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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to (a) support tree health and (b) prevent the spread of infectious diseases in trees.

Defra is committed to protecting our trees from pests and diseases and building the resilience of our trees and plants. In May we published a new Tree Health Resilience Strategy. The strategy sets out plans to protect England’s trees from pests and diseases.

The UK has robust controls in place to protect against tree pest and disease threats. These include being the most prolific user of the EU Protected Zone system, comprehensive official inspections and surveillance and a statutory notification scheme for certain tree species imported from the EU. Horizon scanning for new and emerging threats associated with tree imports is carried out continuously and the results are considered monthly by all UK Plant Health Authorities, facilitated by Defra’s Plant Health Risk Group. The UK Plant Health Risk Register is the principal screening tool used for this purpose and all outputs are published. The Register now has over 1000 entries, informing decision making and prioritisation in relation to tree health threats. Our approach is updated on a frequent basis, to protect against new and revised threats.