The Destructive Insects and Pests Acts provide the legal powers for the enforcement of measures to prevent the introduction and spread in this country of the many plant diseases and pests which have so destructively manifested themselves in other countries but from which we are in the main comparatively free. The powers contained in the Acts are principally exercised to control the importation of plants, bulbs and similar produce which might be the means of bringing pests and disease into the country and, of course, to control the importation of such insects and pests themselves.
In recent years attempts have been made in various countries to eradicate insects destructive to crops by bringing in other insects which prey on them. Needless to say the first consideration in such cases is to ensure that the predatory insects deliberately introduced will not become a greater danger to crops or to beneficial native insects than are the pest which they are intended to destroy
Pests and disease recognise no political frontiers and in the circumstances their control, while of immediate and vital importance to each individual country, is also the common concern of nations. This country shares in international measures for such control through its membership of the European Plant Protection Organisation. One of the measures which that body has recommended member countries to adopt, if they have not already done so, is to regulate the introduction of biological agents for the control of plant pests.
This recommendation arose from the fact that the authorities in Yugoslavia intended, with due precautions, to introduce six species of insect from North America which might prey on the Fall Webworm, a pest of which we are thankfully free, but which was doing considerable damage to mulberry, maple, fruit and other trees and bushes in Yugoslavia. There was certain evidence, but no precise knowledge, that one of the species of insect proposed to be introduced might be a danger to the silk worm. This is illustrative of one of the dangers inherent in biological controls— the fact that an insect relatively harmless in its native environment might, when translated to a new habitat, become unexpectedly destructive to the beneficial insects and crops in its new home.
The Yugoslavian authorities were not unmindful of this danger and informed the international body of their proposals, as a result of which the recommendation regarding control was made by the European Plant Protection Organisation.
I do not want to suggest that there is any immediate danger of harmful insects being brought into this country for the purpose of biological control, but it behoves us to have available powers to prohibit or regulate such introductions lest they should be attempted. Another reason why we should adopt the European Plant Protection Organisation recommendation is that countries to which we export produce, as, for example, potatoes, may ask us to certify that certain insects do not exist in this country and that we have taken adequate steps to ensure that they are not introduced. In these circumstances the proposed Bill contains a short section designed to regulate the introduction of agents for biological control of plant pests.
As the House will have observed from their dates, the original Destructive Insects and Pests Acts have been in operation from before our time and as a consequence various powers are prescribed to be exercised under them by local bodies such as boards of guardians, etc., which have long since ceased to exist. The 1929 Act transferred these responsibilities to my Department which, in the pattern of present administrative trends, is their proper location. That Act did not, however, formally release the local bodies from similar responsibilities and it is to eliminate this duality of function that the further sections to this short Bill are designed.