Plant Health (Amendment) (Scotland) Order 1999 (SSI 1999/22)
I hope that this item will not take long, but we must address it because we are the lead committee on the statutory instrument relating to plant health. We are taking this so seriously because it is important that, as the lead committee, we are aware of statutory instruments as they pass through our hands.
This statutory instrument will stay in place as a negative instrument unless we move that it be deleted. There has been no motion for annulment and there is no reason why there should be, so it is unlikely that annulment will happen.
Given the recent experience of other committees in Westminster, it is extremely important that we should understand such instruments before we pass them. I hope that in future we handle similar orders fairly quickly, but on this first occasion we have invited experts along to go over the paper so that we understand it and know what we are approving.
We have with us Dr Jane Chard of the Scottish Agricultural Science Agency and Mr Charlie Greenslade from the Scottish Executive Rural Affairs Department.
Mr Charlie Greenslade (Scottish Executive Rural Affairs Department):
Carol Brattey from the rural affairs department is also here.
Thank you very much. We will ask you to go over the instrument that is before us so that we will understand what we will be talking about.
Good afternoon, convener and ladies and gentlemen. The Plant Health (Amendment) (Scotland) Order 1999 further amends the Plant Health (Great Britain) Order 1993 in regard to its application to Scotland. The principal order has already been amended a number of times. Similar amendment instruments are being made in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The purpose of the amendments is to implement in the UK council directive 98/57/EC of 20 July 1998. That directive relates to the control of Ralstonia solanacearum (Smith) Yabuuchi et al. That organism was previously known as Pseudomonas solanacearum (Smith) Smith. Even micro-organisms can change their names.
The directive introduces harmonised measures to deal with this disease across the European Community. Article 1 of the directive summarises the purpose of the directive as being
"to locate the organism and determine its distribution; to prevent its occurrence and spread; and to control it with the aim of eradication."
Article 12 of the directive requires each member state to bring the provisions into force within national laws by 21 August 1999, and to notify the Commission that that has been done.
Ralstonia solanacearum is an organism that causes brown rot in potatoes and bacterial wilt in tomatoes. In Scotland, without wanting to diminish our tomato-growing industry in any way, our principal concern is potatoes and, in particular, our important seed potato industry. A brown rot infection can seriously deplete potato yields and make infected potatoes unusable. To illustrate that, I have circulated a photograph showing the symptoms in a growing plant and in tubers.
To put the disease into context, the coming into force of the directive brings to four the number of quarantine diseases of potato that are deemed significant enough to warrant a separate EC directive on their control and eradication. Members may have heard of some of the others. I will not give their Latin names, but their English names are potato wart disease, potato cyst nematode—better known as eelworm—and potato ring rot. Each of the three previous directives has been implemented in Great Britain by the insertion of a separate schedule into the principal instrument—the plant health order. That approach is again being adopted in respect of Ralstonia solanacearum.
Unlike the potato cyst nematode and potato wart disease, both of which occur in Scotland, with the former continuing to be a major problem, neither potato ring rot nor potato brown rot is known to occur here. However, they do occur within the European Community and beyond. For example, in recent years, brown rot has occurred in the Netherlands and ring rot in Germany. In southern England, there have been two outbreaks of brown rot in potatoes and two instances of bacterial wilt in tomatoes.
Ralstonia solanacearum can subsist in water and in the woody nightshade plant, which is of the same family as the potato and tomato and which is found on many riverbanks in southern England and is known to be an excellent host of the organism. The control and eradication measures, therefore, have to have regard to transmission both by potato tubers and by irrigation with infected water.
It must be remembered that the directive and the order that implements it in Scotland are designed to be read together and concern the steps that would be taken to deal with an outbreak of the disease. We do not have brown rot in Scotland and we hope that we will have no reason to bring the measures into practice. I have distributed to members an information sheet that has been made available to the industry in this country and beyond, summarising the measures that we take to keep Scotland free of brown rot. If needed, I can go through it in detail at the end of my contribution. Otherwise, I shall move on to look at the various parts of the instrument.
To understand the amendment order fully, one must read it in conjunction with the principal order and with the parent directive. The principal order—the Plant Health (Great Britain) Order 1993, which has been amended many times—already contains provisions enabling official inspectors to enter premises and to take samples of plant material, plant pests or other objects for the purposes of ascertaining whether any scheduled plant pest or disease is present. The amendment order introduces a number of new provisions.
Article 2 introduces into the principal order a requirement that no potato shall be planted unless it derives from parent material that has been tested and found to be free of the brown rot organism.
Article 3 empowers an official inspector to demarcate zones of infection with the attendant provisions and restrictions that bear on the planting of tubers, the cleaning of machinery and the irrigation of crops. Those provisions and restrictions are set out in a schedule to the order.
Article 4 substitutes in the principal order, on each occasion that it occurs, the new name for the organism, Ralstonia solanacearum, instead of the previous name, Pseudomonas solanacearum.
Article 5 inserts into the order a new schedule, 13A, which is the meat of the amendment and which details special measures for the control of the organism.
Article 6 adds council directive 98/57/EC, which we are implementing here, to the long list of other directives in the area of plant health that supplement the principal EC plant health directive.
Would members like me to go through schedule 13A in more detail?
Just to ensure that we understand what it relates to.
The schedule has to ascribe various meanings to certain key words and phrases—that is what paragraph 1 does. Members may notice that the true seed of the potato plant and the fruit and seed of the tomato are excluded from the definition of "specified plant material". That is because those seeds and fruits do not transmit the disease and therefore do not pose a problem.
Paragraph 2 of the schedule prohibits the planting in Scotland of designated affected plant material. It provides for the issue of notices by the rural affairs department specifying how affected material should be disposed of, for example, by incineration, by feeding it to animals following heat treatment, by deep burial in the ground or by processing under certain conditions.
Paragraph 3 deals with plant material which is suspected of being contaminated. It provides for the issue of notices on how that material should be dealt with. That applies to ware potatoes for consumption or processing, if there is only a suspicion of a problem.
Paragraph 4 provides that notices may require the cleaning or destruction of any machinery, vehicle or packaging material designated as contaminated.
Paragraph 5 prohibits the holding or handling of the organism or affected plant material other than where that is authorised for the purposes of scientific research. A licence has to be issued for that.
Paragraph 6 enables notices to contain the measures specified in paragraphs 7 to 10 of the schedule to be employed in demarcated zones of infection.
Paragraph 7 specifies detailed measures that the notice may require to be taken where a place of production has been designated as contaminated. Those include, for defined periods and depending on the circumstances, measures to deal with volunteer plants: self-sown potatoes, or groundkeepers, as they are sometimes called. Included is a prohibition on the planting of the solanaceous and brassica species. For a certain time thereafter, the planting of solanaceous plants may only be undertaken under certain conditions. In such circumstances, during defined periods, there is an alternative strategy, in which volunteer plants are dealt with and the land is maintained in fallow conditions or put to cereal growing or pasture, or maintained in grass, for seed production. After a further period, that land can be used for growing potatoes or tomatoes, but only under certain conditions.
Paragraph 8 deals with circumstances in which there is a complete replacement of the growing medium. In this case, a unit is used to develop the early generations of potatoes, and certain protected crop production takes place, under glass for example. That allows the grower to replace the growing medium completely, and takes away any problem of contamination. The authorisation would be subject to certain additional conditions.
Paragraph 9 specifies measures that the notice may require to be taken regarding fields that are adjacent to affected areas. Included, for defined periods, are measures to deal with volunteer plants, the prohibition of planting potatoes or tomatoes and, thereafter, as with other provisions, restrictions on the planting of potatoes and tomatoes.
Paragraph 10 specifies that where a place of production has been designated as contaminated, any notice that has already been issued may require machinery to be cleansed and disinfected. It also empowers inspectors to prohibit or control irrigation, which, as we mentioned earlier, is appropriate because brown rot bacteria are waterborne and irrigation is one means of spreading them.
Finally, paragraph 11 of the schedule permits the notice specifying measures regarding a zone that has already been demarcated as being probably contaminated. Again, those measures would include the cleaning of machinery and stores and restrictions on the planting and handling of potatoes. Paragraph 11 also prohibits the use of surface water, which has been designated to be contaminated, for irrigation or spraying of specified plant materials, or other host plants, unless there has been authorisation to the contrary. An inspector would only authorise to the contrary in circumstances where they felt that there was no risk of the organism spreading.
Paragraph 11 also provides that contaminated liquid waste from premises involved in the processing or packaging of potatoes or tomatoes is to be disposed of under official supervision. That is to reduce the risk of spreading the material from processing plants back into the growing areas.
That is what the order does. Does the committee want me to go over the measures that we have in place in Scotland for dealing with the threat of brown rot?
I think that that falls outwith the concern of the committee. What is important is that we are confident that we understand what the statutory instrument relates to and are satisfied that it is designed specifically to deal with the issues before us and does not stray into other areas. Do members have any questions relating to the explanation?
If there are no questions relating to the explanation, we have achieved what we set out to do. We have had the benefit of listening to someone who understands the reasons and terms behind the statutory instrument that is laid before us and we are now in a position to make the decision that is required.
I thank the witnesses for attending the committee. You are now free to leave.
I found that statement very useful in understanding the statutory instrument. However, one way forward might be to have that statement before the committee meeting when we first receive the statutory instrument. At that stage, if any member had questions that they wanted to put to officials they could notify the clerk, and representatives could be invited to the meeting.
That would be a practical way of dealing with such instruments in the future.
It would save time, both for us and for the department.
The clerk has pointed out to me that witnesses must have left the meeting before we can progress to make any formal decisions. A problem apparently arose in another committee.
At this stage, I must put the question to the committee: does the committee agree that the Plant Health (Amendment) (Scotland) Order 1999 need not be drawn to the attention of the Parliament? Members are agreed. That information will be communicated to the Parliament.
How can witnesses be asked to leave an open public meeting?
We can ask them to sit elsewhere.
Oh, they must move out of the position of being able to give evidence. That is fair enough.
That takes care of the statutory instrument regarding potatoes.