MPs wary as pesticide firms fund bee study

As part of the Government’s draft “national pollinator strategy”, which aims to protect bees and other pollinating insects, research into the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides – which have been linked to declines in bees – would be funded by the companies who manufacture them.

MPs on the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee called for the research to be transparent and subject to independent controls, or it would not inspire public confidence.

And they urged the Government to make clear it accepts the ban brought in by the European Union on three neonicotinoid pesticides on crops attractive to bees.

The Government opposed the ban, claiming there was not enough evidence bees were harmed by the pesticides.

But the Environmental Audit Committee concluded last year the existing evidence was of enough concern to warrant a ban.

The committee’s chairwoman Joan Walley said: “When it comes to research on pesticides, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is content to let the manufacturers fund the work.

“This testifies to a loss of environmental protection capacity in the department responsible for it.

“If the research is to command public confidence, independent controls need to be maintained at every step.

“Unlike other research funded by pesticide companies, these studies also need to be peer-reviewed and published in full.”

The Friends of the Earth nature campaigner Sandra Bell added: “If the Government’s action plan to protect Britain’s pollinators is to have any credibility, it must back the ban on bee-harming insecticides and set out a clear strategy to reduce pesticide use.”