Honey Bee Health

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Mr. Benton. Every time I speak in Westminster Hall, I come with a well prepared, thoroughly thought through and balanced response, and on every occasion—I do not know why I continue to be taken aback—I have to depart from it because of the well argued and elegant contributions of other Members, such as those we have heard this morning on this important subject. I want to mention the contributions made by Members who have since left this Chamber: my hon. Friends the Members for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) and for Stroud (Mr. Drew). Although not all the Members who have taken part in the debate are beekeepers—I certainly am not—it seems that there are many more beekeepers in the House of Commons than I would have thought was likely. I hope that I am not breaking a confidence, but I know that the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Sir Michael Lord) used to be a beekeeper. I congratulate the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) on securing the debate. I will not be able, in the short time I have to respond, to cover all the points raised, or to give the kind of detail I would like to share with Members on our thinking for the next steps of our programme to understand the issue, work out a plan for tackling problems in bee health and take it forward. I will respond quickly to some of the key points that have been made. To all those who have expressed concern about whether we should have a voluntary or compulsory registration scheme for beekeepers, I say that my instinct is always, wherever possible, to encourage co-operation through a voluntary method. If we look at the experience of other countries wrestling with the problem, we will see that there are mixed views on, and experience of, compulsory schemes. Although we may need to keep it under review, I prefer to proceed with a voluntary scheme. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare was worried about whether BeeBase will be a development or extension of Big Brother and how we will use the inspectors. I want to respond to the debate and to discuss the increased funding for the National Bee Unit. If he is successful in establishing an all-party group on bees, which I encourage him to do, I will be the first to invite it to visit the NBU at the Food and Environment Research Agency's base in York. I am sure that the unit would be delighted to be visited by interested MPs and that the House would benefit from Members having the opportunity to meet the unit's staff and our inspectors to understand more about their comprehensive programme of work. I enjoyed the contribution of the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink). I did not agree with everything he said, but I was interested to hear some of the comments on how beekeeping used to be taught. Those are all issues we will want to consider carefully, but the increased funding for the NBU is only one part of our programme. I must pay tribute to my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Rooker for laying the foundations of the work, which I was then able to accelerate, in response to what was clearly developing into a pressing problem. We give him full credit and are grateful for that work. The healthy bee plan has been published. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare quite rightly advised us not to use puns in this debate, and we debated vigorously and humorously what to call our healthy bee plan. The Co-operative beat us to the name, "Plan Bee", so we decided to go for the much more prosaic and downbeat, "Healthy Bees". None the less, it is a serious programme of work, and we are absolutely committed to seeing it taken forward. Another part of our plan relates to research. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) is a hard man to argue with on the matter, as he knows so much more than I do about it, and I agree in large part with what he said. The research programme will be robust and carefully evaluated. I wish to reassure the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr. Vaizey), whom I congratulate on his entertaining speech, that we certainly hope to see the first project starting before the end of 2009. The call for proposals is already being made, and we are now in the spring, so I reassure him and encourage those who might be considering putting in bids for research that we are inviting people to make those now. It is important that I join others in paying tribute to the British Beekeepers Association for its role in raising the profile of the issue. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that its research paper will be considered not only by me and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but by those who will determine the shape of the research as it proceeds, so it will inform decisions on the research. I have been asked several detailed questions, but if I do not manage to answer them all, I will write as fully as possible to every Member who has participated in the debate. I have been asked how much will be spent on honey bees from the research programme. I want to share with Members the carefully crafted advice that I have received on that:""I would expect the research allocation to be broadly proportionate to the importance of honey bees, relative to other pollinators."" The fact that we refer to our plan as the honey bee plan indicates how important we accept honey bees to be. They are, as the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare rightly noted, the first pollinators out in spring. In the short time I have left I wish to pay tribute to Martha Kearney. Watching her documentary was one of the few occasions recently when I have been able to say that the BBC did a really good job. It was an excellent programme. Those who missed it should watch it, because it was balanced and explained carefully the full range of challenges facing bees. [Hon. Members: "The Bee Bee Cee."] I will not be drawn down that route. Those responsible for the research funding will seek to ensure a balanced programme. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie) made a good speech in which he congratulated the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government for their contribution, and I agree with him on that. One of the reasons why we made the announcement on funding after the announcements on the healthy bees plan and on our commitment to the NBU, was that we were working hard to bring together all the partners. As I have said, I will write to Members in greater detail. I am grateful to those who have acknowledged the Government's commitment to the issue. We have a lot of work to do on it, but I can promise all those interested that the Government take the issue extraordinarily seriously. I think that any half-way educated person can appreciate the importance of bees to our environment, our food chain and, therefore, our country.