HC Deb 03 July 1963 vol 680 cc547-58

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Finlay.]

11.30 p.m.

Mrs. Joyce Butler (Wood Green)

We are very much a nation of gardeners. It is estimated that there are about 13 million households with gardens, and that this means the use of a very large volume of pesticides and other garden chemicals, When we raised in the House some time ago the problem of poisonous seed dressings causing the death of birds and small animals, I took some part in that discussion and particularly noted the"terrible suspect three" chemicals aldrin, dieldrin and heptachlor.

I was, therefore, very much relieved when the voluntary system of control of these seed dressings was introduced, but I read gardening journals regularly and have for some time been very much concerned by the number of articles which appear in them recommending for garden pests these very chemicals aldrin, dieldrinand heptachlor.

I was very much relieved when I heard that the Ministry had published a booklet, Chemicals for the Gardener. I almost wrote to the Ministry to thank it for having produced the booklet and for having kept abreast of these developments. But I am glad that I did not write, because I had not then seen the booklet. When I obtained a copy I was horrified to find on every page recommendations of those suspect chemicals which have been so much a matter of concern earlier That is why I have raised this matter tonight.

A case can be made for accusing the Ministry of having aggravated a serious situation by the production of this booklet. I think that it is true to say that the death of birds and small animals on farms has been reduced by the control of seed dressings, but that the death rate in our gardens has increased—and that the booklet is helping to increase it further.

One very well-informed commentator has said that this is an invitation to murder. It is a strong expression, but I think that there are some grounds for saying that this is so. I am very much concerned that the booklet was produced without first being submitted to the Advisory Committee on Poisonous Substances. I am not at all impressed by what the Minister said on 19th June about that. I think that it is quite wrong that it should not have first been submitted to the Committee for vetting before publication.

We must bear in mind that, in the main, gardners are amateurs and so look for expert advice. When they see a booklet of this kind they naturally think that they are safe in using the chemicals recommended in it. On page 5, it is clearly said that the labels of the products will have been checked to make sure that the claims made are fair and reasonable. and that the products must be recognised by the Ministry to be safe to use as instructed on the label. The preface to the booklet says: So far as is known, none of the garden packs when used according to the directions is likely to be harmful to birds or other wild life in the garden. Seed dressings containing aldrin, dieldrin or heptachlor, which can be harmful to birds, are not available as approved garden products. That is true, but it is nonsense to suggest that because seed dressings containing these chemicals are not in use in gardens there may not be a risk in using these chemicals in some other form. This is the substance of my criticism of the Ministry in this respect. In view of the nature of gardening, the Ministry should be absolutely sure, before recommending chemicals, that there is no risk of this kind.

I am very surprised, too, that pyrethrum, which is one of the safest insecticides, appears at no point by itself, but always in association with some other chemicals. For a Ministry booklet recommending safe chemicals, this is extraordinary.

Evidence is steadily mounting. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has published some evidence of the harm which these chlorinated hydrocarbons and persistent chemicals appear to be having on bird life and wild life in gardens. Blackbirds, thrushes, greenfinches, owls, hawks and falcons are particularly mentioned as birds affected. Only this week a further report has been obtained of 28 birds whose dead bodies were found in gardens and who could therefore be assumed to have been affected by garden chemicals. Of these, 20 contained residues of the chlorinated hydrocarbons. These birds included five blackbirds, two blue tits, two pied wagtails, a longtailed tit, a carrion crow, a thrush, and a house sparrow.

What is particularly significant about the list is that it includes nestling birds, three nestling blackbirds and some nestling hedge sparrows, whose bodies contained D.D.E., which is D.D.T. as metabolised by the birds' bodies. This is particularly significant from the point of view of the continuation of the species, because one of the problems with which we are concerned is not only the possibility of the lack of song birds in our gardens—and however irritated they may become with the behaviour of birds picking off crocuses and polyanthus and other blossoms in the spring, most gardeners would regard their gardens as dull and miserable places without birds; and during last winter gardeners did a a great deal to keep birds alive by putting out food during the very bad weather—but with the dying out of some species.

I remind the Parliamentary Secretary of the serious situation in Scotland, where birds of prey have been very much reduced by what appears to be a combination of farm and garden chemicals and roadside sprays, and so on. This combination appears to be having some effect on fertility. I understand that a recent report shows that only five of 27 golden eagle eyries in Scotland produced young this year. There is, therefore, serious ground for believing that there is a possibility of the species dying out.

Coming nearer home, it is extraordinary that the Ministry of Agriculture should have published this booklet while the Ministry of Public Building and Works has put a ban on the use of the chlorinated hydrocarbon in sprays in the Royal Parks because there have been some deaths of birds in the Royal Parks. It is much too much to expect hon. Members and members of the public to accept that difference in care between two Ministries without very strong protest about the Ministry of Agriculture.

I therefore ask the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to consult his right hon. Friend and reconsider the decision not to withdraw this booklet, because I am sure that as long as this booklet is in circulation it will seriously endanger the position of birds and wild life in gardens, and the Ministry will be responsible for the deaths which will follow.

I hope, too, that at the meeting which I understand is to take place next week between Ministry representatives, manufacturers, representatives of wild life protection societies, and so on, there will be a lead from the Ministry, which I am sure will be supported, for a ban on these chlorinated hydrocarbons and persistent chemicals being used in gardens. The voluntary ban on seed dressing has resulted in a great improvement in the position, and a similar ban on garden chemicals would effect an equal improvement.

We are coming to a season in which insecticides are being used in great quantities in gardens, and without some real attempt to halt the trend, there may be serious results. I ask the Minister to seek the co-operation of all the gardening publications, the B.B.C. Gardening Club, and all the other media to try to draw attention to these dangers and to encourage gardeners to be more selective and restrictive in the use of garden chemicals.

Finally, when the Minister receives the report from the Advisory Committee for which he has asked will he publish a fresh guide to garden chemicals which includes only those which are known to be safe, which have been tested and tried, and which we can be assured are safe? It is far better to have a limited list of safe chemicals than to continue to keep in circulation this booklet on chemicals for the garden which, in the opinion of everybody to whom I have spoken, is a potential menace to birds and the wild life of the gardens of this country.

11.42 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. James Scott-Hopkins)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady the Member for Wood Green (Mrs. Butler) for raising in such a moderate and lucid manner this question of the risks to wild life from toxic chemicals, but she will realise that she has started to enter a large field, and in my reply I shall have to confine myself to the specific points she raised although there are many other points of great interest in what she said. I know that this is a question which is exercising the minds of many hon. Members, and I undertake to examine very carefully what the hon. Lady said to see whether we can do anything to help in what we are all trying to do.

The main purpose of the hon. Lady's speech was to accuse the Ministry of Agriculture of irresponsibility in publishing this booklet to which she referred, Chemicals for the Gardener. The hon. Lady accused us of being irresponsible on the ground that we are inviting the gardener to drench his garden with an enormous amount of noxious and poisonous sprays so that it becomes a death trap for wild life.

This is not the case at all. As I am sure the hon. Lady realises, gardeners are already using all sorts of chemicals in their gardens. There is nothing to stop them going to the local ironmonger and buying substances which contain the chemicals about which the hon. Lady has been talking. That was not the object of this publication. The point is that we are trying to help the gardener, the amateur gardener, if one likes, to choose the right chemical for the job he has in mind, one which will be effective to accomplish the job, and also to draw his attention to the directions on the label, which will result in the minimum hazard both to himself and to animal life in the garden and round about.

That is why, if the hon. Lady looks at the publication, she will see six golden rules set out on the second page. These golden rules underline the hazards which exist in using these preparations, and draws the attention of the gardener to the dangers in them. What we are trying to do is to underline this point and help the gardener in his selection and handling of these preparations.

There has been particular criticism of the inclusion in the booklet of certain chlorinated hydrocarbons, such as dieldrin and aldrin, and the hon. Lady has concentrated her attack on the statement in the preface of the booklet that, so far as is known, none of the garden packs, when used according to the directions, is likely to be harmful to birds or other wild life in the garden". We would not have made such a statement unless we had believed it to be entirely justified on the evidence available to us at the time the booklet was compiled.

Of the chemicals in the booklet, all the chlorinated hydrocarbons have been considered by the Advisory Committee on Poisonous Substances. The hon. Lady asked why the booklet had not been submitted to the Committee. The reason is that the chemicals mentioned in it have been placed before the Committee and its Scientific Sub-Committee, and have been passed by them for use, and the guidance contained in the booklet takes account of the Committee's recommendations for their safe use. Before they make these recommendations, the Advisory Committee and its Scientific Sub-Committee take a special look at all the available evidence on possible risks to wild life.

The collection of this evidence is a long business. In some cases side effects may arise from use on a field scale which the Committee could not have foreseen when it first considered the chemicals concerned. It is only when one uses these chemicals on a field scale that one gets a wider appreciation of their possible effects. An example, which the hon. Lady mentioned, is the use of aldrin, dieldrin and heptachlor as insecticidal cereal seed dressings. The knowledge came to us later of what happened when they were used on an extensive scale.

The build-up of certain chlorinated hydrocarbons in the soil and in food chains was not, and could not have been, foreseen when these chemicals first came into use. It is the use on a field scale which brings to notice questions which only subsequent painstaking laboratory or field experiments can answer.

The concept of the build-up of persistent chemicals in the bodies of predatory animals by means of the food chain has also been four years or so in evolution. The British Trust for Ornithology and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have done useful work in this field. They have demonstrated a decline in the populations of some predatory birds, and this may well be due to the accumulation of persistent chemicals through the food chain. All the time knowledge is building up, and it is for this reason that the Advisory Committee has the power, which it uses, to review any use of any chemical in the light of new evidence.

The statement in the booklet which I have quoted has been attacked by the R.S.P.B. more particularly on the basis of evidence presented in its report made jointly with the British Trust for Ornithology entitled Deaths of Birds and Mammals from Toxic Chemicals, September, 1961, to August, 1962. This report contains a good deal of interesting and useful evidence, which all contributes to the process of building up knowledge. But the advice of our scientists is that the report, in fact, contains very little actual evidence to support the contention that casualties have increased because of the use of pesticides in the garden, which is what we are here concerned with.

In considering the evidence in the report we must remember that some of these chemicals are very much more toxic than others. I would like to have seen this brought out more clearly in the report, and in what the hon. Lady was saying. Likewise, the report makes mention of the numbers of bodies in which the presence of chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides was detected, and infers that even the smallest traces of insecticide caused the birds to become casualties. The hon. Lady took that line in the last part of her speech.

While not wishing to deny that these chemicals have caused casualties, I can- not accept an unqualified inference of the sort which the hon. Lady made or which is made in the report. This is because methods of examining corpses have improved so much recently that residues far below those known to have any harmful effect can now be measured, and these measurements are possible at levels well below those at which it was previously hardly feasible even to detect the presence of the chemical. They go down to one part in 10 or even 100 million, which is minute.

For example, the report describes any residues of D.D.T. in excess of 1 part per million as"substantial"; yet work has shown that residues in birds known to have been poisoned by the chemical have generally been far greater than this figure described as"substantial." I say this to show how knowledge has increased over the years and how much we are advancing.

Further, the possibility of any of these birds obtaining their residues from other uses does not appear to have been considered by the Society when publishing the Report. Moreover, it seems likely that the increased awareness of the problem among the general public is responsible for a larger proportion of casualities being reported. In any case, in relation to the thousands of bird deaths due to seed dressings in previous years, the scale of deaths now appears to us as very small in relation to the total bird population. Thus, I do not feel that this publication substantiates the statement in the R.S.P.B. Press bulletin of 23rd May that the effects of the chlorinated hydro-carbons in spray and garden chemicals have obviously increased". I do not think that that is necessarily so.

May I digress for a moment and suggest that it is a pity that in this Press release the R.S.P.B. suggested that the Ministry's veterinary laboratory at Wey-bridge had failed to analyse some great crested grebes or ducks found dead in Staines reservoir. I have a copy of its Press release here. These bodies were, in fact, received in such a putrid condition that it was impossible to analyse them. In the same bulletin, a large incident near Newbury was ascribed to cereal seed dressings when reference to the Ministry would have shown that this was due to fowl pest and had nothing to do with seed dressing.

I do not wish in any way to muzzle the R.S.P.B., but I should like to take up the hon. Lady's suggestion that there should be greater co-operation in such matters between all the interested parties—because this is very important—and the Ministry of Agriculture, which is more than willing at all times to co-operate in this field.

While we do not regard the facts adduced in the Report as doing more than suggesting the possibility of a connection between bird deaths and the garden use of chemicals such as dieldrin and aldrin, I feel no complacency in this matter and I can assure the hon. Lady that the Advisory Committee is considering further evidence. This will include figures provided by the Nature Conservancy on residues found in predatory birds and also recent results obtained by the R.S.P.B. which have already been given to our Infestation Control Laboratory.

However, I feel that all the evidence available needs the closest study, and that is why, as the hon. Lady knows, my right hon. Friend has asked the Advisory Committee to undertake a further examination of the risks, both to humans and to wild life, arising from the use of chlorinated hydrocarbons, particularly dieldrin, aldrin and heptachlor. This is a decision which has been widely welcomed by all interests concerned, including Dr. Thorpe, who recently wrote to The Times on the subject. In making their examination the Advisory Committee and its Scientific Sub-Committee will consider all relevant evidence which the R.S.P.B. and the British Trust for Ornithology, the N.F.U. and the manufacturers of the chemicals can lay before them.

I suggest that we should await, before going further, the advice of the Advisory Committee. Here, I would like to reassure the hon. Lady that if the Committee advises any further restrictions on the use of these chemicals then, of course, my right hon. Friend and his colleagues in the Government will give this advise the most urgent consideration, and in this, of course, I include the consideration, if necessary, in the light of the evidence and what the Report might say, of any alterations to the booklet to which we are referring in this debate.

Mrs. Butler

Has the hon. Gentleman any idea when the Report is likely to be received?

Mr. Scott-Hopkins

No, I cannot help the hon. Lady at this moment. It is very early days, as she will realise. My right hon. Friend only very recently indeed referred this back to the Advisory Committee, and I do not know exactly how long it will take, but I am sure that it will work with the utmost dispatch to get this through. The hon. Lady will also realise, I am sure, that the subject is technical and complicated and will need detailed examination.

I would not like the House to think that we are leaving everything to the Committee. Besides the very extensive research by the chemical manufacturers into safer and less persistent chemicals, our researchers and advisers in the Government service are giving much attention to the persistence of chemicals like aldrin and dieldrin, the residues of which may also have side effects on beneficial fauna, such as worms and insects.

The hon. Lady also mentioned pyrethrum. Unfortunately, pyrethrum is not effective on many pests, as has been mentioned in the booklet. But we are looking into all the insecticides which are harmless as far as toxicity is concerned and we are continuing to examine alternatives to the extremely toxic chemicals.

In the longer term, for example, the Agricultural Research Council is supporting research at St. Mary's Hospital into the processes by which insects are overcoming the effects of chemicals. AtRothamsted, the Council has appointed an additional scientist to work at the Plant Breeding Institute at Cambridge on the development of sugar beet resistant or tolerant to virus yellows. In the field of biological control, the Agricultural Research Council now supports research at Oxford into the life histories and host relationships of a group of parasitic wasps.

Many other research projects which will increase our knowledge of pest control are being undertaken by the Research Council and other bodies, and the work as a whole is kept under review by a committee appointed by the A.R.C. under the chairmanship of Professor Fraser.

Although I have not been able to cover the whole field by any means, I think that I have concentrated my remarks on the main purposes of the debate, the pamphlet to which the hon. Lady referred. Although the safeguards associated with the use of these chemicals in the garden, in agriculture and horticulture are not necessarily adequate for all time, at the time they were printed they were certainly the extent of our knowledge.

I ask the hon. Lady and the House not to forget that these insecticides are of value to horticulture and agriculture, and that this fact must be weighed up when one is thinking of trying to keep the balance in this matter. This is a very detailed and complicated subject, but it cannot be said that we have acted irresponsibly in putting forward the booklet. The hon. Lady and the House will realise that these chemicals are available to the ordinary gardener in the ironmonger's shop, or wherever he or she buys them. The booklet advises on what to buy and how to use it in the safest possible way.

Therefore, in the light of what I have said, I hope that the hon. Lady and the House will realise that the statement in the booklet was not misleading.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Twelve o'clock.