The Wildlife Trusts and many others have campaigned for years to stop the use of an insecticide group – neonicotinoids - which is hugely harmful to wildlife, and bees in particular. Over the course of several years 140,000 of you joined our call to government to ban neonics. Thanks to your perseverance, we were relieved that a ban on their use was finally announced by the government last year.  

Today marks this year's Wild Summit – bringing people together to turn ambition for nature's recovery into action. At last year's Wild Summit Mary Creagh, then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: “Without healthy nature our communities and our economies cannot thrive. Emergency authorisations for pesticides must now fully take into account the risks pesticides pose to pollinators including bees. Every action we take brings us closer to a country where nature thrives in harmony with communities.” 

Yet despite that statement last year, it appears that the neonics ban was partial and emergency authorisations have crept in.

Another year, another neonic authorisation 

Earlier this year (unbeknown to us) government authorised the use of another neonicotinoid chemical for use on sugar beet – this time called acetampirid. Whilst it’s not on the list of chemicals government has committed to ban, it is still a neonic - it's still harmful to bees and is known to be damaging in aquatic environments. The first we heard of it was a small article in the National Farming Union's online magazine on 29 May.ⁱⁱ

We sent a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to find out more and the bit of government which took the decision (the Health and Safety Executive (HSE)) eventually wrote back to us over a month later with further information.  

When our new legal director looked at this, he genuinely believed the HSE's decision was unlawful (including on the basis that government has failed to consider the impacts on highly protected sites for nature; and had failed to apply its own guidance on "emergency authorisations" for use of neonics properly).  

So in July, we instructed external solicitors to write formally to government setting out our legal concerns and calling on them to justify their decision. They came back to us one day before the deadline for starting legal proceedings (in late August) and dismissed our arguments. They also claimed that it was too late to challenge and that the courts would not take on the challenge because the sugar beet fields had already been sprayed – in other words, the cat was out of the bag.
 

The secrecy and lack of accountability in these decisions needs to change 

This combination of secrecy and lack of accountability is clearly unacceptable and creates a catch-22 for groups like us which seek to hold decision makers to account. We can't find out about the decision until it's been taken, because it happens completely in private without any of the documents being published (let alone publicly consulted on) till afterwards. When we find out what's happened, it's too late to challenge, because the chemicals have been used – and the damage to bees and other pollinators has been done.  

It's like the police telling a householder they can arrest a burglar if they catch him whilst he's burgling your house. But if he finishes the job and leaves before they get there, there's nothing they can do. Clearly something is wrong!  

Fortunately, there are signs of the courts waking up to this accountability gap. In a recent preliminary decision (in a case brought by a group trying to stop the culling of badgers) the High Court recognised that legal challenges will always be somewhat backward looking, or after the event. But the benefit they bring in terms of ensuring lawful decision making and public confidence is critical (and justifies this approach)ⁱⁱⁱ.

We were obviously disappointed and surprised to see that British Sugar and the NFU leopards have not changed their spots when it comes to neonics. They should be investing more in much needed research and implementation of more nature-friendly ways to control pests (talked about by industry for many years now) or creating support schemes for farmers to help them to diversify crop production or produce sustainable beet. Instead they worked their way down the shopping list of neonics until they found one not on the banned list – and went for that instead.  

We are writing back to HSE to call on it to be much more transparent about the decision-making process going forward and to publish the application documents from British Sugar / NFU when received. If they don't, we will have to keep peppering them with FOI requests to find out what is going on. And if we do see another "groundhog day" decision on neonics in spring next year, who knows: maybe we can build on the "badgers decision" and break out of this catch 22 and strike a blow for bees, pollinators and environmental justice!  
 

Blog thanks to Jake White, Director of Legal Services and Vicki Hird, Strategic Lead - Agriculture.