of neonicotinoid —for the third year in a row. It is a poison so powerful that some have said that a single teaspoon is enough to kill 1.25 billion bees. It has been said that neonics affect the central nervous system of insects and bees’ ability to forage and navigate. A recent study showed that just one exposure could affect a bee’s ability to reproduce in future years.

Nature’s decline is no more alarming than when it comes to insects. As we have heard, the UK has lost half its insects in the past 50 years alone. I say “lost” but I do not like that word, because we have not lost them; we have destroyed them—let us face up to what is going on here. More than 40% of the earth’s remaining 5 million insect species are now threatened with extinction. The loss of these vital pollinators is truly terrifying to comprehend. It raises the question of how on earth the Government can say in one breath that they are halting—let alone reversing—biodiversity loss, when they are also pursuing such wanton destruction.

Of course, it is particularly alarming that this approval comes, once again, against the advice of the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides, which maintains that the risk to bees and other pollinators did not warrant the authorisation. As we have heard, the committee said:

“the requirements for emergency authorisation have not been met”.

It could not be much clearer. The approval is also contrary to guidance, which is clear that emergency applications should not be granted more than once—the clue is in the name.

The Minister may attempt to argue that sugar beet does not flower, so there is no risk to bees, but that is plainly false. Neonics were banned for use on flowering crops in 2013, but were also banned for use on non-flowering crops such as sugar beet in 2018, when it became clear that their use was contaminating soils, streams and hedgerow wildflowers and, by extension, affecting bees. Flowering so-called “weeds” also grow in fields that attract bees, not just in the current year but in subsequent years, when neonicotinoids are still present in the soil.

I remind colleagues of the findings of the Environmental Audit Committee report on pollinators and pesticides from 10 years ago. I sat on that Committee and was involved in taking the evidence that went into the report. I particularly recall this recommendation:

“Defra policy on pesticides must be evidence-based. Where the available scientific evidence is either incomplete or contradictory, Defra must apply the precautionary principle.”

Actually, I would argue that the evidence here is not incomplete or contradictory. Even if it were, DEFRA should apply the precautionary principle, but I think we can all agree that that the precautionary principle has been chucked out of the window when it comes to this decision and many others. So I ask the Minister quite simply: what is the point of the environmental principles policy statement, which was published just yesterday, if environmental principles are not applied in practice? I urge him to look again at this decision.

Before we left the EU, Ministers waxed lyrical about a green Brexit. The Minister is no doubt aware—and we have heard this from the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier)—that the European Court of Justice ruled on 19 January that emergency derogations for neonics are illegal, so the rest of Europe will not be using these bee-killing chemicals. Is that what the Government mean by the so-called opportunities that Brexit provides? Will he now reassure me that the existing restrictions on neonics and other harmful pesticides will be maintained as part of the Government’s review of retained EU law? They very clearly must be.

In conclusion, I want to probe the Minister on long-term solutions. As is patently clear, when we are the midst of a nature emergency, so-called emergency approvals of neonics every year are inappropriate and unsustainable, and they have to stop. We need an approach that safeguards both food production and biodiversity for the future. These things are not separate; they are intimately connected and dependent one on the other.

I welcome the inclusion of integrated pest management in the new sustainable farming incentive, with payments for insecticide-free farming. However, I am concerned that it could just end up being a tick-box exercise, where farmers complete an IPM assessment and produce a plan but are under no obligation to take practical action. Will the Minister commit to remedying that issue, too?

We need a much more concerted move towards IPM, where we use chemical pesticides only ever as a last resort, if at all, rather than continuing our current reliance on banned neonics. Will the Minister therefore commit to further support for IPM? Will he explain what alternatives are being trialled to prevent emergency authorisations in the future? And will the Government bring forward more investment in farmer-led research, practical advice and peer-to-peer learning?