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The Minister, I hope, has found me uncharacteristically reasonable, muted and prepared not to blame the Government but to make suggestions and work with them. I see him nodding assenthe has never seen me in this state in all the years in which we have known each other, both in another place and in this oneand I find myself caught rather by surprise. He need not fear, first, that I am going to blame the Government for the entire problemI wish that I could, but I cannotor, secondly, that I am going to call for massive new public expenditure or an enormous new bureaucracy, although I do think that the money needs to be spent in the way in which my noble friend Lord Moynihan pointed out. He certainly does not have to fear that I am going to call for the appointment
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Neither am I going to suggest, the Minister will surely be relieved to hear, that there should be some sort of bee summit in No. 10, with the Prime Minister being forced to pose, looking interested, beside a hive introduced into the garden after the discussions are all over. No; we need a common-sense approach to this issue. I hope that the Minister will respond to my considered and modest suggestions, but respond much more clearly and in terms to the magnificent and highly important speech of my noble friend Lord Moynihan.
Lord Burnett: My Lords, I should draw the attention of the House to my declaration of interests; I own agricultural property, and my law firm has an agricultural practice which, I believe, includes beekeepers. Unlike Dr Vince Cable from the other place, I am not a beekeeper and, as will become apparent, my expertise in this field is limited. However, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on calling for this debate on an important and far-reaching problem. I also congratulate the British Beekeepers Association and Mr Tim Lovett, its president, for alerting the country to the consequences of varroa and other diseases that are currently devastating the bee population in this country and much of the rest of the world. I also congratulate them on the work that they are doing to assist in overcoming those diseases and problems.
The Governments announcement of additional funding on 21 April for research into bee health has also rightly been welcomed throughout the House. The role of bees is crucial in the pollination of plants and many other aspects of our ecology. Bee products, such as honey and beeswax, have great nutritional and other benefits. In a well-known shop the other day, I picked up some honey lip balm and some almond milk beeswax hand creamnot for my own use but for somebody elses. The therapeutic effects of beeswax and honey are legendary, but the role of bees in facilitating pollination and the ecosystem is essential.
The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, was absolutely correct that there is considerable public interest in this matter. I learnt from an article in the Daily Mail of 19 May that Albert Einstein is reputed to have said,
If the bee disappeared from the surface of the Earth, Man would have no more than four years to live.
I also learnt from the article that:
It is estimated that bees contribute about £850 million a year to Britains economy simply by pollinating commercial crops.
I am informed that there is considerable concern about the threat of bee colony collapse disorder, which has been devastating the beekeeping industry in the United States of America. An inexplicable loss of worker bees has resulted in between 50 per cent and 90 per cent of colonies dying across the United States.
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As I have said, bees not only provide a potential pollination service for crops and wild plantsa very important servicebut they are vital for world agriculture and horticulture, pollinating not only food crops but particularly fruit and vegetables. The decline of the bee population is having a terrible impact on subsistence farmers in many developing countries. The importance of the problem in the United Kingdom is also demonstrated, as I understand it, by the Scottish Government and the Wellcome Trust making contributions to research grants.
The honey bee is the principal pollinator and is of immense economic significance in plant pollination. The funding has been welcomed but, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, it is essential to ensure that its bulk will go on bee health research. I hope that the Minister will reply on this point and assure the House and the British public that this is exactly what is happening. It would also be interesting to hear from the Minister what research is being done in the United States, as well as in other countries, and what level of co-ordination there is between our British research bodies and those of the United Statesand, for that matter, those of other countries being blighted by this dreadful disease. It is a worldwide problem; all countries should learn from one another and be only too happy to pool research and information.
Finally, for agriculture there are a number of tax advantages: for example, tax averaging for income tax purposes. Can the Minister confirm whether those advantages are available to this countrys hard-pressed beekeepers? There is much important work to be done, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister on what progress is being made.
The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, the House is much in the debt of my noble friend Lord Moynihan for bringing up this timely topic for us to discuss. I declare my interest in the welfare of bees as a countryman and a farmer. I notice that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that the economic value of crops grown commercially in the UK that benefit from bee pollination is around £120 million to £200 million per annum. I presume that that refers to crops with an immediately marketable value.
Another aspect follows on from the debate that was concluded in this House earlier on the need for an intensive strategy to reduce carbon emissions if we are to meet the Governments 2050 target. The area of relevance to the case we are considering is the substitution of artificial nitrogenous fertiliserswhich represent a huge generation of CO2with bacterial nitrogen fixation in crops, which at the moment is confined to leguminous
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The effect of disease on bees seems fairly straightforwardthey die. I am not a beekeeper and so am not aware of actions that may be taken to heal them after disease has struck, although I believe that it is possible to remove healthy bees from a hive containing European foulbrood. As mentioned by my noble friend, the Government have persuaded key research funders to devote an extra £8 million to bee health research. This is most welcome as the previous figure of £2 million was patently inadequate. From what my noble friend Lord Moynihan said, it seems that this extra money will come from other budgets and not directly from Defra.
The British Beekeepers Association has been active, and in its document, Honey Bee Health Research Concepts, has identified the key research projects that it would like to be pursued. Has this list been incorporated as part of the Defra bee health strategy, as I understand there has been criticism of the level of consultation that was undertaken in drawing up this policy? Like other noble Lords, I have received briefing from the University of Sussexs specialist apiculture department. It is encouraging to see the four projects that it already has under way, and which in some ways mirror those mentioned by my noble friend Lord Moynihan. Do the Government have plans to extend this kind of research by similar outside agencies, or will their efforts be concentrated on their own research facilities such as the National Bee Unit?
The Governments report, The Health of Livestock and Honeybees in England, makes a number of points that give me cause for concern. Defra estimates that there are 40,000 beekeepers and keeps a database containing details of 17,000 active beekeepers, which is roughly half of all those who keep bees in England and Wales. It also keeps a record of 14,300 who have kept bees but do not now have any. This sounds a little bit like the DNA database, and, one wonders, at what cost? Have the several thousand revisions identified through the Bee Unit inspectors survey been entered in the records?
Returning to the worries of my noble friend Lord Patten, I have been informed that one initiative springing from this new emphasis on the health of bees is to compile a complete register of all beekeepers in the country. What budget has been estimated for the cost of obtaining and registering the details of the remaining number? This type of exercise is a statisticians delight but, given that so much research is required, is that really the most effective use of the money?
Most of my information comes from the National Audit Offices excellent publication, The Health of Livestock and Honeybees in England, published on 4 March this year. Section 4.13 deals with imported exotic diseases of honeybees. The facts are astounding to one who seldom, if ever, considers bees and fatal disease in the same breath. The spread of the varroa mitewhich was much mentioned this afternoonhas been inexorable. It has developed resistance to traditional treatments and is now regarded by Defra as impossible to eradicate. It was removed from the list of notifiable diseases in March 2006. Instead, the National Bee Unit has issued guidance on methods of killing the mite and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate has begun talks in Europe aimed at relaxing the licensing requirements for treatments. There are annual imports of some 9,000 queen honeybees into England and Wales. Of these, in 2008, 5,500 came in 103 consignments from the EU and were subjected to a 10 per cent physical check, which identified two cases of notifiable disease. Imports from the rest of the world came in the form of 63 consignments, containing a total of nearly 4,000 queen honeybees. All of them were physically examined and disease or pests were found in 24 consignmentsthat is, 38 per cent. None of the diseases found was notifiable, but some of them were known to weaken bee colonies, making them more vulnerable to more serious infections.
I find myself wondering how our bees have come to suffer both from varroa and sudden colony collapse. Is it because the infecting agent is airborne? Does it come in on imported fruit and foods carried by commercial transport, or conceivably in passenger luggage? Is it perhaps the result of the evolution of some other bug which lives here and in its original form may not even affect bees? However it begins, the disease of the varroa or sudden colony collapse variety threatens crop fertility in our fields, gardens and allotments. The severity of this threat ranges from the loss of output of £120 million per year, of which we spoke earlier, to the scenario mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Burnett, of the annihilation of the human race within four years. I do not believe either scenario and consider that such guessing games to be irrelevant, provided we take the actions necessary to protect our bees from disaster.
I have been involved in farming and country management most of my life and I regret that it is most unusual for any farmer or major landowner to keep his own bees for his own crop. There are increasingly those who have in recent years made considerable efforts to ensure that they grow the sort of products that attract bees to their land. They are aware of the importance of bees to husbandry in general, but do not seem to be able to take steps to import their own bees, to house their own colonies or to encourage others to keep bees close to their land. Have the Government discussed this possibility with the NFU or have they commissioned the Bee Unit to try to extend the range and numbers of those involved?
The report that I referred to makes a number of points that give further cause for concern. It speaks of an online database linked to a website, together known as BeeBase, which supplies details of the incidence of disease and guidance on best practice. The report,
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This failing is made even more important by the finding, noted in paragraph 4.17, that,
The report states that nearly 80 per cent of reported cases of notifiable disease are found by members of the Bee Unit in the course of inspecting hives; 17 per cent are notified by beekeepers already on the database, but only 3 per cent by non-registered keepers. The report comments that if disease is present in the same proportion in colonies belonging to unregistered beekeepers as in those whose details are on the database there is more than twice as much bee disease in this country than has been identified. The report goes on to suggest that this extra level of disease is not being notified because the beekeepers concerned do not know how to identify notifiable diseases or are unaware of the requirement to notify any they find. This is an important problem.
Will the Minister take urgent steps to ensure that the website conforms to government standards? Will he then instruct Defra to advertise the website in other publications that are likely to reach the 17,000-odd hobby beekeepers not on the database and not in regular touch with other beekeepers? I suggest, for example, putting an advertisement in county council newsletters that are delivered to local homes once or twice each year, on the premise that someone with one hobby may well have another. It might also be possible to put an advertisement on the main noticeboard of every further education college in England and Wales.
Let us hope that our efforts today will bring the issue of bee survival further up the agenda of peoples concerns.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on introducing such an important topic and speaking to it in such a constructive way. I am grateful to him for several of the points that he made.
I should emphasisethis is a partial response to the anxiety expressed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, about the means of communicationthat there are 44,000 beekeepers in the United Kingdom and only 300 professional bee farmers. It is easy enough to relate to the professionals but much more difficult to deal with the enormous number of beekeepers who have only one or two hives and, as the noble Duke indicated, are difficult to communicate with and often lack essential knowledge. I assure him that we will take on board his point about how our communication might be more effective. I certainly accept his injunction about cleaning up the website and getting rid of some
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I have absolutely no answer for the noble Duke on the wonderful question of whether we have a monetary analysis, which I think is what he really wanted, of the value of nitrogen fixation in leguminous crops in the United Kingdom. I can only just pronounce the concept, let alone produce an answer to his question. I have not the faintest idea about that and am not sure whether anyone in government has, but if an answer emerges I shall assuredly write to him.
There is one other point with which I want to deal briefly. The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, mentioned the United States, where there are very real anxieties about the bee population. The only point of solace that I can give in discussing a very real problem requiring urgent action is that, unlike the United States, we do not have a massive industry in bee movement for the specific pollination of farmers crops. That is particularly the case with almond nut crops in the United States, where bees are cultivated and carried vast distances to pollinate farmers crops at particular times of the year. We do not have that movement problem in the United Kingdom, so in that sense we can be a little more confident of keeping control over the issues than in the United States, from where we hear from time to time the most alarming messages about the bee population. Of course, those messages are a warning to us about why our action here needs to be effective.
We recognise the point that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, made in introducing the debate about the significance of honey bees for pollination and their importance to the nations food and to our economy as a whole. Honey bees are facing a growing number of threats from pests and diseases, including the varroa mite, which poses a significant challenge to beekeepers. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cameron, that certain aspects of this matter fall to the Scottish Executive and Scottish Ministers, as he will appreciate, but I assure him that they are addressing the issues in the same way and with the same urgency as Defra is addressing them in England.
With regard to the withdrawal of the regulations, given that the noble Lord, Lord Patten, has held out the olive branch of co-operation today, I am obviously going to have to co-operate with him, and therefore I find myself, rather as he indicated, in a possibly unique position. I agree with him entirely that we should not overregulate. The regulations are just not working because they are not controlling varroa, and there is absolutely no point in insisting on retaining them if they are not producing an effect. We should address ourselves to dealing with the problem, and I shall approach that issue in a moment. However, there is an element of deregulation, which I am sure will commend itself to the noble Lord.
Today, I particularly want to emphasise the work that we are already undertaking. I cannot answer the question about whether bee inspectors wear uniforms, but they certainly do not have police powers. There are
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Lord Patten: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, who is being so helpful. It may be difficult for him to answer the question today, but I asked specifically whether in recent years the number of bee inspectors had been reduced. If the noble Lord cannot give an answer this afternoon, perhaps he will write to me. My noble friend Lord Moynihan and I wonder whether a call for volunteers to help the bee inspectorate would appeal to the Minister.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, it might appeal to the Minister, but bee inspectors have to be trained and need expertise. Transforming volunteers into effective bee inspectors is quite a challenge. I emphasise that the National Bee Unit is a serious unit, on which we rely a great deal as one of the weapons that we are deploying to tackle the issues that we face. The main activities are inspection and enforcement. The bee inspectors are out in the field, controlling notifiable pests and diseases. The unit is responsible for research and development. It also has that crucial role of communication, which the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, suggested needed to be fulfilled as effectively as possible. It has a crucial role in advising beekeepers, which is a significant task. The unit contributes to the evidence-based policy development, including identifying risks to bee health from current and emerging threats. The National Bee Unit is critical to this challenging issue that we all face.
The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, identified for the House aspects of government activity in terms of the Healthy Bees plan, which the Government published in March after considerable publicity. The plan comes from the recognition that honey bees are facing a number of threats from pests and diseases. It gives direction and focus for the Government, beekeepers and other stakeholders to work together to respond effectively to the threats and to sustain honey bees and beekeeping now and in the future. There is no doubt that the challenge to beekeepers is significant. The plan, as rightly identified by the noble Lord, sets out to keep pests, disease and other hazards to as low a level as possible. It sets out standards of good beekeeping and seeks to establish effective biosecurity to prevent the spread of pests and diseases. It will ensure that everything that we do is underpinned by sound science and evidence.
I shall come on to the science in a moment, because the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and other noble Lords put great emphasis on the research aspect, which is of the greatest importance. Of course, the plan is an attempt to get everyone to work together on a common problem, or I should say problems, because we do not know what the individual problem is. The challenge is enormous. In response, on top of the current £1.3 million a year that is allocated, the National Bee Unit will receive an additional £2.3 million over
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The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, is the £2.3 million part of the extra funding that the Minister talked about?
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, the extra funding, which I am coming to in a moment, relates specifically to research. It is not part of that.
The third priority, which the noble Lord emphasised to me, is that we have our databases up to date. They are a key source of free advice, training and information for beekeepers in this interesting but diverse industry.
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