My Lords, we have reached the high point of the evening: an amendment about Japanese knotweed. It is actually an amendment about weeds, alien and invasive. I have listed Japanese knotweed and Himalayan Balsam, which I think are now the two biggest nuisances of the invasive alien weeds in this country—and, indeed, from my observation, in much of Europe as well—but this is really an amendment about Japanese knotweed.
I could wax lyrical for hours about Japanese knotweed and the problems that it causes, if you want—but I am sure that you do not, so I shall not do that. I shall merely say that as a weed that has,
“a detrimental effect … on the quality of life of those in the locality”—
to quote the Bill on the subject of community protection notices—it is top of the list.
The Environment Agency has described Japanese knotweed as the most invasive species of plant in Britain. The problems are well known: on river banks, on pieces of land, invading people’s gardens, on building sites and on built sites, it is dreadful. It is an incredibly strong weed, which can grow up through concrete and split it, and cause the foundations of buildings to require attention. It can do all sorts of things, and it spreads very easily. It does not spread in the normal way, by sexual reproduction—not in this country, anyway. In this country the whole thing is apparently
one huge female clone: it is all the same plant. It spreads vegetatively, and if you take a small part of the stem, the root or the leaf and just drop it, the odds are that you will have an infestation in that location before long.
Japanese knotweed causes huge problems. Local authorities attempt to deal with it on their own land—certainly my local authority does, perhaps because I nag it all the time—but it is much more difficult when the weed is on somebody else’s land. What is the law that applies to it? Because of its invasive nature, Japanese knotweed is listed in Schedule 9 and subject to Section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. All that does is make it an offence to plant Japanese knotweed and cause it to grow in the wild. That is all very well if it is in the wild and growing as a weed on waysides or wherever. It does not apply to Japanese knotweed which you have not planted but which is growing on your property and you are not dealing with it. Under cross-compliance rules, if a farmer receives the single farm payment, he is required to take reasonable steps to prevent its spread. Those are the old rules and no doubt they will be rolled forward.
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The Government are carrying out experiments. We have a Question on Japanese knotweed about once a year. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharples, is usually in the forefront of this. There are a lot of laboratory tests to find natural parasites from Japan, which would not eliminate it but would control it and keep it down. In an Answer to a Question from me, the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, said:
“Following rigorous laboratory testing which identified the psyllid Aphalara itadori”—
a psyllid is a little beetle called a jumping plant louse—
“as a suitable biocontrol agent for Japanese knotweed, it was released under licence to two sites in spring 2010, subject to a programme of close monitoring. After reviewing the data collected”,
the,
“licensing authority, approved releases to eight sites in England … in spring 2011. The continuing monitoring has not identified any non-target impacts”.
But it is not doing all that well. The numbers remain low, so additional releases have been made at the sites to boost numbers. The noble Lord continued:
“This rate of progress is not unexpected. Other classical biocontrol programmes have taken five to 10 years from release”.—[Official Report, 22/1/13; col. WA 283.]
What do you do if you are trying to sell your house? Recently, I visited Nelson in Lancashire where there is a row of terraced houses with a cross street across the top. The verge on the other side of the cross street, which is privately owned by adjoining landowners, has a massive infestation of knotweed. Even though it is on the other side of the street, people who wanted to buy a house in the area cannot get a mortgage. Earlier this year a report in, I think, the Observer, set out how this was happening all over the country. The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Building Societies Association got together to try to knock heads together to say, “This is not a reason for not giving mortgages”. From personal experience, I can tell noble Lords that it is still going on.
If your neighbour has this problem it might be a private nuisance but, as such, the council will not do anything about it. I am suggesting that we should have an absolutely firm commitment from the Government that under these new community protection notices the presence of Japanese knotweed on land, particularly land near highways, rivers, buildings or dwellings, would be regarded as a community nuisance and that these provisions could be used to force landowners to get it removed. It is not easy to get it removed but it is possible. It may take two or three years and several sprayings. There are lots of technical aspects to it. For example, if you cut any down, it is controlled waste. You cannot just throw it away or put it on the tip. It has to be disposed of properly.
One of the problems is that people just cut it down and chuck it away. Then a new infestation starts. It is a scourge which is happening all over this country. The existing means are not stopping its spread. The jumping plant louse route is very hopeful and welcome but it will take a long time, perhaps decades, before we dare, or before it is possible, to release these insects into the wild to try to control it.
I believe that people are not taking this issue sufficiently seriously. There should be legislation from central government to make it an offence to have this stuff growing on your land and doing nothing about it. I beg to move.