Submission to Environmental Audit Committee on the Pesticides Voluntary Initiative

Submission to Environmental Audit Committee on the Pesticides Voluntary Initiative from Friends of the Earth and PAN-UK, December 2003 Friends of the Earth and PAN-UK, both members of the Voluntary Initiative (VI) Steering Group, submitted joint evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee’s 1 2inquiry into the VI last year . The Committee’s report of the inquiry set out several challenges to the VI concluding that the following year (ie 2003) would be a crucial one in which the VI should start to deliver on its objectives. The Committee recommended that a thorough assessment be carried out by the end of 2003. Although DEFRA has commissioned work on the best way of assessing the VI this is not due to be completed until the end of January 2004. A thorough review of the effectiveness of the VI seems unlikely before the middle of 2004. Friends of the Earth and PAN-UK consider that there has been little change in the progress of the VI over the last year and that there are some new areas of concern. In October this year Friends of the Earth and PAN-UK wrote to the Chairman of the Committee outlining our concerns (listed again below). This submission provides more detail on some of those points. We have also prepared a detailed assessment of the Catchment Management project which is key to delivering on the objectives for reducing water pollution. A separate report on this is available which shows that although the project ...