Many of my constituents have written to me about the neonicotinoid group of insecticides. They’re worried about the government’s willingness to seek a second opinion on the Europe-wide ban on its use by farmers because of the potential danger to bees. I think the position of the government in seeking this second opinion is completely sensible. Policy must always be pragmatic and evidenced based. You might think this was a truism and you’d be right. But it’s not a truism that the European Union has accepted in its environmental legislation. Instead European environmental law since 2000 enshrines the precautionary principle at its heart. This was formalised later in the Lisbon Treaty. Precautions are obviously smart. You look both ways before you cross the road, we wear seatbelts and we maintain a standing army. All these are precautions against dangers that may, or may not, materialise. But the precautionary principle is not about taking precautions. Instead it elevates something that’s obvious to an absurd conclusion. It’s also blind in one direction and ignores the risks of inaction. British farmers have a flea beetle problem. Fields of rape seed are being killed off by the infestation. Unless the ban is lifted Britain will need to start importing the crop and rural economies will be damaged. Neonicotinoid is an effective and discriminate insecticide and a departure from the old chemistry that killed all insects in the soil. The court has banned this pesticide under the precautionary principle because the manufacturers cannot prove “the absence of danger” to bees. This ruling ignores the risks of not using the insecticide and of allowing the crops to die. Farmers are also forced to use up to six different, more harmful and more expensive, chemicals. The debate around neonicotinoid has become a polarised PR battle. According to bee conservation biologist Dave Goulson “both extremes are complete nonsense”. Speaking to The Guardian, he said that “The science is pretty convincing that neonicotinoids are contributing to bees’ decline, but it’s by no means the worst factor. Most scientists agree its habitat loss that is the single biggest driver, with disease and pesticides contributing. Obviously, any pesticide is damaging to wildlife; it’s about finding the right balance between productivity and environmental impact”. It’s important to remember that one of the best habitats for bees is actually rape seed. The ban that seeks to protect bees would actually allow flea beetles to demolish its habitat, which Goulson established as the main cause of the decline. As its one of the largest flowering crops, allowing this crop to die would take away much of the bees’ food. This doesn’t back a complete ban on the insecticide. A balanced approach is needed. Unfortunately, balance is not the style of those who back this approach to environmental protection. The ideology behind the precautionary principle is biased in favour of assuming that the natural world is inherently safe. A quick look at the natural world ought to dispel this view. Human history has been a constant struggle to scratch out a living and to stop things in the wild killing us. Without human ingenuity we’d be bumped off by cold weather, hot weather, easily preventable illness, wolves and hunger. For example, there is nothing natural about wheat. It didn’t exist in nature and was selectively bred by early farmers until they had something usable. We’ve always had to interact and use the world to survive. That miserable ends at the hands of predators are less common is attributable to good things we’ve done. Carried into the modern context, banning insecticides by placing an impossible burden of proof on those who want to use the product ignores the risk of letting fields of rape seed die. If this kind of ban has been carried further, food output would never have risen in the second half of the 20th Century and the world would be unable to produce enough food for its inhabitants. This incoherent theory that prohibits everything must be scrapped from European legislation. Dealing with messes like this is why Britain needs to engage with Europe more. This kind of position is less likely if we had more involvement. Hopefully, the usage of neonicotinoids will be controlled in accordance with proper evidence on the harm it does to bee populations rather than anti-scientific prejudice. If it is largely to blame for the population decline then of course it shouldn’t be used. But the debate around environmental protection should be as nuanced as the issue itself. It should not slip into the lazy reasoning that lead to the introduction of the precautionary principle and the habit of blanket bans.