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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how the effectiveness of the Ragwort Control Act 2003 is assessed; how frequently that assessment take place; what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of that Act; and if she will make a statement.

We have not made an assessment of the effectiveness of the Ragwort Control Act 2003, as this Act amends the Weeds Act 1959 by inserting a provision enabling the Secretary of State to produce statutory guidance in the form of a ‘code of practice’ on how to prevent the spread of ragwort. The Secretary of State, published a code of practice in 2004 and this is available on the gov.uk website.

Defra injurious weeds policy aims to balance a variety of different interests in the countryside. This is reflected in the published ‘Code of Practice on how to prevent the spread of ragwort’.

Natural England is the responsible authority for investigating complaints about injurious weeds, and collects data on injurious weeds complaints to monitor the number of complaints in each season. This data is reviewed annually by Defra and Natural England and from the 2018 season this data is available on data.gov.uk.