My Lords, clearly we are all aware that farmers and growers have had to deal with some pretty formidable challenges over recent years, including the rising costs of fertiliser, feed and energy. It is really important that we do everything we can to support farmers going forward.
I absolutely understand the concerns that have been raised about any prospect of further crop loss due to disease or insect infestation, as well as the anxiety around the kinds of tools that farmers can use to protect their crops and to prevent any problems and the financial consequences that come from them.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, just mentioned the national pesticide action plan, as did the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. I note that, when this was debated in the Commons at the end of last month—only last week, in fact—the Minister said that it would come “soon”. We have been hearing that for quite some time. If the Minister is unable to give any more detail on that today, it would be good if he could press his department to come up with a more concrete date so that we all know when we are likely to see the plan.
I have a few questions about certain things. First, I am sure that noble Lords who have heard me speak before know that I am particularly interested in consultation. The Explanatory Memorandum says that feedback from informal stakeholder engagement was strongly supportive of the proposed extension. I would like to understand better what is meant by informal stakeholder consultation. Who did the Government consult? How is that managed? I ask out of interest.
I want to make the point that we support the extension. However, it is not clear how the time limit of three and a half years was arrived at for the provisions. Other noble Baronesses have mentioned the fact that the NFU is concerned about that date. Again, more understanding of how the date was arrived at and whether it had anything to do with the informal consultation that took place would be helpful.
Although we support the extension, we believe that it needs to be temporary. During this time, growers, farmers and researchers need to be effectively and productively looking for alternative crop protection solutions. We urge Defra, the Minister and his department to look at how they can encourage the development of alternatives and outline any measures that the Government are taking to facilitate and accelerate the development of alternative systems for crop protection.
I do not know whether the Minister has seen the very good report that was published in January this year and produced by the Pesticide Collaboration, Designing Pesticide Reduction Targets for the UK. It looks at what is happening in other European countries, such as Denmark and Germany, that have set pesticide reduction targets. One thing that the report does, which I draw to the Minister’s attention, is to highlight the inadequacies of existing pesticide usage data as a major barrier to both setting and measuring progress towards the UK’s pesticide reduction targets. What are the Government doing around this? When we get the national action plan, will it have those reduction targets in place? Will it have a plan for how to get there and how we will invest in new methodologies?
I have a couple of final questions. Looking at how we will move forward, where, if at all, does the gene editing Act fit in with this? In particular, how will that Act fit in with the pesticide national action plan when we see it? While we were debating that Act in this House, all the briefings and a lot of the information that came from the Government and noble Lords at the Dispatch Box related to how researchers and industries were expected to move quickly, for example to reduce reliance purely on chemicals. Answers to those questions would be very helpful.
Finally, I ask about the level of information that the new system will require for any future authorisations to be given. The reason for asking this is because, previously, the Government have admitted that they intend to ask for less safety information for registration of chemicals in the UK. My question is really to find out if this will extend to seed treatments. If so, we could see things authorised in the UK that would not be used in other jurisdictions. Some clarification would be most helpful.