This week I spoke in a debate about the Government’s inexplicable decision to allow the emergency use of bee-killing pesticides, despite receiving expert advice that the conditions to use these pesticides have not been met.

I made clear to the Minister that the Government’s decision is wrong, and could prove extremely harmful to bees – which have already declined in number significantly since the 1970s. We know that we are in the middle of an ecological emergency as biodiversity plummets across the world. Every Government decision should work to remedy this crisis, not worsen it.

The Government has set a target to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030, but how can Ministers pretend to be making progress on this target when they are overruling their own experts on the use of bee-killing pesticides?