Looking after members interests.

[HaoBao]

Would the petition be to scrap phytosanitary certificates for small orders?

[colser]

Much appreciated Ian

[Christian]

This is excellent news! Thank you very much for taking this forward, Ian.

Solutions could be as simple as an equivalent to the US Small Lots of Seed scheme, which would give amateurs the opportunity at least to trade or exchange seeds without having to worry about costly phytos, import permits and inspection fees. We are so reliant on a relatively small number of commercial nurseries, and perhaps more so fellow enthusiasts in the UK and across the continent, for seeds or plants. The same must be true for other areas of horticulture, yet guidelines seem solely aimed at professionals trading in bulk.

Hearing from different societies how the new regulations affect them will be interesting, and should make a campaign quite effective.

[The Tunn]

Well done, Ian.

[HaoBao]

Pattock, as for a potential figurehead this is her Twitter if anyone wants to contact

[ragamala]

Would the petition be to scrap phytosanitary certificates for small orders?

I am a tad baffled by this thread, and particularly the mention of a petition to the UK government. Has it not occurred to anyone that we are out of Europe, and have as much moral influence within the EU as a fox asking to break down the hen coop fencing?

As Iann said early on in the thread, many were questioning what would happen at length ages ago. Terry Smale, bless his memory, was very clear in stressing the problems we would face re phytos etc. Yet I don't actually recall any official position or statement of fact being issued by the BoT.

We are out of Europe. This is the Brexit legacy. We have to accept the decisions that were made and live with them. Raising hopes through lobbying or petititions to a UK government which no longer has control of the issues is not helpful. The time for that is long gone. Service to members would have been good years ago, advising of the potential risks of Brexit. Perhaps that was the time we really could have had some influence. But of course that would have been seen as "political" at the time.

[HaoBao]

I didn’t come up with the idea of a petition, just wondered what was going to be asked of the government.

Could the U.K. say people can import to the U.K. without a phyto but the EU could refuse exports from the U.K.?

Do the phytosanitary certificates help stop diseases/viruses etc.. from being brought in to the U.K and deter trading habitat collected plants? If they don’t what’s the point and if they do why are they a bad thing?

[HaoBao]

I just had a quick look for ariocarpus on eBay and a seller is asking $15 (US) to cover the CITES and Phyto from Thailand to the US but they say they ship worldwide. Is that wrong or too cheap?

The eBay seller was:

seller:a_little_of_each

[Phil_SK]

We are out of Europe. This is the Brexit legacy. We have to accept the decisions that were made and live with them.

I'm inclined to agree. The Trade and Cooperation Agreement does contain a clause

The Parties shall jointly review the implementation of this Agreement and supplementing agreements
and any matters related thereto five years after the entry into force of this Agreement and every five
years thereafter.

but I would imagine that any such review/renegotiation would be much more asymetric than we saw when we were a member and likely to be very limited in scope.
That said, I reckon it's a convenient way of bringing the Society some useful column-inches, not least because it plays well in newspaper articles and these articles probably get 'shared' quite a bit.

[ragamala]

I didn’t come up with the idea of a petition, just wondered what was going to be asked of the government.

Point taken. My opinion of petition potential is low. I have seen many petitions with very large numbers of signatures die a death. It is slightly misleading to say petitions with over 100,000 signatures will be debated in "Parliament", given that most people might take this as a full HoC debate. The route is for debate in Westminster Hall, where typically very few MPs have any interest in the proceedings. As an example, over 6 million signed a petition to revoke Article 50 and the debate in Westminster Hall fell flat. Very flat. Over 10,000 a petition will get an answer from "the government" which normally means a carefully couched refusal to engage.

If there is any route it should be a joint effort by the horticultural industry and societies such as ours. But this is not the sort of active grouping that has functioned well in the past, and I would be concerned that the membership be properly consulted about any involvement before Society trustees or figureheads take individual action. This is not an urgent issue, e-petitions need at least 6 months to run and in any event Westminster Hall debates are suspended until further notice.