It is a pleasure to follow my fellow Select Committee Chairs, my right hon. Friends the Members for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) and for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill), who spoke expertly and forensically about some of the results of their inquiries.
One of the pleasures of chairing the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee is that we are spoilt for choice with the range of fascinating subjects into which to inquire, and on which the world’s experts are only too happy to give us tutorials in public for other Members and the wider public to see, so it is very difficult to choose particular subjects from among those we have in mind. We are enthusiastic about most of the subjects we choose, as we are finding new technologies that can make huge positive differences to the world. So it is unusual for the title of an inquiry we have conducted to have a slightly minor key element to it. We talk about “Insect decline”, and that is because the members of my Committee are worried about the regression or backward steps that we have unfortunately seen as a country in biodiversity, particularly with respect to insects, over many decades.
Our report reminds us that insects, and indeed all other invertebrates, are significant not only for their intrinsic importance as part of life on earth and in contributing to the richness of our natural world, but in making an essential contribution to the supply of food, as both my right hon. Friends mentioned. Pollination is the most obvious example, but they also have crucial roles to play in managing crop pests—I think that is a euphemism for consuming crop pests—maintaining the health of the soil and recycling nutrients from waste.
The first thing to say is that although data is surprisingly patchy, such data as we have and its interpretation by experts show that UK insects have indeed been in decline. Whether that is measured by abundance of insects, which is the number of insects found in a particular place; the diversity of insects, which is how many different species are present in a particular place; or the distribution of insects, which is the number of places in which insects can be found, all three measures indicate a decline in insects in the UK.
Even though the UK is one of the best-monitored countries in the world when it comes to insects, with surveys such as the Rothamsted insect survey, which began in 1964 and the UK butterfly monitoring scheme, which started in 1976, the wealth of knowledge that we have tends to be concentrated into relatively few insect groups, principally moths, butterflies, aphids and bees. The bee is a well-studied species, but of the 2,000 species
of bee in Europe, more than half have little or no data associated with them to establish their conservation status, whether that is vulnerable, threatened or of least concern. Our report recommends that the funding authorities, such as UK Research and Innovation should give greater attention to long-term monitoring by improving budgets. The UK pollinator monitoring survey has a budget of only £216,000 a year for such a vital piece of longitudinal information. The celebrated Rothamsted insect survey has a budget that equates to £440,000 a year. These foundational studies are much less well-funded than many other studies that we see.
We also recommend that monitoring takes place over the long term, beyond the five-year duration of the typical research grant, and the reasons for that are obvious. If we want to see trends that take account of the year-to-year variations in the climate that we inevitably experience, we need that long-term commitment. As well as maintaining the coverage of the existing surveys, we should look to institute their equivalent covering a wider range of species, including those not currently covered.
Knowing the trends on abundance is one thing—it is important to proceed on the basis of evidence—but we want to halt decline. We have established that there is decline, and we should halt and reverse the decline that has taken place, so policy, as well as data, is important. The national pollinator strategy that many Members in this debate will be familiar with is an excellent model for that, and my Committee strongly commends it, but as I said a few moments ago, pollination and pollinators are not the only contribution that insects and wider invertebrates make to our ecology. We recommend that the approach of the national pollinator strategy should be applied to a national invertebrate strategy, containing accountability targets for non-pollinating, but agriculturally beneficial invertebrates.
Even within species such as the bee, there have been concentrations on honeybees, for reasons that are perhaps understandable. Members should not get me wrong—honey beekeeping is important. I am always grateful to my constituent, Mr Lorne Mitchell, who brings me a jar of his delicious honey from Goudhurst every time he comes to my surgery—long may that continue—but honeybees are not the only thing we should worry about. There are more than 270 wild species of bee in the UK, and they need conserving, as well as promoting the pollination advantages of honeybees. We call on DEFRA—I hope the Minister will respond positively to this—to expand the remit of the National Bee Unit to include a focus on wild bee health as well as honey bees.
In this work, it is not just professional entomologists and researchers in our universities and institutions such as Rothamsted who are important, because amateur entomologists have always played an important role in collecting data for research. Every Member will know about the data collections that we have, in some cases going back many decades and even centuries, from amateur enthusiasts who have meticulously compiled data in particular areas. In some respects that is becoming more popular. In the Big Butterfly Count, over 100,000 citizen scientists, as I think we can call them, take part annually. Some amateur entomologists are real experts. In Tunbridge Wells Dr Ian Beavis is an institution, with an encyclopaedic and profound knowledge of the insects of the High Wealds that surpasses that of any professor. Our Committee believes that funding authorities should
be able to allow funding to go to experts of that type, who may not be employed in universities or research institutions, and that they should be able to participate in conferences, publications, and symposia through an outreach of the grants programme to provide opportunities for them.
Both my right hon. Friends referred to many of the agricultural policies that their Committees have looked into and promoted to the Government. My Committee shares the approval that both their Committees give to the statutory targets to halt and reverse species extinction and decline, but we believe they are too narrowly focused. For example, we believe that as well as having a red list of particular species that are at risk of extinction, as we have at the moment, there should also be a baseline list consisting of a wider range of insects and other invertebrates, so that we can monitor progress over time against those baselines, sometimes even before species become a cause for concern.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby spoke about the role of pesticides. That is an important matter and, as he said, we have called for more research to be done. We share the concern of many Members of the House, including those on the Environmental Audit Committee, that the Government are yet to publish a revised national action plan for sustainable pesticide use. That has now been delayed by more than six years since an update was due in February 2018. We believe that an updated plan should include a target for reducing pesticide use in urban and suburban areas, as well as in agricultural settings, following the good practice that we heard in evidence to our inquiry from organisations such as the Royal Horticultural Society about phasing down the use of pesticides in gardens, as it is doing in its important and celebrated garden at Wisley.
Finally, much has been said about stewardship schemes such as the environmental land management scheme that is replacing the EU’s common agricultural policy. There is a big opportunity for the scheme to be beneficial for biodiversity, and specifically as a vehicle for insect decline to be targeted, halted and reversed. We would like integrated pest management, which is a much more holistic and natural way of suppressing pests, to be advanced, tested and deployed as pilots through the early implementation of ELMS. If that is shown to be effective, it should be incorporated as specific actions within ELMS. In promoting biodiversity, not only are we exercising stewardship over our precious natural environment—something every Member of the House is concerned to do—but we can make an important contribution to our economy and national security by ensuring that our supplies of food are more resilient. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points raised, and to the contributions of other hon. Members.
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