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Editor's Pick

One step forward: UK Government kills nature bill and pesticide authorisation

In a single week, Downing Street has destroyed hopes for the introduction of a robust, world-leading climate strategy any time soon but potentially saved millions of British bees.

a close up of a bee on a wooden floor

In December, Keir Starmer’s Labour administration set out a clear plan for how fatally toxic neonicotinoid pesticides could be completely phased out of use in Britain. The chemical substances have been directly linked to a decline in populations of bees in England.

However, the substance is recognised as highly effective against a deadly disease spread to crops through aphids. The condition can devastate farmlands and harvests, and as such use of neonicotinoid pesticides has been approved in the UK on a number of occasions as emergency measures to try and protect crops, at enormous expense to populations of pollinators.

‘The Government made the only sensible choice and upheld the ban on the use of neonicotinoids, refusing the application for use on sugar beet in England. The science is clear that this bee-killing pesticide has no place in our countryside if we are to reverse nature’s decline and secure our future food security,’ RSPB Director of Policy and Advocacy Kevin Austin tells us.

‘At last, the government has put a stop to the yearly rigmarole of the pesticide lobby pushing for the use of bee-harming pesticides on sugar beet. This decision ends the industry’s four-year streak in undermining the supposed ban on the use of toxic neonicotinoids,’ adds Paul De Zylva, nature campaigner at Friends of the Earth. But the government needs to go further still by closing this blatant loophole once and for all, which has enabled its continued use under the pretence of being deployed only in exceptional circumstances.

Many are now calling for more support to be extended to farmers to help them access nature-friendly alternatives, emphasising the issue of disconnect between policy and reality, and the sheer volume of support needed to support entire economies transition to greener practices. The fact it comes at a time when the Climate and Nature Bill, proposed by Liberal Democrat MP Roz Savage, has just been decimated in a House of Commons vote – 120 to seven in favour of ending debates over the draft regulation – only serves to reiterate that.

While the proposed bill was far from perfect, it would have led to a significant tightening of UK regulations around the environment and given the public more say in how net zero is born out over the coming decades. Backbenchers had been asked to break ranks and vote in favour of the legislation despite the absence of support from the Government itself, but party lines held fast, with Savage now committed to ‘working with ministers’ to find a way forward but giving up on hopes of getting a vote on the bill itself.

A familiar situation and one that will only reinforce the viewpoint the current regime is comparatively pretty similar to the last in terms of environmental record, albeit we’re still in the first six months or so of policy impact. Whether we’ll be having this conversation in another 12-and-a-half years is another question altogether, if Labour manage to survive that long.

]And that’s precisely the point. In a week that saw populism hit fifth gear via US President Donald Trump’s return to The White House its hard to forget the impact of memory on the electorate. And the public’s inability to recall much before the most recent scandalous campaign and point of political point scoring. Whether Starmer is really just another Cameron-May-Johnson-Truss-Sunak on climate issues is almost irrelevant, it’s what we’re able to remember that now really counts.

This makes consistency and delivery more important than ever, and in many ways puts Labour in an impossible position. After more than a decade of neglect, Britain’s embattled economy is hanging on by what looks like an increasingly frayed thread, and the public have long-since grown tired of being let down by politicians. Whether the disappointment is legitimate or the result of misconception and misinformation.

This means the UK Government has very little time to prove its effectiveness or risk losing the next election by a steep margin – as the only centrist party in the race, and the Conservatives likely to be another few parliamentary cycles away from seriously contending, this could potentially lead to a very real power vacuum that needs to be filled. And a very real risk those poised to fill it don’t have the environment’s best interests at heart. 

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Image: Red Shuheart via Unsplash

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