Revelation: Conservatives failed to conduct impact checks before approving banned pesticide | Bees

The Conservative government failed to carry out a legally required assessment to determine how green-lighting a banned pesticide, described as a “death blow to wildlife”, would affect some of the world’s most important natural sites, documents have revealed.

The previous government this year gave emergency permission to sugar beet growers to use the Cruiser SB for the fourth consecutive year.

Just one teaspoon of the pesticide is enough to lethally affect 1.25 billion bees. In granting its approval, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) went against the advice of the Health and Safety Executive and the UK’s expert committee on pesticides.

The move was criticised at the time by the Wildlife Trusts, who called it a “death blow to wildlife” because of the neonicotinoid pesticide’s toxic impact on bees and the way the chemical leaks from fields into waterways.

It now appears that the authorities chose not to carry out the legally required assessment of the impact of this decision on protected sites, on the grounds that it would be too difficult.

In a briefing paper given to former Agriculture Minister Mark Spencer to inform his decision, obtained by the Ends report through a freedom of information request, it states: “We considered, for the current decision, whether it would be possible to undertake a meaningful assessment of the impacts on protected areas. Our conclusion is that it is not possible.”

“It is not known where the treated seeds will be used in relation to protected sites and [sites of special scientific interest] “The SSSIs,” he said, adding that “there are several hundred protected areas in the part of England where sugar beet is grown.”

Weeks earlier, the green watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), said it had opened an investigation into Defra over the approval.

The OEP said it was examining whether there had been “serious failures” by Defra to comply with the Nature Conservation Act, particularly in relation to its duty to carry out such an assessment of how approving the pesticides would affect the UK’s most ecologically important sites.

At the briefing, officials explicitly acknowledged that this requirement existed in law, stating that “any decision to grant emergency authorisation for the use of the Cruiser should include an assessment of the impacts on sites designated as SSSIs under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and sites designated as Special Protection Areas and Special Areas of Conservation under the Habitat and Species Conservation Regulations 2017.”

Kyle Lischak, UK director of environmental charity Client Earth, which made the complaint to the OEP that led to its investigation, said: “My understanding is that they seem to think this is all just too complicated.

“The law exists for a reason. In these circumstances, the parties must follow the legal procedures to fully understand the issues. And if they don’t do it because it’s too expensive, too complicated or too inconvenient, then that’s not a legal defense. It’s simply negligence.”

In the document, Defra officials informed the minister that if the Cruiser SB were to be used in an SSSI, the nature regulator Natural England would need to consent, and that as this was unlikely to happen, “risks will be mitigated to some extent in areas where the risks to animals may be highest”.

This justification was met with scorn by Lischak and wildlife advocates, as most protected sites in England are not classified as healthy, not because of pollution within them but because of pollution from outside their boundaries.

“It’s misinformed and it’s frankly disappointing,” he said, adding that there were multiple looming biodiversity targets for which the government was legally responsible, the most important being the goal of halting wildlife decline by 2030.

Elliot Chapman-Jones, head of public affairs at the Wildlife Trusts, said it was “totally unacceptable that no assessment has been made of the damage this could cause to some of the country’s most important natural sites”.

Before coming to power, Labour had promised to end the use of Cruiser SB, but this promise was not included in the party’s manifesto. Chapman-Jones said: “The new UK government should learn from the mistakes of its predecessor and deliver on its promise to rule out any further authorisation of these pesticides.”

He added that the UK urgently needed an ambitious action plan to reduce pesticide use to protect the environment and human health.

Cruiser SB is a neonicotinoid pesticide banned in the EU and UK since 2018, after evidence emerged of its toxicity to all pollinators and insects, on which most crops and plants depend.

For the past four years, the UK has circumvented this ban by granting emergency authorisations so that sugar beet growers can use the pesticide against the beet yellows virus, which damages the crop.

However, according to Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex, about 95% of the product is not absorbed by the plant and ends up in the environment.

“The pollen gets into the soil and into the ground water, where it then slowly leaches into ditches, streams, rivers and lakes. By contaminating the soil, this means that all the flowers that grow near a treated crop, or the following year in the same soil as a treated crop, are contaminated. The pollen and nectar are then contaminated,” he explained.

Research has repeatedly shown high levels of neonicotinoids in UK waterways. Analysis of water quality data by Nature Non-Governance last year found that the highest concentrations of the chemical were detected in areas where sugar beet is grown, including the east of England, the south-east and the West Midlands.

In 2017, a report by the NGO Buglife showed that a section of the River Wensum in Norfolk, designated a Special Area of ​​Conservation for its river life, was “chronically polluted” by neonicotinoids.

Goulson said the rest of Europe was getting by without using pesticides, and that farmers in northern France – which had a similar climate and soil to East Anglia – were growing sugar beet “perfectly well without this chemical”.

Campaigners fear that if a protected site assessment is not carried out for the use of Cruiser SB, which has attracted increasing public attention, the same could be true for other chemical approvals.

NFU Sugar and British Sugar have confirmed that they have re-applied for emergency authorisation to use Cruiser SB for next year’s sugar beet harvest.

In a joint statement, NFU Sugar chairman Michael Sly and British Sugar agriculture director Daniel Green said: “The UK sugar beet crop continues to be threatened by viral yellows. In recent years the disease has caused crop losses of up to 80%. If approval is granted, the seed treatment will only be used if a specified threshold, set each year by Defra, is reached.”

“Growers must also follow a strict management program to ensure best practices and compliance with the conditions of the emergency authorization on farms. In addition, the industry has jointly funded residue monitoring over the past two years.”

The OEP is investigating whether a number of breaches of environmental legislation were made in the decision-making process regarding the Cruiser SB. Helen Venn, the OEP’s chief regulatory officer, said that as the investigation was ongoing, “it would be inappropriate to comment at this stage”.

Defra said it would “work constructively” with the OEP as part of its investigation. It stressed that the emergency authorisation process was “highly regulated”, with previous use of the Cruiser SB having had to meet a number of conditions to mitigate risks to the environment, including potential risks to pollinators.

The spokesman reiterated Labour’s election pledge to ban the use of bee-killing pesticides.