Bees

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on introducing such an important topic and speaking to it in such a constructive way. I am grateful to him for several of the points that he made. I should emphasise—this is a partial response to the anxiety expressed by the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, about the means of communication—that there are 44,000 beekeepers in the United Kingdom and only 300 professional bee farmers. It is easy enough to relate to the professionals but much more difficult to deal with the enormous number of beekeepers who have only one or two hives and, as the noble Duke indicated, are difficult to communicate with and often lack essential knowledge. I assure him that we will take on board his point about how our communication might be more effective. I certainly accept his injunction about cleaning up the website and getting rid of some of its imperfections. Work is under way on that. We are all too well aware of how important it is for communication to be effective and accurate, and I am grateful to him for identifying areas where things could be improved. I have absolutely no answer for the noble Duke on the wonderful question of whether we have a monetary analysis, which I think is what he really wanted, of the value of nitrogen fixation in leguminous crops in the United Kingdom. I can only just pronounce the concept, let alone produce an answer to his question. I have not the faintest idea about that and am not sure whether anyone in government has, but if an answer emerges I shall assuredly write to him. There is one other point with which I want to deal briefly. The noble Lord, Lord Burnett, mentioned the United States, where there are very real anxieties about the bee population. The only point of solace that I can give in discussing a very real problem requiring urgent action is that, unlike the United States, we do not have a massive industry in bee movement for the specific pollination of farmers’ crops. That is particularly the case with almond nut crops in the United States, where bees are cultivated and carried vast distances to pollinate farmers’ crops at particular times of the year. We do not have that movement problem in the United Kingdom, so in that sense we can be a little more confident of keeping control over the issues than in the United States, from where we hear from time to time the most alarming messages about the bee population. Of course, those messages are a warning to us about why our action here needs to be effective. We recognise the point that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, made in introducing the debate about the significance of honey bees for pollination and their importance to the nation’s food and to our economy as a whole. Honey bees are facing a growing number of threats from pests and diseases, including the varroa mite, which poses a significant challenge to beekeepers. I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cameron, that certain aspects of this matter fall to the Scottish Executive and Scottish Ministers, as he will appreciate, but I assure him that they are addressing the issues in the same way and with the same urgency as Defra is addressing them in England. With regard to the withdrawal of the regulations, given that the noble Lord, Lord Patten, has held out the olive branch of co-operation today, I am obviously going to have to co-operate with him, and therefore I find myself, rather as he indicated, in a possibly unique position. I agree with him entirely that we should not overregulate. The regulations are just not working because they are not controlling varroa, and there is absolutely no point in insisting on retaining them if they are not producing an effect. We should address ourselves to dealing with the problem, and I shall approach that issue in a moment. However, there is an element of deregulation, which I am sure will commend itself to the noble Lord. Today, I particularly want to emphasise the work that we are already undertaking. I cannot answer the question about whether bee inspectors wear uniforms, but they certainly do not have police powers. There are only 70 bee inspectors and they are crucial to the work that we are doing to deal with the current problems that we face. The National Bee Unit and its inspectors are a crucial part of Defra’s current work. They receive funding from both Defra and the Welsh Assembly Government.