Oral Answers to Questions

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr David Heath)]

On 30 October, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State asked DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser to convene an independent expert taskforce on tree health and plant biosecurity to review the current arrangements and make recommendations to address long-term tree and plant disease risk. Today, the taskforce published its interim report and made a number of recommendations on measures to address the increasing threat to the health of our plants and trees. They included strengthening our approach to risk assessment, improving biosecurity and clarifying governance.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

The Forestry Commission website indicates that there is an ash dieback infection in a tree in the north of my constituency, yet the Forestry Commission refuses to identify the location of the tree. Given that the Forestry Commission manages only a certain proportion of our trees, what about the danger to the other remaining trees? Why is there such secrecy in the Forestry Commission about revealing the identity of this infected tree?

[Mr Heath]

Let us just be clear for the benefit of the hon. Gentleman: if the infected tree is mature, as we are not in the period of sporulation there is no danger to surrounding trees, certainly not at the moment. The advice from the scientific advisers is that it is better to leave mature trees in situ than to fell them. The contrary advice applies to new planting saplings.