Business of the House

This is going to sound very trivial, but it is actually quite important to our landscape and countryside. May we have a debate on conkers or, perhaps more properly, on invasive pathogens on native British trees? Horse chestnuts are being assailed by Phytophthora, leaf miner caterpillar and, most seriously of all, by Pseudomonas syringae—a new and very aggressive disease, which has affected possibly 50 to 75 per cent. of the native horse chestnut population. We do not want to see the same sort of depredation that happened to elms as a result of Dutch elm disease, so may we have a debate to discuss what can be done?