Lord Roborough (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who contributed to this short debate, and particularly to the Minister for her knowledgeable answer. I add my thanks to the Minister for a meeting which she organised a couple of weeks ago with her officials. The depth of knowledge of those officials on this subject was phenomenal. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, made a good point about public education. These are not adorable, furry animals, these are pests. They are causing damage to our wildlife, our trees, and to everything in our country, and people need to be aware of that. I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, about ragwort. My experience is that responsible farmers remove this as soon as they see it, and it is disappointing to see public bodies not taking that responsibility seriously. I also thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for his points. He slightly contradicted himself; of course, it is very difficult to remove these invasive non-native species, but the point is that it is not impossible. I had the same experience with Japanese knotweed and Himalayan balsam; you can eradicate them, but you have to work at it. I will take away the comments made in the debate, and perhaps see whether there is something we can do, in this Bill or elsewhere, to try to strengthen the defences against these. I withdraw my amendment.