Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will reassess the threshold required for an exemption to be applied to the current ban on neonicotinoid pesticides.

All decisions on the authorisation of pesticides are taken within the strict legal framework provided by retained EU legislation. This includes the recent emergency authorisation allowing the limited and controlled use of a neonicotinoid seed treatment on the 2023 sugar beet crop. The legal tests for emergency authorisation, the consideration given to each and the resulting decision are detailed in documents published on gov.uk. The advice regarding the threshold is based on an established model, led by scientific evidence from the Rothamsted Institute.