George Monbiot (Free trade in plants is lethal for our forests. We must ban it, 15 August) writes that the UK’s biosecurity inspection regime is “random” and calls for a ban on plant imports into the UK. As biosecurity minister, I agree that one cannot overstate the importance of robust biosecurity to the UK. We will always take strong, decisive action to prevent devastating pests and diseases reaching our shores.
The UK enjoys a hard-won international reputation for biosecurity, and our standards are second to none. Since 2012, we have invested over £37m into research in tree health and biosecurity and our unparalleled Plant Health Risk Register. Growing ever more trees and plants in this country is certainly the way forward. But banning trade in plants would not be a silver bullet – not least because some pests and diseases cross the Channel unassisted in the air, including ash dieback. That is why UK inspections are risk-based, not “random”, with the full spectrum of threats regularly reviewed and published as part of a country-wide approach.
We took the lead in strengthening EU protections against Xylella – prevention is always better than cure – and will deploy more stringent controls than the EU where necessary. We continue to review our actions against high-risk hosts like olive trees, and will not hesitate to act swiftly.
Partnership is also crucial. This comprehensive action takes place alongside industry bodies like the Horticultural Trades Association, nurseries and the public. The “Don’t Risk it Campaign” at ports and airports is precisely to raise awareness with the public about biosecurity. Next year is the International Year of Plant Health, and we will continue to strengthen biosecurity even further. Vigilance is vital to safeguard the landscapes we love: we must all play our part.
John Gardiner
Minister for biosecurity, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
• George Monbiot has hit the nail on the head in his plea for a ban on the import of live plants. Governments have consistently ignored the advice of their own experts, from the 1960s onwards, to stop the uncontrolled imports of live plants and soil into this country. At the same time, the money spent on research into tree diseases has remained paltry. Incongruously, we prefer to spend hundreds of millions of pounds understanding and preserving our past, but almost nothing preserving our future. The almost certain extinction of ash is a catastrophe that dwarfs Brexit and is an insult to future generations.
Jim Pratt
West Linton, Scottish Borders
• All power to the Danes and others leading the way in showing how our uplands should be managed for boosting biodiversity, for not merely tolerating but welcoming the presence of raptors as well as for carbon sequestering. Allowing scrub to return is a very laudable aim (Can grouse shooting go sustainable?, 12 August). However, if all grouse moors were to be treated in the same way across the country, the one habitat where our seriously endangered red-listed curlew can breed successfully would cease to exist. Unless the present government takes seriously the threat to all red-listed birds and invests in appropriate land management schemes, enabling ground nesting birds such as curlews to return to the largely devastated agricultural lowlands, our skies are at risk of becoming all together much quieter.
Karen Lloyd
Curlew campaigner and editor of Curlew Calling Anthology
• Although it is interesting to read that this year’s contributor to the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, Dr Hannah Fry, has raised the idea of a Hippocratic oath for scientists to commit them to think deeply about the broader implications of their work, it is not the first time this has been proposed (Scientists shaping the future ‘should take the Hippocratic oath like doctors’, 17 August).
One of its earliest and most distinguished proponents was the philosopher Sir Karl Popper, who gave a paper on the subject at a conference in Vienna in 1968 in which he recalled taking an oath derived from the Hippocratic oath when he received his doctorate in psychology at the University of Vienna. However, Popper did not restrict himself to scientists, but extended the notion of oath-based moral responsibility to include anyone contributing to the growth of knowledge. He seems to have been thinking in terms of everyone engaged in academic research, which makes sense against the background of the perversion of all academic disciplines that took place under National Socialism in his native Austria.
More recently, the notion of a Hippocratic oath specifically for scientists has had its detractors, and these have claimed that such an oath could be inimical to freedom of thought and expression, for instance by being politicised. Dr Fry’s is the latest contribution to this well-established debate, though (to judge by your report) what she proposes does not suggest a way to resolve it.
David Head
Peterborough
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