COMMONS AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 12 July 1985)

§ Baroness Nicol
My Lords, I wish to welcome particularly this Amendment No. 26. In it the Minister is honouring a commitment which the noble Lord made—I think at the Committee stage of the Bill in this House, originally—to find a proper wording which would set out clearly the objectives of Clause 15, which was the clause about which we were all most concerned. I think that the wording that has been chosen is admirable and I congratulate those who have devised it. It covers, I think, all the objections that we had to the original clause.
I should like particularly to welcome the reference to continuous development of means of control. This is something which we had not asked for but we certainly hoped for. I am afraid I have a question on it because "continuous development" means continuous funding. I wonder whether the Minister is prepared to say at this stage how he foresees the funding of this continuous development being made. Is it to be by Government methods or by any other methods? Depending on his answer, we shall have more to say on a later amendment. However, on behalf of these Benches, certainly I welcome the new wording of Clause 15.

§ Lord Stanley of Alderley
My Lords, I wonder whether I may make a brief comment on this amendment? I very much welcome it, as does the noble Baroness, in so far as it goes on from an amendment that was proposed in this House and accepted by the Government, I think at Third Reading. Being a rather suspicious sort of person, I have to ask my noble friend, bearing in mind that I think this was somewhat—if I may put the word in parenthesis— reluctantly accepted in the Commons, whether the Government really have their hearts behind it. I have to point out to my noble friend that, in a recent publication which was circulating at the Royal Show, no mention was made of the continuous development which the noble Baroness has just mentioned. Otherwise, I very much welcome it.

§ Lord Belstead
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the generous remarks that she has made. However, she asked me a direct question, which was: does continuous development mean continuous funding? The answer is, yes of course it does imply that. But if the noble Baroness then asks me to give the House some figures about the trend in our funding, I am sorry that I cannot add to anything which may have been said about public funding for Government support for pesticides development at the present time. However, what the noble Baroness asked was relevant.
If I may reply to my noble friend Lord Stanley of Alderley at the same time, my noble friend wrote to me a little while ago and he put his question in a slightly different way. My noble friend asked whether the Government's heart was really 'in this, and he pointed out to me that a leaflet which the Ministry of Agriculture prepared for the Royal Show did not seem to reflect the force of this amendment. I have just replied to that letter, saying that there is indeed no question about my right honourable friend's department's commitment to this point, which has now been put into the Bill, provided that your Lordships agree with the Commons amendment. Our reluctance about putting it on the face of the Bill originally was as to whether the amendment was strictly necessary. A great deal of Government research, development and advisory work is in this area.
But we accepted the mover's point of view in another place and we have developed it further by extending in Amendments Nos. 31, 33 and 35—Amendment No. 35 falls just outside this group—the scope of the Bill through the definition of pests to the control of organisms as well as pesticides and other preparations.