Grand Committee
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Bichard)
My Lords, welcome to the Grand Committee. If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2013
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Transitional Provisions) Order 2013.
Relevant document: 9th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the statutory instruments before us today provide the detail of the transition to and operation of individual electoral registration, which replaces the current household registration system. The description of electoral registers and amendment regulations also make changes relating to the edited versions of the electoral register and to elements of the conduct of elections.
I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, to this long-running saga. We considered first what became the Electoral Registration and Administration Act, and then the numerous statutory instruments that followed. The Bill team assures me that there are no more than 29 to come. The good news that we have today is that the data-matching exercise has turned up around 78% of voters being matched through the system. The query attached to that is that the data matching is much higher in areas that have a static population than in areas that have either a mobile population or a large number of second homes. That is why Argyll and Bute comes 20th in the list of lowest matching areas but urban areas and areas with a high number of students are also among those where the percentage of data matching comes out much lower than in other areas.
To ensure that as many existing electors as possible remain on the register during the transition, the Government announced in their official response to pre-legislative scrutiny on IER that part of the transition would involve a data-matching stage where all electoral registers in Britain would be matched against trusted public data sets. Where a positive match is made between an entry on the register and information in the data set, that person may be confirmed. The dry run, as I have already said, found that about 78% on average of those submitted to the Department for Work and Pensions could be confirmed by data matching. The results were better than we originally anticipated.
Furthermore, using a combination of national and local data could lead to an even greater overall average match rate of as much as 85%. This high rate means that fewer electors will need to make IER applications during the transition. EROs will then be able to focus their resources on unconfirmed electors and those eligible citizens who were not on the register already. As we have discussed before, we already have an existing problem in that the number of voters who are not on the existing register has steadily grown over the past 10 years.
Cabinet Office officials have recently written to each local authority, giving them their indicative funding for implementing IER next year. Each allocation is based in part on the results of the confirmation dry run to ensure that sufficient funding is provided for the work required of each ERO to produce as complete and accurate an electoral register as possible as we move to the new system. The Government expect the allocation to cover all the costs in the majority of authorities but will consider funding additional costs in individual cases if they are precisely and strongly supported by evidence and have not already been recognised.
Each of the instruments before us today relates wholly or partly to IER. The transitional provisions order sets out the activities unique to the transition—due to begin in June 2014 in England and Wales and after the referendum of September 2014 in Scotland. Many of the regulations in the description of electoral registers and amendment regulations set out the operation of IER from that date, through transition and into the period of business as usual. Under these regulations, each ERO will still be required each year to carry out a full annual canvass of households, sending out a canvass form to every residential property.
Unlike the process under the household registration system, completing this form will not get a new elector on to the register. A household inquiry form will be used to find out who is resident. If people have not moved, they will be retained without further action being required beyond returning the form or informing the ERO that there has been no change, just as under the current system. However, if the residents recorded on the returned form have changed, any new electors will need to apply individually to register.
As is currently the case, there will be a duty on EROs to follow up where they get no response to these canvass forms: the household inquiry forms. If no information is forthcoming, a further form will be sent. If necessary, a third form will be sent and a canvasser must visit the property. The occupier or the person responsible for the property will have a duty to respond. The existing criminal offence for not responding will continue to apply. Where an ERO finds out about a person who appears to be eligible, whether through the household inquiry form or through other information, they must invite that person to register. As with the household inquiry form, the ERO must also follow up any non-response to an individual invitation to register and may require the person to make an application. In addition to the criminal offence of failing to respond to a household inquiry form, the ERO has the option to impose a civil penalty on an individual who fails to apply if required to do so.
The application to register is a key part of IER. It is central to the individual nature of the new system as it means that each elector who is added to the register will have made their own application to register. It is also vital that it is convenient for applicants both in the information required and in its design. The Electoral Commission is currently working on the forms for IER, which include the new household inquiry form, the letter inviting a person to register and the IER application. Officials in the Cabinet Office are working closely with the EC on the development of these forms, which are being user-tested to ensure that they are convenient for electors and minimise inadvertent errors in applications.
For the first time, online registration will be enabled, thus modernising the registration process and making it more accessible, especially for those registering from outside the UK, such as service personnel and other overseas electors. Paper forms will be retained for those who prefer that method of registration. As part of the commitment to tackle fraud, a central feature of the new application forms and of the online application portal also enabled by these regulations is that applicants must provide personal identifiers—namely, their date of birth and national insurance number. These will be used to verify their identity through data matching against records held by the Department for Work and Pensions. Electoral Commission research shows that 95% of people would be able to provide their NINo if required. If they cannot, applicants will be advised where they can locate it.
However, it may be that someone cannot provide their date of birth or NINo, that they are in the minority of applicants whose details do not match DWP records, or that the ERO considers for some other reason that additional evidence is necessary to verify the applicant’s identity. For these situations, the regulations set out a robust but accessible exceptions process using prescribed documentary evidence or attestation by another elector in the same area who is of good standing in the community.
This has been a very brief description of how the new system will work. Where households have not moved or changed in composition, they will need simply to complete a household form or inform the ERO, just as they do currently. For new applicants, this new, separate application will be needed. Making the transition from the current system to IER is a significant change, and we have included steps in the transitional provisions order to ensure that it is as convenient as possible for voters.
I have already described how we will use data matching to confirm a large majority of existing electors on the register at the start of transition. Following this data matching, every elector will receive a letter. Most electors will be informed that no further action is required but a minority will be invited to register. They will then have until December 2015—more than a year, in most cases—to apply under IER.
In houses where electors registered during the postponed 2013 canvass, the letters to individuals will, for this canvass only, replace the requirement to send a household inquiry form. Where electors have not been heard from since 2012 and were carried forward during the postponed canvass, or there is no one registered at a property, the ERO will send a household form. It also has the flexibility to send these forms where it thinks that this is the best way to find out about new electors—for example, in areas with high population turnover.
Electors who returned forms in the 2013 postponed household canvass will remain on the register throughout the transition. People who have not yet registered through an IER application or been confirmed by data matching will be able to cast a vote in the 2015 general election on the basis of their pre-IER registration. However, as the fraud risk is most acute around postal voting, only those who are individually registered will be able to cast an absent vote once the revised register is published in December 2014 in England and Wales, and on 28 February 2015 in Scotland. Voters who are absent, with postal or proxy votes, will be informed of the need to make a new application if they have not been confirmed or have not made a successful IER application.
The Representation of the People (Provision of Information Regarding Proxies) Regulations 2013, which are UK-wide, allow EROs to check that someone resident in another area is or will be a registered elector and therefore eligible to act as a proxy when appointed to do so by an elector in the ERO’s area. In other words, someone who casts a proxy vote for someone else has herself or himself to be on the UK electoral register. In the 2015 canvass period, EROs will send a household enquiry form to every residential property as usual. They are also required to send out another invitation to those remaining electors who were not confirmed by data matching in 2014 and who have not yet made a successful IER application.
As the then Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform told the House of Commons, and as set out in our implementation plan, the Government’s aim is to conclude the transition to IER after the 2015 canvass period. We are confident that those non-IER entries remaining on the register at that point will be out of date or inaccurate. The Minister of the day will have to lay, and Parliament approve, an order in the summer of 2015 to enable the end of the transition in that year; otherwise it will continue until the end of the 2016 canvass. The decision will be for the Minister and the Parliament of the day after the 2015 general election, but I am confident that they will be content with the progress of the transition and will bring it to an end in 2015, which will mean that the register published in December that year will be made up of individually registered electors only.
The Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Description of Electoral Registers and Amendment) Regulations 2013 introduce a number of measures designed to make sure that electors can make a fully informed choice about whether their details appear in the edited register. Among other changes, electors’ edited register preferences will be carried forward indefinitely, so electors will no longer be asked to opt out each year. The changes provide for improved descriptions of the two registers that will ensure that the information for electors is as clear and user-friendly as possible, and a new, more transparent name: the open register.
The same regulations make a number of improvements to the running of elections that are designed to help voters participate effectively in elections and reinforce further the integrity of the voting process. The proposed changes implement electoral administration and conduct provisions in the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. The changes will enable postal votes to be despatched further in advance of polling day, which will be of particular help to those in remote locations, such as persons overseas, including service voters, as more time will be given for them to receive, complete and return their postal vote to be counted. We are also making improvements to the design and layout of voting forms that are intended to make the voting process more accessible and easier to understand.
Provisions on these matters were included in amendments previously made to the European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2013 in order to apply the provisions to the European Parliamentary elections in 2014. These amendments have recently been debated by Parliament, which has thus had an opportunity to consider the changes. I do not therefore need or intend to go into detail on them today, although I will, of course, be happy to answer any questions on them. I beg to move.
Lord Lipsey (Lab)
My Lords, the whole Committee will be grateful to the Minister for that explanation of what these orders contain. He gave it, understandably, in a pretty low-key way. I think it is worth the Committee reminding itself just how much is at stake on the path we are going down. We must do so because this is a milestone today, along a path that has had many milestones; but it is right that Parliament should check that we are still on the right road before approving the orders.
Perhaps I could illustrate that importance by saying this: let us suppose that the exercise comes up with 80% of eligible voters registering to vote, which is below what we would hope for, but not implausible. Let us suppose at the same time that we get another dullish election where the turnout is only 60%. It would follow from those figures that fewer than half of those eligible to vote had participated in the election. When you start getting to a figure like that, there is no question but that this reflects on the legitimacy of the return.
It is terribly important that we get the maximum turnout at the election, but, in the mean time, that we have a register that is as near complete as possible. Of course, we understand and support the move to individual electoral registration: that is also terribly important to our democracy in order to prevent forged votes being cast. We must make sure, however, that this is being done thoroughly, as well as it possibly can, and that it is not impeded by an insufficiency of resources or rushed through for whatever reason.
It might seem strange to mention my next point straight after warning against “rushing through”, but just last week, one expected deadline for electoral registration was missed. The Commons Library note, dated only a couple of months ago, said that the Government expected to make a firm decision by the end of November on whether to proceed with individual registration for the 2015 election. When Greg Clark was answering a Question on 26 November in another place, he did not say that the Government had decided to proceed; he said simply that they were on track for individual electoral registration to come in in 2014. I do not think there has been a critical slippage yet; but the more the Minister can say to persuade the Committee that they will be giving the go-ahead and that there is still time to have registration fully in place by the summer of 2014—even if it falls short of an absolute pledge; I will come back to that in a minute—the more helpful it would be.
When we say it is “on track”, it is worth reviewing one or two issues that have come up on that track. One about which all Members of the House should be very pleased is the decision to retain the civic penalty. I have no doubt whatever that it was the threat of a civic penalty—even though it is not much used—that prevented a serious slump in registration, particularly among younger people, which would have been damaging. I give the Government absolute credit for that: they listened, they thought about it and they decided to retain the civic penalty. That is greatly to be welcomed.
Another matter that has been resolved, but where I personally regret the resolution—as indeed does the Electoral Commission—is the question of the open register. Here, there is a straight conflict. This should be a register for voting purposes only; that is to say, it should not be sent out to anybody who wants to use it for marketing or any other purposes. Frankly, the ability of a voter to contract out is not a sufficient protection, because most of them have better things to do than to think about whether they want to contract out of the electoral register.
We understand that the marketing industry has brought huge pressure on the Government to continue to make the register available for its purposes. We hear that some local authorities that were going to give priority to putting in a box that could be ticked to say, “I want to contract out”—the tick could then be removed—have been threatened with judicial review by the marketing industry. I must say that in my guts I find it very distasteful when our electoral process is taking second place to the lowest commercial considerations, but I am sure that the marketers have their case; it just has not persuaded me. I ask the Minister to agree, though, that after the first use of IER the Government will review this provision and any evidence there may be as to whether it has damaged the integrity of the register so that, if we have made a mistake this time around—and we all make mistakes—it can be resolved next time.
Another issue that has been largely resolved, I think, is that EROs themselves were very worried about the resources that were being devoted to this. We have had progress in two regards here. The Government have told them what resources they are going to get, and have also said that they are prepared to consider a request for more resources in cases where there are particular difficulties in given areas. Nobody is dancing on the rooftops about this, but it is clearly good progress, and EROs are less unhappy than they were.
However, there is a particular problem, which we need to go on worrying about, with the universities. I will cite one case. There is a ward in Lancaster, I am told, which is nearly always all student-inhabited and where registration is around the 10% mark at the moment. In Sheffield, which has several universities, the universities themselves are putting resources into campaigning to get a fuller register. That is not really what university money is for: it should come from the budget provided for IER. I would welcome any reassurances that are forthcoming on those issues—particularly the university point, which is a chilling worry. Whether the Lib Dems worry about it in quite the way they used to, I do not know. They used to rely considerably on the student vote, but of course that may not be so certain at the next election. The Minister, is, of course, perfectly placed to give both a party as well as a ministerial opinion.
The one thing that is not resolved is an IT issue. The Government are quite frank about this in the memoranda: we do not yet know whether the IT to do the verification matching will work. We do not expect to know that until February or March, when it has been properly trialled. If it does not work, it will cause serious difficulties at least for the scheme—and maybe more than that. The probability is that it will work, by the way, but we ought to think about contingency planning if it does not. There is a particular problem—which came out in the Minister’s remark—about postal voters, because unless they are individually registered, they cannot vote at all. There is no way around that, so postal voters could lose their vote if this does not work—and even those moving shortly before the election might find it difficult, if this does not work, to exercise their vote. This is of concern to the Electoral Commission, as I am sure it is to the Government.
I do not want or expect the Government to delay making the announcement that they intend to go ahead until they are certain that these things work. If you do not take any risks in life, you tend not to make much progress. However, my father used to say to me when I was a young man, “David, always leave room for the big back-out”. I think he had girls in mind, rather than electoral registration at the time—but I think that, on this, Ministers ought to leave room for the big back-out. That is to say, if it turns out that this IT simply does not work—and my expectation is that it will—they will have to be in a position where they can find the words that they have used to show that they were concerned about this issue. If that means that fundamental decisions have to be reviewed, and I do not expect that to happen, they should stand ready to do that.
The Government have taken a pragmatic approach to electoral registration—with the full support of my party and, indeed, politicians of all parties—because individual electoral registration is clearly something that we should have in this country, as most other countries with genuine democratic systems have it. These questions are in no way designed to show any opposition to it, but simply to say that we must double bank and make sure that we have every step along the way working, so that it will go smoothly, with a high number of people on the register.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, I am sorry that those who usually lead on these issues for the Liberal Democrats—my noble friends Lord Tyler and Lord Rennard—are not with us this afternoon. I will step in where angels fear to tread.
First, as Liberal Democrats, we are glad that registration is now compulsory, not voluntary, as was suggested in the beginning. That would have led to very different registration levels in various constituencies. Secondly, we have waited a long time for this: the Electoral Commission recommended the change to individual registration in 2003. A decade later, we are bringing this regulation into being.
Thirdly, we need to look again at the format of the registration forms. I declare an interest as president of Bite the Ballot, the youth movement to encourage young people to take part in the electoral process and influence manifesto commitments. Perhaps the Government will look at the form. We are replacing the 400 different forms that were used in various constituencies and electoral areas with one form. It will be a national form, which is used in every constituency. Of course, in Wales it will be bilingual. Even in Scotland we will have the element of the language up there.
The civil penalty for not registering comes in an accompanying letter. I get lots of correspondence—we all do—and we might look at the report we are sent, but we put the accompanying letter to one side. Can we not have the penalty note on the form itself, saying that if people do not register there is the possibility of a penalty? In addition, can the second and third forms be distinguishable, so that they look different—perhaps printed in a different colour—so that people know that this is not the original form but the second or third form?
On postal voting, what do the Government believe is the ideal moment to send out postal votes in the UK? Over the years, with the late Lord Garden, who of course was a distinguished military person, I tried to ensure that those who were on military service in places such as Afghanistan—this has been mentioned already—were able to receive their postal vote forms in sufficient time to enable those votes to be completed, returned and included in the count. It is difficult. I remember we had quite a debate on it when the Labour Government were in post. Is there some way we can ensure that those who are ready to sacrifice their lives for us will at least have the opportunity of casting a vote, wherever they are? That is very important.
The regulations are acceptable, I am sure, but other initiatives are not here—of course, we would say that—such as engaging young people to register and take part in political debate. I go back to the Bite the Ballot proposals for a national registration day—5 February 2014—in every area; I think the superstores and the large shops are going to have tables where people can register, and young people in particular will be able to register. Will the Government support this Bite the Ballot initiative? What steps are being taken at a local, constituency level to ensure that every support possible is provided to make National Voter Registration Day a success? We dream of half a million new, young voters on that day. Support will be essential to ensure that that happens.
Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for the careful way in which he set out the basis of these regulations. I want to associate myself with the great sweep of the comments made by my noble friend Lord Lipsey and the noble Lord, Lord Roberts. I do not think the Minister will be surprised to hear that I still have concerns about this legislation, but he will, I hope, be pleased that I do not intend to rehearse all those concerns today. This is not the appropriate place to discuss the Government’s approach to introducing individual electoral registration. My noble friend Lord Lipsey has already set out for the Committee the importance of that, so I will not go over it.
There appears to be very little that is exceptionable in these regulations. I welcome much that is in them. However, your Lordships’ House is being asked to approve them without the benefit of crucial information, which is available to the Government but not to your Lordships. This cannot be an acceptable way to proceed in a healthy democracy, where there is proper scrutiny of the Executive by the legislature.
As far as I am aware, every independent body has warned of the potential damage to levels of registration by the Government’s approach to this legislation. All experience and evidence suggest that there are specific groups at particular risk of seeing their registration levels fall as a result of government policy: young people; students, as we have already heard; people with learning disabilities; people with disabilities generally; people living in areas of high social and economic deprivation; and ethnic minorities. These concerns were extensively rehearsed during the passage of the Bill and were brushed aside by the Government, who have still not produced any evidence to justify their insouciance. Their responses have brimmed with hope and aspiration, but they have not really put forward anything to justify their confidence.
It is not credible to argue, as the Government often do—we have heard a trace of it again today from the Minister—that there are significant problems with current levels of registration. It is no justification at all to make a bad situation worse. We are not in a position to assess the arguments put forward for the efficacy of the measures that the Government have outlined today and elsewhere, because we do not have the information to judge whether they are sufficient. It is impossible to assess whether these measures are adequate without knowing the assessment of risk that the Government have made.
The Minister suggested in the past that the Government had indeed considered these concerns. If your Lordships’ House is to approve these regulations, surely it should have access to the same evidence as the Government about the risks to electoral registration of their policy. Yet, we do not. I have been trying for nearly a year to secure it under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. I have been fobbed off with what I regard as inadequate excuses for not giving it. These excuses have consistently been delivered late—well outside the provisions of the Act. I last wrote to Cabinet Office officials on 6 November. I am still waiting for a response. The Minister, I am sure, can work out that the response is out of time.
Will the Minister today at least spare me—and, more importantly perhaps, his long-suffering officials—further grief? Will he tell your Lordships what assessment the Government have made of the risks this legislation poses to levels of registration among young people; among students; among people with learning disabilities; among people with disabilities generally; among people living in areas of high social and economic deprivation; and among ethnic minorities? If he will not, please will he explain why he will not?
There can be only two possible explanations for the Government’s persistent refusal to share this information with your Lordships’ House. The first is that all the concerns that I have referred to are groundless, but the Government are not revealing this because of their worries about extending transparency in government. Will the Minister say whether this is indeed the reason for the Government’s refusal to reveal the detail of their assessments of the risks to electoral registration of this legislation?
The only other possible explanation for the Government’s lack of transparency is that their assessment indeed confirms all other independent assessments of the risks that so concern everybody else and that they are embarrassed to reveal it, because that would throw a harsh light on the profound flaws in the legislation.
I would be grateful if the Minister could say today which of these two arguments applies to the Government’s lack of transparency in this area. If he will not respond to that—and I fear that probably he will not—will he at least make a guarantee? It is only a small request, but it would save everybody a lot of grief and place the Government in a much better light than they currently are in. Will he guarantee that I will receive replies to my freedom of information requests—which, I must give due warning, are unlikely to stop now—within the statutory limits provided for under the Act? I hope that the Government recognise that the sort of inexcusable tardiness I have experienced until now undermines their frequent claims to the promotion of transparency in government.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, first, I draw Members’ attention to my interest as a member of the Electoral Commission. I am also the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Voter Registration.
The order and regulations we are considering in Grand Committee today are important as part of the process of bringing into effect individual electoral registration. I very much agree with my noble friend Lord Lipsey, who described to the Grand Committee just what is at stake and how important the regulations—and all that we are discussing here today—are. I look forward to many more discussions and debates on this over the coming weeks and months.
National Voter Registration Day, which the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, mentioned, is something that I very much support. We discussed it many times at the all-party group meetings. It is very important that we get young people registered to vote. They are a real risk group, as other colleagues mentioned. There is, as my noble friend Lord Wills said, much that we agree with here, but there are real risks. I agree with him very much. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, will be able to address the points my noble friend has made; in particular, I hope that when my noble friend puts in FOI requests, he will get proper and adequate responses and that this will be addressed.
Members will be aware that the previous Labour Government put on to the statute book individual electoral registration and a process for bringing it into effect. With the new Government coming into office, the process was accelerated and other changes were made with the passing of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. As many noble Lords said, IER is supported by all parties and we all welcome its introduction. It is another safeguard to ensure that our democracy is both protected and enhanced. It is important for the governance of our country at all levels, for society in general, for our citizens, for political parties and for our reputation around the world that we can all have confidence in our electoral process. It is largely built on trust, but it needs safeguards for protection.
I have a number of questions for the noble Lord. I am sure he will answer as many as he can today, but I do not expect him to be able to answer them all—or all the questions posed by other noble Lords. Where that proves to be the case, I assume that he will write to me and other noble Lords who have asked questions and place a copy in the Library of the House
I turn first to the order that requires electoral registration officers throughout England, Wales and Scotland to undertake specific activities in relation to the transition to IER. As my noble friend Lord Lipsey said, there are real concerns with the IT needed to deliver this. Fundamental decisions have to be made and some may have to be reviewed. Will the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, tell the Grand Committee what safeguards are in place? About 70% of electors were confirmed through the tests in the data-matching exercise—the noble Lord said it was 78%. However, as he will be fully aware, we do not have an overregistration problem in this country but an underregistration problem. Will he tell the Grand Committee what else is proposed to get electors on to the register, other than the online proposals?
Noble Lords are all aware of the Northern Ireland experience. I accept that this is being done in a different way, but it would be good to hear what other plans the Government will put in place to ensure that we do not have a similar problem. It has to be a bit more than the ERO being able to concentrate on the other 30% who are not identified through this process. Will he also tell the Grand Committee what the status is of other databases and matching exercises? Are these not going to be looked at further? Will they be able to give us what we want? Might we look at any others in the future? What is the review process for looking at databases as we move forward?
I am sure that the noble Lord will understand that the completeness and the accuracy of the register are not the same thing. I note the baseline measurements of 86% complete and 85% accurate for our electoral register. However, to put it another way, our electoral register baseline measurements are 14% incomplete and 15% inaccurate. Is that acceptable to him—and, if not, what will the Government do to improve the situation?
My worry is that, as other noble Lords mentioned, it will be students, people living in private rented accommodation, service men and women and their families, and other groups that have the potential to move around who will be at the greatest risk of being lost to the system. I am sure that the noble Lord is well aware of the importance of the register that will be published in December 2015, as it relates to the next parliamentary redistribution of seats. I think that I am right in saying this will be the base figure that the Boundary Commission will take. If there is a drop in the number of people registered to vote, that will have very serious consequences for how seats are redrawn and could create a gross injustice and unfairness. How will the noble Lord ensure that that will not happen? What contingency plans do the Government have in place?
I turn to the other regulations before the Grand Committee. Changing the name of the edited register to the open register is a very sensible move and I fully support it. The Government are a bit obsessed with the retention of data and I have some concerns about losing the ability to detect fraud that their keenness to destroy records could create. Where someone has failed to be matched and cannot produce documents that satisfy the ERO, they will need to have their application attested by an elector who is registered in the same local authority—someone of good standing. Can the noble Lord tell the Grand Committee who is a person of “good standing” and how many applications they will be able to sign per year: one, two, 10 or 100? When do alarm bells start to be rung?
Does the noble Lord think that one visit and two follow-up invitations will be enough? Does he not accept that in many places EROs will have to go much further than this? What advice would he give to EROs about using the requirement-to-register power: is it something he would expect EROs to do only in exceptional circumstances, or is it something he would encourage them to do much more frequently than that to improve the completeness and accuracy of the register in their locality?
On postal vote identifiers, will he give a commitment to look at the date of birth identifier in particular? As I see it, the most common problem is that people will give their signature and date of birth when applying for a postal vote, but, when casting their postal vote, they will sign the document and put that day’s date on the form. That would be an understandable mistake, but it would mean that their vote was not counted. I am sure that the noble Lord would regret that most sincerely, as would I.
As I said at the start of my remarks, I fully support IER, as do all parties—and, I am sure, all noble Lords. However, I and other noble Lords have raised a number of concerns at which the Government will have to look seriously as these changes move forward.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am grateful for almost everything that has been said in this debate. We all agree, as the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, that it is extremely important, first, to get maximum registration, and then to get maximum turnout. We also accept that both of these are difficult and have become more difficult; and that the question of the legitimacy of government is, of course, caught up in this. We are all well aware that we might possibly elect a Labour Government at the next election with 35% of the votes cast on a very low turnout. I can imagine what the Daily Mail would say about the legitimacy of that Government.
We have a shared interest across all parties, first, to make sure that we maximise registration and then—this is something on which we need to have some active cross-party conversations—persuade our deeply alienated electorate, let alone our deeply hostile media, that politics is an honourable profession; that voting is important; and that maximising the turnout at the next election has to be seen as a civic duty and not as something that, as some newspaper columnists tend to suggest, will only encourage the bastards.
Lord Wills
I am very grateful for what the Minister has just said and want to associate myself with those remarks profoundly. I would like to “mark his card” with a particular potential problem on which I hope the parties could collaborate. That is the problem about funding for electoral registration in this context. As the Minister will know, it is not ring-fenced—although I personally believe that it should be. However, because it is not ring-fenced, local authorities under a lot of pressure might well be tempted to skimp, shall we say, on some of the efforts made. The problem could arise, therefore—and it is only a potential problem at the moment—that local authorities with a particular political complexion will not necessarily see it as in their interests to canvass areas that support the other parties. I am sure that the Minister can imagine the sort of scenarios that could occur.
At the moment, there is no protection against that happening. I am not saying that it will happen. Most local authorities in my experience as a Minister were extremely diligent and took their democratic duties extremely seriously. I would be very surprised if it was a widespread problem, but it could be a problem. I welcome the comments just made by the Minister and his reassurance that he will at least explore what might be done to protect against that sort of eventuality.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I hesitate to get into a discussion on ring-fencing, which the noble Lord and I have debated several times before. The good news is that the data matching so far has come up with a much higher proportion than we originally anticipated. That will enable us to focus funding on those vulnerable groups and particular areas that we now know to be the most difficult. We all understand which those groups are. They are young men above all—young men who tend not to open letters and who move around very rapidly—students, young black voters, and other challenging groups of one sort or another. That is the area on which we are currently concentrating. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, and others that the Government are co-operating actively with Bite the Ballot, Operation Black Vote and other organisations that are working to increase the intention and willingness to register within their own communities. We are also working with universities and students to ensure that they, too, are able to raise interest and maximise the registration of those groups in their areas. We are well aware of this and we are doing everything we can.
The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, asked whether we were going ahead for 2015. So far, things are going better than anticipated. We have not completely gone snap on it, but the IT has demonstrated more resilience than we feared might be the case, so it is on track. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s comments on the open register. There are some wider considerations here, as we all understand, such as the questions of credit references and identity verification for mortgages, and other such things. There is also an issue about overseas voters, since they will be asked to demonstrate that they have been, within the past 15 years, resident somewhere in a particular constituency. All of these things fit in with maintaining an accurate register, let alone the question of longer historical research, which relates to the future of the census—another complicated area on which I will not go into more detail here.
Yes, of course we will review the situation after 2015, and we will be absolutely concerned to do whatever we can about service registration. The question of service voting and registration is becoming a little less difficult than it has been, because as troops return from Afghanistan and from Germany, the proportion of our serviceman living outside this country is going through a relatively rapid decline. Of course they will continue to move around, but arrangements for Armed Forces voters and their spouses will be maintained in as strong a form as we possibly can.
We are absolutely concerned to get good young people’s registration forms. I have already mentioned our work with universities and other groups. The noble Lord, Lord Wills, talked about access to the Government’s risk register. Again, we have discussed this before and I have reiterated that the Government work through a risk register as a matter of course but do not publish it. We have just all agreed where we know the risks are in this shift in registration, but I have to reiterate that we knew where many of these risks were already. It is relevant that we have already had increasing problems with young men, people living in rented accommodation and ethnic minority voters. Those existed already; we simply have to work harder to get through to all of them; that is why we are targeting our efforts.
Lord Wills
Very briefly, everyone knew where the risks were with the current system of registration. The question I have been trying to get the Government to address is: does the way in which they are proceeding to introduce individual registration increase those risks, maintain the same level of risk or decrease the risks? Which is it?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, our efforts are intended to mitigate a risk that was already increasing and is likely to increase further. We will continue to need to look at a range of issues. I am well aware that a Labour Private Member’s Bill, which has been presented two or three times in the House of Commons, suggests, for example, that benefit seekers should not be able to receive their benefits unless they are on the electoral register. This provision is not included in the Bill. It is something that the noble Lord may wish to pursue further. There is a range of questions that we still need to consider, but he and I know how difficult this is: first, getting these people on the register and then persuading many of them to vote.
The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked how aware we were of the importance of the register for December 2015, because it is likely to be the basis on which the redistribution of seats next time around will be drawn. Again, this is not a new problem. We are already aware that there has been underregistration in a number of cities—a number of safe Labour seats, one has to say. To the extent to which we have managed to raise the level of registration, we will raise it on a much fairer basis for the next redistribution of seats. Again, we all recognise, on a cross-party basis, that these things go together, and that we share an interest in making sure that as many of these vulnerable groups as possible are persuaded to register.
The last question from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, was: who is a person of good standing? I am tempted to say that it is clearly a university professor. However, I take the question as he put it and I promise to write, particularly on the question of how many times the same person can sign a form on behalf of someone else before the ERO begins to question whether they are an appropriate person to sign the form. I am aware of where he is going with that question and I will do my best to answer it. I hope that I have answered all the questions that noble Lords raised, and I beg to move.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his responses, which I am happy with. I did ask some other questions, but I take it that he will respond to them in writing.
Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Description of Electoral Registers and Amendment) Regulations 2013
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Description of Electoral Registers and Amendment) Regulations 2013.
Relevant document: 11th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Representation of the People (Scotland) (Description of Electoral Registers and Amendment) Regulations 2013
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (Scotland) (Description of Electoral Registers and Amendment) Regulations 2013
Relevant document: 12th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Representation of the People (Provision of Information Regarding Proxies) Regulations 2013
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (Provision of Information Regarding Proxies) Regulations 2013.
Relevant document: 11th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Violence Against Women
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Gould of Potternewton
Asked by
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to address violence against women in countries experiencing conflict.
Baroness Gould of Potternewton (Lab)
My Lords, it is a tragedy but a reality that violence against women and girls, be it sexual assault, domestic violence, FGM or forced marriage, is seen by far too many women as part of normal existence. In discussing the question of rape as a weapon of war, I want to concentrate on sexual violence in conflict, although the other issues around violence against women are extremely important.
The United Nations Security Council has declared that the use of rape and sexual violence as a weapon of warfare is a threat to international peace and security and it has passed several resolutions mandating states to take specific measures to end impunity for war rape and to address gender inequality. The question that must be discussed today is what the result of these initiatives is. At this point, I must declare an interest as co-chair of the UK branch of the Global Justice Center.
Rape as a particularly serious form of sexual violence qualifies in international law as a form of torture designed to destroy communities through terror and humiliation. As a weapon it is used more than any other prohibited weapon of war, including starvation, herbicides or dum-dum bullets, yet somehow the degradation and sexual assault of women are not seen as such a significant crime and worthy of prosecution. It can be extremely violent and dangerous. It is psychological warfare designed to humiliate and it is used systematically as a tactic of war.
Girls and women are now at a high risk of physical, sexual and emotional violence from regular soldiers, non-regular army groups and militia, and non-combatants. This risk is compounded by the breakdown of structures of authority, displacement, and the rupture of communities and their coping strategies. Women and girls are often the most vulnerable when humanitarian emergencies occur, but they are often not accorded enough priority by donors at the onset of a humanitarian crisis. It must also be understood that women are not a homogeneous group. Attention has to be given to the fate of the large number of widows, for instance, and their children, as well as all women at risk.
Sexual violence has wide-ranging negative consequences: physical trauma, disease, HIV/AIDS, psychological trauma, unwanted pregnancy, maternal mortality and the risks of resorting to non-sterile or unsafe methods of abortion, thus perpetuating the physical and psychological effects of the injury. The horror of rape can lead to severe health implications or death. In many societies, the shame of rape is a burden for the survivor, causing the woman to become a social outcast and frequently obliging her to leave her family and community, which may lead to poverty and often to prostitution.
Whether it is in the iconic square in Cairo, or during the 100 days of the Rwandan genocide, when it is alleged that 400,000 women were raped, or in Bosnia, where it is estimated that 200,000 to 250,000 women were raped—with only perhaps 50 prosecutions, I should add—or in the Central African Republic, where campaigning militia and government forces alike continue to rain terror over the population by the systematic use of rape, even though a hearing is being conducted against a military commander, the war rape continues, and women and girls made pregnant by such rape are denied access to abortion due, directly or indirectly, to the US abortion ban on humanitarian aid. There is evidence that in Libya, in 2011, Gaddafi deliberately used rape as a punishment. Today, in Colombia, sexual violence is perpetrated by armed actors, both state and non-state, but it is the state security forces’ involvement in sexual violence that has a particularly devastating effect since those forces are mandated to protect the Colombian population. A woman from Colombia said to me, “Their uniforms should symbolise security, discipline and public service, but instead they symbolise the fear of rape”. Amnesty International reported the terrible situation of women in Syria in fear of sexually based violence fleeing to camps where they cannot go out at night because of that continuing fear of sexual violence, when they thought that they were going to safety.
Girls and women raped in situations of armed conflict are considered the wounded and sick. That means that they have absolute rights to non-discriminatory medical care and attention under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which states that no adverse distinction should be made on any grounds other than medical ones. However, because of the restrictions placed on the use of aid for the purpose of abortion, non-discrimination might signify that the outcome for each gender must be the same, but the treatment is not and should not be identical. Consequences—most notably pregnancy—necessitate distinct medical care, including the option of abortion. Denying abortion to female victims of war rape who are forced to bear the children of their rapists violates Common Article 3, the prohibition against torture and cruel treatment.
The UK’s partner of choice for humanitarian aid to persons wounded or sick in armed conflict is the International Committee of the Red Cross. Despite the UK’s explicit policies on safe abortion and gender equality, the ICRC, which receives more than 20% of its annual budget from the United States, operates under the US abortion ban, stating in its internal operational guidelines that,
“the ICRC’s general position … is that its medical staff do not perform abortions”.
The ICRC further advises that such medical care is governed by domestic abortion laws, not the medical needs of the patient as required by the Geneva Convention. Nearly all of the UK’s humanitarian aid for victims of armed conflict is given to humanitarian aid entities that discriminate against female rape victims by denying them medically needed abortions.
This is in no way to diminish the important role that the Government have played in highlighting this crucial issue. It was encouraging to hear this statement in the Queen’s Speech:
“My government will work to prevent sexual violence in conflict worldwide”.
They have increased efforts to tackle this issue through the Foreign Secretary’s preventing sexual violence initiative, which aims to increase the number of perpetrators brought to justice and is signed by 120 member states. Perhaps the Minister can update us on what progress has been made on that initiative. Importantly, it was supported by the G8 Declaration on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict this year and I am sure that we all look forward to the outcome of the proposed global summit.
Resolution 2122, which supports abortion access for survivors of rape in war, noting the need for,
“access to the full range of sexual and reproductive health services, including regarding pregnancies resulting from rape, without discrimination”,
is in line with the Government’s announcement on 9 January this year that the option of abortion is a necessary component of medical care for women and girls impregnated by war rape. This resolution represents a step forward in recognising the rights of female victims of war, so my question to the Minister has to be whether this policy has now been incorporated into relevant DfID policies. Has there been a revision of the safe and unsafe abortion practice paper that limits the provision of DfID support for abortion services strictly to situations where abortion is legal under national laws? Those actions are vital if we are to make change happen.
Further initiatives that might be followed by the Government are to remove any barriers to the implementation of the important Security Council Resolution 2106 by the UK making a bilateral request for the US to remove its abortion ban on humanitarian aid and publicly to support access to safe abortions for female war victims. How do the Government intend to follow through the recommendation of the House of Commons Select Committee on International Development that all UK aid partners should inform girls and women raped and impregnated in armed conflict of their rights under international humanitarian law, including their right to abortion as a component of non-discriminatory medical care? The UK has the power to ensure that its aid complies with the Geneva Conventions and the Security Council resolutions.
Effective responses to sexual and gender-based violence have to ensure medical, psychological and material support, as well as access to justice for survivors. This requires strong political commitment and leadership at both national and global levels. If we are to look forward to the future, we really have to see a reduction, if not the elimination, of these terrible atrocities against women and girls.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, on raising this subject for debate today, because the situation of women in conflict is so often overlooked. For most people in the UK, war is viewed through the media with images of young men—soldiers, rebels, fundamentalist groups, freedom fighters. What is hardly ever shown are the pictures of the women in these countries who die as civilians, or those who are raped violently and repeatedly as a strategy of modern warfare. Over the past century, wars have shifted from battlefields to communities, and today it is estimated that 90% of casualties are civilians, mostly women and children. In terror, women often flee, trying to take their families to a safer place, sometimes making themselves even more vulnerable.
Of the 42 million refugees and internally displaced people today, 80% are women and children. These stark figures do not reveal the suffering that lies behind them. What happens to families when a mother is killed? What about the heartbreak of leaving your home with nothing, to ensure your family’s survival? This anguish was very much brought home to me when I met Syrian refugees in Lebanon in May. Being the poorest in these countries makes women especially vulnerable in conflict, not only because they are less physically able to defend themselves but because their cultural norms and status in society often put them at particular risk. The destruction of services and infrastructure during conflict means that there is no support to turn to, and it is not just by the enemy that women will be attacked. When a conflict starts, levels of domestic violence spiral out of control.
As the noble Baroness has highlighted, women frequently become prime targets. Too often today, rape is used as a weapon of war; raping a woman in front of her family effectively disarms the men. UN special representative Zainab Bangura describes it as “History’s greatest silence”. Accurate data from conflict countries are hard to obtain but the estimates are truly terrible: 50,000 women systematically raped in the camps in Bosnia; around 400,000 women raped in Rwanda; 400,000 women raped in the DRC in the years 2006 and 2007 alone; 500,000 women raped in Colombia. One could go on—Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mexico, women being gang-raped in Tahrir Square in Cairo, and it is happening right now in Syria today. In spite of this, the conviction rates up to now have been pitifully small: none after World War II, 29 in Bosnia, 11 in Rwanda and six in Sierra Leone.
I pay enormous tribute to the Foreign Secretary for his initiative to prevent sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict countries, which was launched in May 2012, and I am enormously proud to be on the steering board. There has been outstanding progress, and I am sure we will hear more on this from the Minister: 137 countries have endorsed the declaration—that is 70% of all the members of the United Nations. In the words of the Foreign Secretary:
“We want to bring the world to a point of no return, creating irreversible momentum towards ending warzone rape and sexual violence worldwide”.
In time, this will change the lives of millions across the world.
As the noble Baroness said, women are not a homogeneous group. No data exist on the millions of widows and wives of the disappeared, who are particularly vulnerable and may be targeted within their families and the wider community. According to Widows for Peace through Democracy, it is suggested that there are over 2 million widows in Iraq; more than 50% of all women in eastern Congo are widows, and there are 2.5 million in Afghanistan, with around 80,000 in Kabul alone, often having to resort to begging on the streets to support their families.
“Wherever there is conflict, women must be part of the solution”,
said Michelle Bachelet, the former head of UN Women. Women are hit hardest by war, yet it is an irony that they are excluded from national peace talks and plans. Over the past 25 years, only one in 40 peace treaty signatories have been women, and between 1990 and 2010 only 12 out of 585 peace accords referred to women’s needs in rehabilitation or reconstruction.
Failing to recognise the different experiences of women and men threatens to erode women’s rights and puts them at increased risk. For women, violence continues after the fighting stops, when there will be many armed men and usually fragile or non-existent transitional justice systems. In post-conflict countries, a culture of normalised sexual violence can continue. When I visited Liberia, we were told that girls had to engage in “transactional” sex to survive, with even the girls in the university having to exchange sex for grades.
There has been little real progress on including women at the peace table in spite of seven UN resolutions, starting with 1325 and ending with 2122, to address this, through lack of global implementation. Over the past few years, one only has to look at the way in which Afghan women have been excluded from the London Conference, the Bonn II Conference—where a woman from civil society was allowed to speak for three minutes—and the Chicago NATO summit.
You cannot have real and lasting peace without considering and including women, who are half the population, and it is certainly not peace for the women if domestic and sexual violence is raging unabated and there are no institutions to deal with this. Surely it is just as much a right for women to help to decide the future of their country and that their diverse experiences are integrated into all peacebuilding, peacemaking and reconstruction processes. When that happens, peace is more likely to last. I particularly ask the Minister to ensure that, where the UK is involved in peace negotiations, women in civil society are included.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)
My Lords, I endorse and support what my noble friend Lady Gould said about the right of women raped and impregnated in conflict to abortion under the Geneva convention, and indeed international humanitarian law.
Last year, as rebels captured the main towns in Mali, we heard that girls as young as 12 had been forcibly taken to military camps, gang-raped for days and then abandoned. Earlier this year Ban Ki-moon visited Congo, where he met women who had a condition called traumatic fistula. I have also met women who, to put it in plain language, had had their insides torn out, were unable to control their bladder or bowels and were in constant pain. In Darfur I met a 16 year-old girl who, after being raped, was rejected by her family and fiancé, and endured additional abuse at the hands of police. Her child was then two years old and she was left isolated and alone. It is usual for these women and girls to be ostracised and rejected by their families.
Just imagine an orphanage where 300 children conceived when their mothers were raped had been abandoned. Imagine a town where in the past year 11 infants between the age of six months and one year had been raped. Of the thousands of reported rapes in Congo, up to 50% of all survivors were under the age of 17, and 10% were under 10.
Sexual violence in conflict is a security, development and human rights challenge. It is indeed an extremely effective weapon of war that creates enduring ethnic, religious, family and community divides. Violence against women is increasingly used as a way to humiliate, attack and undermine enemy male combatants. Women are raped and impregnated or infected with HIV as a part of efforts to destabilise their communities. It is also important to recognise that, as the excellent NGO, Womankind, points out, attention to the impact of war on women has failed to address domestic violence in fragile and conflict-affected countries, and that in such conditions it is often the case that women suffer violence from partners and family members.
How, in policies, programmes and funding, do the Government seek to address domestic violence in fragile and conflict-affected states? Is it not clear that, whether in the form of beatings, bullying, forced marriage or female infanticide, violence is used as a tool to subordinate women? The tragedy is that too often violence against women is tolerated, justified and overlooked, and there is an unwillingness to acknowledge that social norms and the widespread prevalence of patriarchal attitudes and beliefs determine the status of women.
The UN Security Council has said that it,
“remains seized of the matter”,
so why are gender perspectives not mainstreamed through all the UN work on conflict-affected and fragile states? The NGO, Saferworld, which has real expertise on peace and security matters, has pointed out that while we have a large number of international agreements on addressing sexual and gender-based violence, little progress has been made on implementing them, so I do not expect to hear from the Minister that everything is fine and going well.
We have the Beijing Platform for Action and United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888, 1960, 2106 and 2122. Surely we have enough information to act on. It is good to have these progressive policies, of course, but if they are not translated into action, we will not see real change for hundreds of thousands of women, men, girls and boys whose life chances are so threatened by sexual and gender-based violence. Furthermore, even with that solid framework of UN resolutions already in place, we see that Mary Robinson is the first and only lead mediator in the peace process, when over half the world’s population are women. Plainly, we need to see many more women who are civil society leaders, with decades of experience on peace and security issues, holding key positions in peacekeeping operations.
It occurs to me that as the number of resolutions increases, and while the focus on protecting women from sexual violence is welcome, it seems that little is being done to plan for more women’s participation in decision-making. Resolution 2122, agreed in October, represents some progress but there is still a long way to go. Surely it is time to recognise that there is an urgent need to support women’s efforts to address their own security needs, and that they should have a central role in efforts to respond to conflict—and indeed to help with the prevention of conflict.
On the preventing sexual violence initiative, the priority has to be preventing violence in the first place. Focusing simply on prosecution fails to acknowledge the daunting barriers to justice that women face. Indeed, a World Bank report found that apart from lack of education and a limited awareness of their rights, the main reason that women do not seek help is the perception that violence is normal and somehow justified, and that it remains the case that women are too embarrassed and stigmatised to seek redress. We identify the fact that there are grave problems with impunity in conflict-affected states. This reinforces and reflects the widespread social convention that serves to marginalise women. Is it not time to shift the balance of shame from the survivors to the perpetrators? Will the Minister confirm that the planned PSVI conference will include a focus on primary prevention and survival services as well as on increasing prosecutions?
Violence against women is increasingly recognised as a threat to democracy, a barrier to lasting peace, a burden on national economies and a truly appalling violation of human rights. Protection and prevention are within the grasp of our generation. We should ensure that both are applied with rigour.
Lord Hussain (LD)
I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, for raising this important issue. We often hear about violence and rape against women from many parts of the world, and we all stand united in condemning those acts. However, we very rarely discuss such issues taking place in many countries that are more friendly to the United Kingdom, such as India. Recently some cases in the capital and other areas have been reported widely in the press, but the case of gang rape in the Indian capital has remained the focus for almost all the print and electronic media in the country. This has been followed by violent and angry protests at India Gate in the heart of New Delhi. Not only the residents of Delhi but also the whole of India has condemned these crimes. Living their own life of peace, far from turbulent Kashmir, the young generation of the city have rarely witnessed such protests, yet they arose in anger to protest against this brutal incident. People all over India have condemned the brutality of the crime and demanded a harsh punishment for the culprits. Cries of justice for the victim have echoed in many quarters.
However, this has also exposed the duality of attitude of the majority of Indians. If an incident of gang rape against a medical student on a moving bus in the capital is a matter of grief and sorrow for India, provoking it to demand justice, what about Kashmir, where many such cases of rape against innocent girls involving forces have come to the fore? These have been overlooked by the majority of Indians and the rest of the world. Why has not the rest of India demanded justice for these girls? The residents of Kashmir, which is claimed by India as an integral part and is still considered the most militarised part of the world, where the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act gives extraordinary powers to the military forces and where protests against alleged human rights violations take place on a daily basis, have cried themselves hoarse demanding justice in a number of rape cases against innocent daughters of the state.
The major rape case in the history of Kashmir and indeed the whole of India is the Kunan Poshpora mass rape incident. On 23 February 1991, Kunan Poshpora, a village in the Kupwara district of north Kashmir, witnessed incidents of the alleged mass rape of 20 women by army troops in one night. The incident drew the attention of national and international media. However, this was soon forgotten and the womenfolk of the village landed in unending troubles. Women who deserved the respect and honour of society were not secure any more from the cruel face of the armed forces. A number of other cases of rape and enforced disappearances have come to the fore in the past three decades. Another case that shook the region was the 2009 Shopian rape and murder case, which resulted in protests that rocked the whole valley, with several families losing their loved ones in the agitation.
Shutdowns, curfews and protests, unimaginable for Indians, are not new to Kashmiris. Importantly, womenfolk have become the victims of sexual abuse in the state. Several decades have passed but Kashmir is still fighting to restore its internal peace by achieving justice for its loved ones, who have been subjected to enforced disappearances, and its womenfolk, who have been subjected to senseless violations of their dignity.
The root of the problem, as pointed out by many, is the existence of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, which grants special powers to the armed forces deployed in Kashmir. According to the law, the forces have the power to,
“enter and search without warrant any premises to make any such arrest as aforesaid or to recover any person believed to be wrongfully restrained … or any arms, ammunition or explosive substances”,
and seize it. Does this imply that in a crackdown, the forces can take away all the male members of a community and do whatever they wish with the womenfolk left behind? Kashmir has witnessed too many such incidents.
On 31 March 2012, a UN official asked India to revoke AFSPA, saying it had no place in a democracy such as India. Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, visited the region and said:
“During my visit to Kashmir, AFSPA was described to me as ‘hated’ and ‘draconian’. It clearly violates international law. A number of UN treaty bodies have pronounced it to be in violation of international law as well”.
I will cut short my speech because I can see that my time is nearly up. A Kashmiri newspaper recently reported that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, asked the Sri Lankan Prime Minister to ensure a “credible, transparent and independent” inquiry into alleged war crimes. Will the Foreign Secretary ask the Indian Government to ensure a credible, transparent and independent inquiry into the alleged gang rapes in Kashmir at the hands of the security forces, and to bring those responsible to justice?
Baroness Coussins (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate, and will focus my remarks on Colombia and Peru. I declare my interests as president of the Peru Support Group and as a volunteer with VSO’s parliamentary volunteering programme in Peru two years ago, where I worked with various NGOs concerned with sexual violence and held meetings with members of the then new Government, as well as the police, judiciary and British companies operating in Peru. I am also associated with the ABColombia Group in the UK and a few days ago chaired its conference on Women, Conflict-Related Violence and the Peace Process in Colombia, which was attended by the representatives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the acting Colombian ambassador and some brave victims of sexual violence, who flew over especially, and about 100 activists, academics and others.
It is important to understand the social and cultural context of sexual violence in conflict zones. Women face historical, ingrained attitudes of gender discrimination and economic, social and political marginalisation, as we have already heard. This creates a permissive context for violence against women, which is exacerbated by conflict. We see this today in Colombia, and it was a major issue in the Peruvian conflict between 1980 and 2000. Both conflicts have made widespread and systematic use of women’s bodies as a weapon of war, particularly affecting poor, indigenous and Afro-descendent women.
In Colombia, sexual violence is perpetrated by all armed actors in the conflict, both state and non-state forces. The Constitutional Court of Colombia and the International Criminal Court have expressed grave concerns about the high levels of conflict-related sexual violence, describing it as,
“habitual, extensive, systematic and invisible”.
There is almost total impunity for this type of violence. One survey covering a nine-year period from 2000 estimated that nearly 13,000 women were victims of conflict rape; more than 1,500 were forced into prostitution; and there were more than 4,000 forced pregnancies and nearly 2,000 forced abortions. Yet only 18% of Colombian women actually report this crime, and there is very little hope of that improving, given the dangers that they face, the social stigma and the involvement of the security forces.
As we know, UN Security Council Resolution 1325 states that conflict-related sexual violence should be on the peace process agenda from day one; yet it is still not on the Colombian agenda, despite peace talks having started there in November 2012. In Peru, we have also seen the systematic nature of sexual violence committed by both state forces and Shining Path rebels during the internal conflict. The perpetrators could have been tried for crimes against humanity, but instead the judicial system has chosen to treat it as a common crime. Although the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded that military commanders were responsible for the majority of conflict-related sexual violence, these crimes remain unpunished.
None of the 538 cases documented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has reached trial. The military refuses to release information that could be used as evidence, while the police and judiciary are inefficient and underresourced. Impunity for conflict crimes contributes to the sustained high levels of violence against women today. Most of the victims were members of marginalised indigenous communities, indicating the links between violence, poverty and racial discrimination. These same groups were also the main victims of a mass programme of sterilisation without consent during the 1990s. As yet, there has been no redress for that to the estimated 200,000 victims.
At least one case awaits trial at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights concerning the arbitrary arrest, rape and torture by state agents of Gladys Carol Espinoza in 1993. This case was referred after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ruled that the Peruvian state had failed to meet its obligations to prevent and punish torture. Would it be possible for Her Majesty’s Government to do more to press Peru to comply with the rulings of the Inter-American court?
I welcome the Government's PSVI programme, but ask that a special effort be made not to overlook Colombia and Peru and elsewhere in Latin America. I was disappointed that Colombia was not designated as a priority country when the PSVI was first announced. I would appreciate it if the Minister could say something about how the UK could support the survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in these countries, including support for the human rights defenders who try to help them on the ground but who themselves are so often also in jeopardy.
At the conference here last week, we were pleased to hear the Foreign Office representatives announce a government conference for next June on this whole subject. I congratulate the Government on that initiative, but could they commit to ensuring that there will be speakers from civil society women’s organisations and guarantee that Colombia and Peru will be explicitly covered on the agenda?
I want to make a brief point about how the issue of sexual violence relates to the recent free trade agreement between the EU, Colombia and Peru, which was debated in this Room only last week. In the light of today’s debate, would the Minister undertake to press for a gender perspective to be adopted in the monitoring and implementation of the human rights and labour standards elements of the trade agreement, given the levels of discrimination arising from sexual violence in these countries?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I also thank my noble friend Lady Gould for initiating this important debate. I, too, welcome the Government’s Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative and the Foreign Secretary’s work in raising the profile of this issue on the international stage. However, as we have heard in this debate, not only must we be tough on the crime; we have to be tough on its causes. We must tackle the underlying problem of a lack of empowerment, education and inclusion. The FCO, DfID and the MoD are jointly responsible for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security and for delivering the UK’s national action plan on the resolution. The Government’s progress on the plan is reported in the third annual review and, as my noble friend Baroness Kinnock has already indicated, many of the positive aspirations unfortunately have yet to be translated into reality.
Challenging attitudes and beliefs around gender-based violence is critical, alongside the implementation of effective legislation. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, I welcome the decision to host a global summit in London next year, co-chaired by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ special envoy Angelina Jolie. Campaigning organisations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Saferworld and others have made a vital contribution to help to advance this cause over many years. I, too, ask the Minister to assure the Committee that these organisations will be able to be active participants in the summit. The UK commitment to increase funding to the UN Secretary-General’s special representative on sexual violence in conflict is also welcome and I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether other countries have followed suit and what the Government are doing to ensure that they do so.
As we have heard in this debate, despite its prevalence, sexual violence in conflict has remained an invisible crime, ignored or dismissed as an inevitable consequence of war. As my noble friends highlighted, 20,000 to 50,000 women were raped during the 1992-95 conflict in Bosnia, yet only 12 attackers have been tried to date. In Rwanda, 500,000 women were raped in 100 days of conflict, yet only 3% of the genocide trials that followed contained any convictions for sexual violence.
The Government are right in saying that this is the time for the international community to step up its efforts to respond to these crimes. Will the Minister set out how many UK personnel have been deployed in post-conflict areas, as part of the UK team of experts, to help to improve local accountability structures since the initiative was first launched? Will he set out what discussions he has had with international partners on contributing their skilled and experienced staff to an international team of experts that can be deployed more widely?
There are a number of priority areas that I would like the Minister to specifically address in his response today. First, what response have the Government received from the Sri Lankan authorities since the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting on the offer to help to bring perpetrators to account, and how do they plan to take this work forward? In respect of the work that is being done by the UK’s team of experts on the Syrian borders, are there plans for support to be given to those in need in Syria itself?
As my noble friends have confirmed, the global community commitment to protect girls and women raped in armed conflict is made clear by the UN Security Council’s seven resolutions addressing sexual violence in armed conflict. We heard from my noble friends that the denial of safe abortion to war rape victims is deadly, inhuman and cruel. Resolution 2106’s mandate to provide comprehensive and non-discriminatory health services seeks to end this wrong against those victims. I am aware that the Government have made their policy position clear on the provision of safe abortions, but will the Minister make strong representations to those Governments that, as we have heard, continue to make aid and support conditional, urging them to adopt the same approach as us?
We had an excellent debate recently in this Room in Grand Committee on women in Afghanistan post-2014, initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson. The debate highlighted that over 4,000 incidents of violence against women in just six months this year were documented by the independent Afghan Human Rights Commission. I am aware of the substantial funds allocated to development aid in Afghanistan by DfID, but what training is being given to the Afghan army so that, particularly post-2014, it sees protecting women from sexual and other forms of violence as part of its role? What protection is being given there to women human rights defenders?
Lord Bates (Con)
My Lords, I join all noble Lords in paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, for securing this debate and for the way in which she introduced it. I will preface my remarks by making two points. The first is to pay tribute to her and other Members who have spoken today, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, and my noble friend Lady Hodgson, for the tremendous work that they have done in this field to bring light to a subject that has often been swept under the carpet. The declaration, now on the international agenda, that violence against women and girls is no longer acceptable is surely something that we want to hear.
Secondly, contributions to the debate have been helpful in crystallising matters. We heard the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, refer to Colombia and Latin America and the noble Lord, Lord Hussain, talk about India and Kashmir. We heard my noble friend Lady Hodgson and the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, talk about Africa and the Middle East. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, spoke about Bosnia. This reminds us that this is not something that is restricted to a particular place or geography. It is endemic in warfare and needs to be tackled with the utmost severity. In response, finally, to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, who understands well the briefings that one might receive ahead of debates like this, I can say that there will be no complacency. Of course we will seek to inform Members about what the Government are doing, but in no way are we saying that it is enough: it is simply the start of taking action in this important area.
The Government have put women and girls at the heart of their international development work. Our vision is set out in our strategy on delaying first pregnancy, support for safe childbirth and preventing violence against women and girls. We recognise that such violence is widespread, highly prevalent and has devastating consequences. It has been hidden and accepted for far too long. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development has made it clear that tackling violence against women and girls is a central part of the UK’s development policy. My honourable friend Lynne Featherstone continues her active efforts to be a champion for combating violence against women. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, as a number of noble Lords and noble Baronesses have mentioned, has made prevention of sexual violence in conflict-affected countries a priority.
Violence affects about one-third of women and girls in the course of their lifetime. Preventing violence against women is a development goal in its own right and is a key to achieving other development outcomes, including educational attainment, maternal health and economic activity. The impact of violence and rape does so much to erode and destroy those in the human lives concerned. Evidence shows that in emergency situations, including times of conflict, the risk of violence to women and girls is exacerbated. Existing social structures and networks that can protect women are often weakened or destroyed. Inadequate facilities and limited resources reduce women’s options and increase the risk of economic and sexual exploitation. The violence perpetrated is not always sexual violence—evidence shows that in times of conflict, the incidence of domestic violence also increases. The use of sexual violence against women and girls in wartime is well documented. It is used for many reasons: to inflict injury, to degrade, to intimidate and to force a population to flee. Estimates of the scale of violence against women and girls during conflicts in the 1990s demonstrate large-scale targeted abuses, which have been placed on record here this afternoon.
The consequences of violence against women and girls in conflict situations are stark. Sexual violence causes physical and psychological damage to thousands of women and girls, and in the worst cases results in the loss of life. Some survivors will be faced with an unwanted pregnancy, and the choices they face are often limited and harsh. They risk death from an unsafe abortion or face social exclusion and destitution. Every year, 47,000 women and girls die as a result of unsafe abortions and millions more are permanently injured. Improving access to safe abortion is challenging, and I am proud that the UK is one of only a handful of donors willing to take on the challenge. Given the scale of the problem, it is important that the international community works to ensure that the needs of women and girls are prioritised and that action is taken to protect and support women and girls affected by violence in conflict zones.
I am pleased to reassure noble Lords that the Government have been leading the international community in addressing the challenges of violence against women and girls in conflict situations. Just last month, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for International Development hosted Keep Her Safe, a high-level event attended by senior representatives from the Government, the UN, NGOs and civil society. The point has been made from across the humanitarian system, and that will continue in future meetings. They agreed a fundamental new approach to protecting girls and women in emergency situations. They recognised the need for comprehensive services for sexual reproductive health, psychological health and mental health for women and girls affected by crisis. The event secured £40 million in pledges from the international community to support this work in emergencies. We will track the progress of these commitments, working very closely with the US, which takes the lead on this initiative in 2014.
In another major step, the Foreign Secretary launched the preventing sexual violence initiative in May 2012. It aims to address the culture of impunity by increasing the number of perpetrators brought to justice both internationally and nationally, strengthening international efforts and co-operation, and supporting states to build their national capacity to deliver justice and services. In April this year, G8 Foreign Ministers adopted a historic declaration on preventing sexual violence which committed countries to use all measures—political, practical and legal—to ensure that there are no safe havens for the perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict. Last week, the Foreign Secretary announced that he would co-chair an international summit in the UK which would aim to take further the commitments already made.
In the remaining time, I will address as many of the questions raised as possible. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, asked what actions were being taken following the UNGA ministerial meeting in 2013, when the Foreign Secretary launched the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. I will refer to some specific elements. The first is eroding impunity, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, referred. The 137 endorsing countries have agreed that no peace agreements should give amnesty to people who have ordered or carried out rape. The second is protecting civilians. Every UN peacekeeping mission should now automatically include provisions for the protection of civilians from sexual violence in conflict. The third is eradicating safe havens for the perpetrators of sexual violence in armed conflict. Suspects wanted for war-zone rape can now be arrested in any of the countries that have signed up—a number that is growing. We need to see an increase in the number of prosecutions, something referred to by my noble friend Lady Hodgson and the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock. Only that will really underscore the determination of the international community to stamp out this wicked and heinous crime.
A new international protocol will be launched next year which will improve global standards for documenting and investigating conflict-zone sexual violence and improve accountability. There will be new global efforts to ensure support and justice for survivors of rape. A number of speakers referred to the shame and stigma felt by people who have been victims and the need to ensure that that is squarely put on the shoulders of the perpetrators.
The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, was concerned about some attitudes towards abortion among the donor community. DfID welcomed recent UN Security Council Resolution 2122, which said that women ought to have,
“access to the full range of sexual and reproductive health services, including regarding pregnancies resulting from rape, without discrimination”.
That is a very clear statement and something that this Government support and acknowledge. We will uphold that and encourage other donors to equally respect and uphold it.
The noble Lord, Lord Hussain, referred to events in India. Priorities for DfID’s work in India include tackling violence and investing in girls’ education. As for his specific point about whether we would raise this directly with the Government of India, I shall take that back and report to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and see what action we might take to ensure that the horrific cases that he brought to our attention are acted upon.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, asked for examples of perpetrators being brought to justice. As I have mentioned, that was a key element of the G8 and UN General Assembly declarations on the subject. One additional element is that we will not hesitate to arrest and transfer fugitives required to appear before these courts who come to the UK. That is an important addition that should go without saying. It is something that all agencies and departments are signed up to.
I am running out of time so will just refer to some closing remarks in my brief. I will write to those noble Lords and noble Baronesses whose questions I have not addressed and give them the best possible answers that I can to the points that they have raised. I conclude by saying that this is something that the Government take with the utmost seriousness. We believe that progress is being made on it in the international community. We acknowledge that it has been referred to as “history’s greatest silence”. Along with the actions that are taking place, this debate today is giving a voice to the victims. We can all be proud of that, but there is a lot more to do.
Badgers: Bovine Tuberculosis
(10 years, 5 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Knight of Weymouth
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans there are in future years to continue with a cull of badgers as part of the Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication Programme, following the withdrawal by Natural England of the licence to cull badgers in Gloucestershire.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, this debate follows the decision by Natural England at the end of last month to prematurely halt the extended licence to cull badgers in Gloucestershire. I believe that this decision indicates that the overwhelming view of the independent scientists on badger culls was correct: that a cull is costly and impractical and that continuing for the remaining years of the licensed cull risks exacerbating the serious problem of TB in cattle.
The problem has been growing over recent decades. I live in the south-west of England, where dairy farmers have been particularly badly hit. It has cost the taxpayer as much as £0.5 billion over the past decade in testing, compensation and research, with further sums borne by the agricultural industry. It therefore follows that urgent action must be taken. There is a logic in thinking that killing badgers should be a part of that. Badgers are undoubtedly involved in transmitting TB to cattle and it therefore seems obvious that fewer diseased badgers will lead to less disease in cattle. However, infection is also passed from cattle to cattle, from cattle to badgers and between badgers. The Government are therefore right to pursue other measures as part of their eradication plan for bovine TB, such as pre- and post-movement testing for cattle.
However, in continuing with culling, the Government ignore the most important part of the science: that the social behaviour of badgers produces a much more unpredictable effect due to the effects of perturbation. I am very happy to stand corrected by the real experts in this debate—the noble Lords, Lord Krebs and Lord Trees—but in layman’s terms, perturbation is brought about by the territorial behaviour of badgers. A group of badgers will stick to a territory around a sett if they detect other badgers at their boundary but will extend their range in the absence of other badgers.
The randomised badger culling trials carried out by the previous Government, devised by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who I am delighted to see in his place, had clear and undisputed findings. First, localised small-scale culling of badgers in the RBCT increased bovine TB. Secondly, 100 square-kilometre areas receiving widespread culling had lower cattle TB rates than those with no culling. The benefits took several years to emerge but persisted four years after culling ended. Thirdly, land adjoining the widespread culling areas experienced rapid increases in cattle TB. These detrimental effects faded over time but never turned into benefits. The trials, as with the current pilot culls, tried to reduce these effects using natural impermeable boundaries such as rivers.
These findings informed the current government policy. The licensing criteria are intended to produce large-scale, long-term, rapid and efficient culls, as the trials agreed that small-scale, short-term, slow and inefficient culls will increase cattle TB. By extrapolating the RBCT effects to a 150 square-kilometre circle, it followed that Government-led cage-trapping of badgers could reduce local cattle TB over a nine-year period by 12% to 16% below what it would have been with no culling. However, because background TB levels are rising, this 12% to 16% relative reduction over nine years actually represents a slowing of the rate of increase of cattle TB, not an absolute fall. On average, farmers would probably experience as much TB as they do today, or more. Farmers on adjoining land would almost certainly experience increased TB risks. To get this limited impact, the licence required 80% confidence of culling 70% of the badger population in the area.
When the policy was announced in October 2012, more than 30 of the leading scientists in this area wrote to the Secretary of State. At the very end of their letter, they said:
“Implementing these criteria entails substantial challenges, both for government and for farmers and, as a result, beneficial effects on cattle TB cannot be guaranteed. For example, licensees will be required to cull a minimum number of badgers (to avoid net increases in cattle TB) without exceeding a maximum number (to avoid causing local extinction, which would breach the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats). Setting such minimum and maximum numbers is technically problematic, especially when local estimates of badger numbers—”
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, before the Division I was reading an extract from a letter to the Secretary of State from 30 scientists sent in October 2012. I will continue:
“Setting such minimum and maximum numbers is technically problematic, especially when local estimates of badger numbers are very imprecise. Furthermore, shooting the required number of badgers sufficiently rapidly and with due regard to public safety is likely to be challenging in the face of public protest and potentially inclement weather”.
So the Government were warned by the leading scientists.
What do we now know about how the pilots have gone? In Somerset, 65% of the estimated population of badgers was culled in the pilot area. In Gloucestershire, it was just 39%. Based on the science that the Government used to design these pilots, this means that the cull was not sufficiently effective to reduce cattle TB, and in Gloucestershire is likely to have caused more harm than good. Will the Minister therefore tell us when we will get any statement on the record from the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Defra’s chief scientist and the Chief Veterinary Officer, and their analysis of whether the pilot culls have increased or decreased the incidence of bovine TB in Gloucestershire, Somerset and neighbouring areas?
Will the Minister also take this opportunity to explain one other curiosity? The licensing is for trapping and shooting and for free shooting. The data show a sudden increase in the more expensive trapping and shooting halfway through the initial six-week pilot. The extension was stopped at the same time as the cage-shooting season ended, with three more weeks to run for free shooting. This suggests that those carrying out the cull voted with their feet and abandoned free shooting. Is this true? Do the Government expect free shooting to be widespread if they push ahead with a cull over the next few years? Will he publish a new cost-benefit analysis accordingly?
It looks like an effective farmer-led cull is very difficult, due to weather and protesters, as scientists predicted, and due to badgers moving the goal posts, which no one predicted. If an ineffective cull is what we have ended up with, it will make matters worse, so what should we do? The answer appears to be vaccination of badgers. Thanks to FERA trials on the safety of an injected vaccine, we know that it reduces the transmission of the disease among badgers. We do not yet know the effect on cattle, but we could, through the evaluation of vaccination pilots.
The case for piloting vaccination is profound. It plays to the perturbation effect, not against it. Vaccinating an area reduces disease in the badger population in that area while keeping badgers alive. Those badgers then keep out other potentially diseased badgers, thus creating an area where the situation is improving, which also blocks further spread of the disease in badgers.
There are normally three broad arguments against badger vaccination. The first is cost. This objection is because it needs cage-trapping. Given that that is what culling now seems to favour, that element is cost-neutral. Unlike culling, there is negligible policing cost. The pilot culls have cost considerably more to police in Gloucestershire than expected, for example. The remaining element is the cost of the vaccine, offset against the cost of disposing of badger corpses. It is also clear from voluntary vaccination programmes that there is considerable public support. Many come forward to volunteer and some are funding vaccination.
Secondly, people say that we cannot wait for a vaccine to take effect; that it is too slow, with no effect on animals already infected. To that I say: ask the scientists. The annual mortality of badgers is 25% to 35%. Hence, vaccination would work pretty quickly compared to the cull impact of 16% over nine years.
The final argument is that vaccination does not remove infected badgers. The evidence is that, with culling, the reduction in infected badgers is much slower than the overall reduction in the badger population due to perturbation. We know that culling will not reduce the overall level of infection because the overall level of reduction is offset by background levels of rising TB. However, vaccination would at least reduce transmission between badgers without the increase in transmission created by the perturbation effect induced by culling.
To summarise, I am assuming that we mean vaccination by injection; I think there are issues attached to oral vaccine that have to be addressed. There is long-term potential attached to a cattle vaccine, but that is more complex and not something that we can proceed with as quickly as we need to. The Government should look closely at the pilots that they have carried out and then be led by science. This will tell them that culling is impractical, due to perturbation. It may have worked against non-native invasive possums in New Zealand with very different social behaviour, or in Ireland, where much lower badger density leads to much less of a perturbation effect. But the evidence from England is great and consistently shows that it does not work. The efforts and resources spent on culling badgers should be replaced by a vaccination pilot. I look forward to other contributions and to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Parminter (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing this debate and his speedy overview of the issue. I also welcome the Government’s commitment to eradicate this terrible disease and its impact on our wildlife, our farmed animals and our farming community. I want to focus on the cull pilots, which were introduced nearly two years ago to the day. They were set up to test three things: first, the effectiveness of removing the target percentage of badgers; secondly, the safety of culling by free shooting; and thirdly, the humaneness. Let us remind ourselves that free shooting has not been trialled anywhere else in the world for badgers, and therefore I understand the decision by the Government at that time to introduce those pilots—although even before we had the changes in the pilots, with the introduction of cage-trapping and the extension periods to both, I certainly had some sympathy with the view that the boundaries of the pilots were beyond the parameters of the randomised badger culling trials and therefore could not be used as a gauge for the likely outcome of the pilots in analysing the impact of reducing the incidence of TB in cattle.
Given the evidence that we have had of those pilots, it is hard to conclude anything other than that they have failed the efficacy test that was set in 2011. The licence issued specified,
“the killing of no less than the specified minimum number of badgers in a single period of 6 weeks during the Open Season”.
During the period of the two pilots, both of the cull periods were extended: in Somerset, from 42 to 63 days and in Gloucestershire, from 42 to 93 days, with a week intervening in between. Cage trapping has been introduced to supplement free shooting and of course the initial number of badgers has been revised and brought down by the Government. Even with those changes, though, it was still impossible for the cull to reach that 70% of the population that the cull licence required it to achieve.
It has clearly been the right decision for the Government to set up an independent panel to assess the outcome of the two pilots, particularly in the light of their commitment to support evidence-led policy. We all therefore eagerly await the outcome of the IEP. In advance of that, however, I have three questions for the Minister. First, what is the expected time for the delivery of the report from the independent expert panel, given the extension to the pilots and any impact that that might have on the subsequent decision by the Secretary of State about whether to roll out culling in up to 10 further areas?
Secondly, it is critical that we have confidence that the assessment of the humanity of these pilots has been done on the basis of the badgers that were killed by free shooting as opposed to those killed by cage-trapping. Will the Minister therefore confirm that there will be full disclosure of how the data were collected and assessed at the time of release, so that we can be assured of the methods used to kill the badgers?
Thirdly, given that the costs of cage-trapping are significantly higher than those for free shooting, and that the duration of the cull has increased the costs for policing, does the Minister now accept that a new impact assessment is necessary prior to the Secretary of State deciding whether or not to allow the rollout of these culls, so that we know what the net cost/benefit is, both to the taxpayer and the farming community?
The Government have made it clear that they will not do nothing on this important issue, and I applaud them for that. As we await the reports from the IEP, and as the future of licensed shooting is in doubt, I urge the Government to redouble their support for the vaccination programme and to set up a high-level working group to take leadership on this issue and bring together the key players of the NFU, the Wildlife Trusts and the National Trust in order to give best-practice guidance to those in the farming community and landowners who want to take forward voluntary vaccination as a means to tackle this appalling disease.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, for bringing forward this debate. As noble Lords will be aware, I have an interest in this topic, having been involved in the debate about badgers and TB in cattle since my 1997 report on the subject, which led to the establishment of the randomised badger culling trials that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to.
As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, the randomised badger culling trials showed that large-scale, persistent culling of badgers—removing a large proportion of the population—had a modest effect in reducing TB in cattle. The best estimate, which is only a rough guide—confirmed recently by Professor Charles Godfray and 10 top expert scientists in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society—is that the reduction expected after nine years could be 16%. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, the evidence from the randomised badger culling trial was that it made things worse in the early years, and worse for farmers around the edges of the cull areas.
Nevertheless, the Government decided to go ahead with pilot culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset. It is worth reminding ourselves of the purpose of the pilot culls. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, it was not to test whether killing badgers controls TB in cattle but to test whether or not it is possible to kill enough badgers by free shooting, as opposed to cage-trapping, and to kill them humanely and safely. This was stated very clearly in a letter to me from the then Minister of State for Agriculture and Food, David Heath, which said that,
“the pilot is not a scientific trial but rather a test of our assumptions about practical areas of uncertainty”,
and that it would,
“give us sufficient information on both the effectiveness and humaneness of controlled shooting to be able to make a judgement on its acceptability as a culling method”.
However, this is not what the current Minister of State or the Secretary of State say. Quoted on the BBC website, George Eustice said that the pilots,
“will make a difference to disease control in the area”.
Likewise, Owen Paterson said that the aim of the pilots was to,
“achieve the earliest and greatest possible impact on bTB in the area”.
I am confused. Does the Minister agree with David Heath or with George Eustice and Owen Paterson? Are Defra Ministers clear about the purpose of the pilots?
We now know that the pilots have been a complete fiasco. As has been said, there was confusion about the number of badgers in each area, as well as the target proportion to be shot, and the farmers completely failed to meet the target numbers in the allotted time period. Back in October 2012, just before the pilot was due to start, the number of badgers estimated to be in each area went up by a massive 400%. In October 2013, during the cull, the number shot down by 35%.
We know that the Secretary of State accused the badgers of moving the goal posts, but there is another possible interpretation: it might just be that Defra did not have a clue about how many badgers there were in those areas. As has been said, the target of the pilot was to remove more than 70% of the badgers but less than 100%. The 70% target was set because in the randomised badger culling trials this was the proportion that had to be removed to achieve the modest positive benefit to farmers.
Part of the way through the pilots, when it was clear that the target of 70% would be missed, it was magically changed to 53%. Those badgers seem to have moved the goal posts again. Could the Minister please explain to us why the target was changed part of the way through the pilots, and on what scientific basis? Furthermore, why was the maximum proportion to be killed in Gloucestershire lowered from 90% at the start of the pilot to 70% part of the way through? Does the Minister agree that this change means that any farmer who was efficient enough to meet the initial target would have ended up breaking the law by the end of the pilot?
I was quoted some months ago in the press as saying that the pilot cull was a “crazy scheme”. It seems to have got even crazier. However—now I come to my key point—as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, Defra has established an independent expert panel, chaired by Professor Ranald Munro, which will advise it on the effectiveness, humaneness and safety of controlled shooting. I understand that the panel is due to report very soon. If it concludes that controlled shooting is not effective or humane, will Defra abandon its plans to roll out further controlled shooting? I have one further question, which has already been alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter: in the light of the experience of the pilots, will Defra re-evaluate the cost/benefit analysis of the policy?
I could seek answers to many more puzzling questions about Defra’s plans for shooting badgers to control TB in cattle, but I would be very pleased if the Minister would give direct answers to the questions that I have already posed: what is the purpose of the pilots; why was the 70% target changed; will Defra follow the advice of its independent expert panel; and will it do a new cost/benefit analysis in the light of its experience of the pilots?
In concluding, I emphasise that the focus on killing badgers is misplaced. We all agree that TB is a dreadful problem for farmers, particularly in the south-west, and that something has to be done to bring it under control. However, there is no point in doing something if it is the wrong thing. The sad fact is that there are more effective and cheaper ways of controlling TB in cattle. We have already heard from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, about the idea of vaccination. However, in the short term, before vaccines became effective, putting in place rigorous measures to prevent transmission of the disease between badgers and cattle, and among cattle, would be a more effective policy in achieving a 60% reduction than trying to kill badgers. If Defra were to turn its attention to this solution, farmers, scientists and conservationists would all be relieved, and badgers would be able to take a rest from their task of moving the goal posts.
The NFU has told me that in 22 years, 25% of cattle herds in Cornwall, Devon, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire have never had TB. There may be a clue in trying to understand why those 25% have never had TB. Surely that could give us an indication of what those farms are doing differently that helps to prevent their cattle from getting the disease. That would be a more fruitful approach than the pointless exercise of trying to kill badgers.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Knight, for bringing this subject forward for debate. I want to try to look at the problem rather holistically, which is a challenge in under 10 minutes, but I will try. Let us be under no illusions: bovine tuberculosis is a major threat to the health of domestic animals and wildlife in Britain today. This is a disease that was almost eradicated from Britain 40 to 50 years ago by means, directed at cattle, that were essentially the same as those we use now—TB testing of cattle and the removal of reactors, although a good many other measures have been put in place that mean that the controls on cattle are even tighter than they were then. A key factor that has changed in the past few decades is the emergence of badgers as a major wildlife reservoir of this infection. There is epidemiological evidence that something like 50% of outbreaks in cattle are related to badger infections.
We are faced now with a problem of infection in badgers and in cattle on a substantial and increasing scale. If I could show the Committee maps of the spread of the infection, noble Lords would see that there has been a relentless spread in the geographical distribution of bovine infection from the original hotspot in the south-west of England, when it was nearly eradicated, to the current situation where bovine TB is threatening the dense cattle populations of Cheshire and Lancashire.
Although there is an understandable focus on the adverse impact on cattle and badger health and welfare, we should not forget that there is another victim of this disease—the cattle farmer who suffers huge stress and distress every time their herd is tested and animals are removed from the herds that they have built up over many years. We do not concern ourselves enough with the human toll that this disease is having. It is a fact that the suicide rate in farmers is the highest of any professional group. Although one certainly cannot claim that this is all due to TB, the fact is that an already vulnerable group of people is being subjected to excessive anxiety and uncertainty. That is the situation that we are facing. When the average city dweller pours their milk over their cornflakes each morning, they may not understand the hard work, worry and commitment that go into producing that daily milk.
What are the options to deal with this disease? Ideally, an effective vaccine for cattle is the solution but for various reasons, which have been made clear most recently by a letter from the EU Commissioner Tonio Borg, it is likely to be some 10 years before a vaccine is accepted and licensed in the EU to be deployed in the UK. Experience shows that in the absence of a vaccine for the target domestic species—in this case, cattle—and where there is a wildlife reservoir of infection, control measures need to address the wildlife reservoir as well as the domestic animal. In the case of bovine TB, there is a wildlife host, the badger, that is present in very high numbers—10 to 15 setts on a farm is not unusual—is in close direct and indirect contact with cattle on grazing areas, in forage crops such as maize and indeed in farm buildings, has no natural predators and is excreting substantial amounts of Mycobacterium bovis into the environment. In this situation, and in the absence of a cattle vaccine, measures directed at the wildlife host, as noble Lords who spoke earlier accepted, are essential as well as stringent measures directed towards cattle.
What are the options vis-à-vis badgers? As your Lordships are aware and as has been mentioned, a vaccine for badgers is licensed for use by injection. It has various limitations, including the fact that a high coverage of the population is necessary to reduce infection and transmission. Something over 40% has been suggested, which is feasible but difficult in a wild animal population compared with a controlled domestic animal population. Animals that are already infected will not be stopped by vaccination from excreting bacteria, and susceptible young animals are constantly being born into the population. Moreover, the animals have to be cage-trapped and restrained to allow injection—itself a stressful procedure for a wild animal. This is one rational approach, and it was advocated by noble Lords who spoke earlier, but it has to be said that the effect on bovine TB incidence is unproven. It is also a very costly measure, as things stand. The current vaccination trial in Wales, which has completed two years, shows that it costs more than £600 to vaccinate each badger. With a population of probably 250,000 to 300,000 badgers in Britain, you need only do the mathematics to determine the cost of vaccinating at least even a proportion of that population.
Still, if interested parties could work together effectively and economically to deliver a vaccine, that would be hugely helpful and doubtless the cost could be reduced. It would require a co-ordinated approach by many different groups, including those working in conservation. In that context, the Welsh Government have offered grant support to private groups to subsidise the cost of vaccination by 50%, and certain conservation groups are seriously considering that option. It is regrettable, however, that so far neither the RSPCA nor the Badger Trust has taken up the invitation to commit funds to achieve badger vaccination.
The Duke of Montrose (Con)
I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Can he help the Committee by telling us at what age young badgers catch TB and at what age they can be vaccinated?
Lord Trees
I am not sure whether the data are available but they may be. I am sorry that I cannot answer the question; I would hate to do so without preparation.
The dynamics of infectious disease in general show that reducing the density of the population will reduce infection transmission. This does not require the complete elimination of a population—far from it. However, if the population density is lowered so that the rate at which a primary infection creates secondary infections falls below 1, the so-called parameter R0—the reproductive rate—the infection will subside. We know that in a number of areas the R0 for bovine TB is only fractionally greater than 1; in fact, estimates range between 1 and 1.2. Reducing that to less than 1 may be achievable with modest reductions in the badger population.
The use of contraception is a possibility to reduce badger-population density and would be a humane way of doing so, but research is at an early stage. I am told that it will be some years before we might have a deployable contraceptive method. As well as contributing to the control of bovine TB, a reduction in the badger population would benefit other species that appear to be adversely affected by predation by badgers, such as hedgehogs, ground-nesting birds and some rare species of bumblebee.
That brings me to culling. This has been used to reduce many wild animal populations, including badgers, in various circumstances. We currently cull deer, foxes, grey squirrels, seals, magpies and rodents, among others. No one likes killing animals—I certainly do not—but the majority of us accept that culling animals in certain circumstances is justified, provided always that it is done humanely. Members of this House are complicit in the extermination of rodents within these very walls.
If the culling of badgers can be done humanely and with a sound scientific basis, ruling it out at this stage as one of the tools in the control of bovine TB is premature. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, has said, we need to see the report of the independent expert panel on the current trials to evaluate their humaneness and safety, and to understand why the culling rate was less than intended and what factors were responsible for it. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned, a key meeting of experts in 2011 accepted that a reduction in TB incidence of around 16% could be achieved by culling badgers under certain circumstances, and that included allowing for the perturbation effect. One may think that 16% may not sound a huge amount, but if the infection rates from badger to badger, badgers to cattle and cattle to cattle can be reduced by just a relatively small amount so that the infection parameter R0 can be tipped below 1, the disease will be driven to extinction, which is a goal that we all seek.
Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to follow the noble Lord, Lord Trees, and what I thought was the most interesting contribution to this debate so far, with great respect to other noble Lords who have spoken. The fact that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, published his report 16 years ago and now stands up and says that actually 75% of the farms in the south-west of England have got problems with TB indicates something that the noble Lord, Lord Trees, brought out so clearly.
I declare an interest as a minority partner in a small farm which has been affected, where we have had to face the problems of very inadequate science. The tests produce false positives or false negatives, and perfectly good cattle have gone for slaughter, having given the impression that they had TB when they did not. This is a closed herd and I am in absolutely no doubt that the TB comes from the badgers and that the badgers have led to the increase in the problems with TB. Only on Thursday our neighbour had a reactor and that is a frequent event. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, brought out well the appalling pressure that is on so many farming communities and the number of people who are going out of dairy, some for economic reasons, but others because the problems of TB are so great for them.
I declare another interest, because the first culling area is in my old constituency of Bridgwater and West Somerset. I recall that it was not so bad in west Somerset for a time and then there was an exercise in Devon, which had a particular problem with TB. There was trapping of badgers and testing them for TB, and some very misguided animal rights activists got hold of the trapped badgers and transported them to west Somerset and released them there. I am in no doubt that that significantly contributed to the serious aggravation that they now face.
The other thing is that there is certainly no shortage of badgers. The problem that my noble friend the Minister has to face is how well we can actually count the badger population, but there is absolutely no doubt in my own observation of the number of setts, that there has been a significant explosion. I have to say, as the Minister who took through the Wildlife and Countryside Act back in the early 1980s, that when one sees how the populations of animals that have no natural predator and which are protected have exploded, to the detriment of a lot of other wildlife species, it is necessary to find some way of controlling numbers in these areas.
There is one point about vaccination that did not come out. I was told—I do not know if this is right—that there has to be annual vaccination. If true, that just adds to the extraordinary difficulties. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, suggested that the solution was vaccination. I think he will concede, having listened to the noble Lord, Lord Trees, and the comments he made from his own professional background, that the idea that vaccination is the solution to the problem seems highly unlikely. Obviously we await the findings of this report with great interest—I as much as anybody, because of west Somerset.
If I might dare to presume to advise my noble friend who will be answering this debate, I would suggest that he does not answer any of the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, at this stage. He should give no guarantees or undertakings from the ministerial Bench at this stage, when he has not even seen the report and what possibilities and qualifications there may be in it. It would be much fairer not to answer those questions at this stage, but to say that the report will be looked at absolutely objectively, that it is a very important report and everybody will need to study it. He should not be asked pre-emptively for assurances of one sort and another in advance. I hope the noble Lord does not think that that is an aggressive remark—I understand his concern—but that seems to me to be the fair answer for the Minister to give.
This is an issue from which nobody can take any pleasure. There are a lot of people around the country listening to discussion of these issues who are desperate. There has, so far, been no successful progress on dealing with this appalling problem that has caused such tragedy, including suicides and family break-ups of every kind. At this stage we should try not to score points, but to see how we can work together to find a better way forward.
Lord Krebs (CB)
I thank the noble Lord, Lord King, for those comments. I just want to emphasise that Defra has set up an independent expert panel, which will advise on the safety, humaneness and efficacy of controlled shooting. My question to the Minister is: if the expert panel finds that these conditions have not been met and that free shooting is not effective and not humane, will Defra continue with the policy? It is not a matter of prejudging the outcome of the panel’s results but of asking a conditional question. If the answer is, “We would go ahead even if the panel says that free shooting is not effective and not humane”, that is interesting to know. It is surely something that Defra must have thought about ahead of time.
Lord King of Bridgwater
With great respect, if the noble Lord reads in Hansard what he said the first time around, he will find that what he was asking for was considerably more direct. He was asking for guarantees of certain specific answers. The Minister may disregard what I said but my advice would be not to answer that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)
My Lords, we must not underestimate the scale of the devastation wrought on our farming industry and rural communities by the worsening bovine tuberculosis epidemic; I think most noble Lords who have spoken today have acknowledged that. It is unacceptable that in the 10 years to 31 December 2012, more than 305,000 cattle were compulsorily slaughtered as reactors or direct contacts in Great Britain. Moreover, a further 22,512 cattle have been slaughtered up to August this year solely because of bovine TB. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, over the past 10 years the disease alone has cost the taxpayer more than £500 million. It is estimated that it will cost another £1 billion in the next decade unless we can use all the available tools to intensify the action that needs to be taken.
In the face of such a grave problem, difficult decisions must be made. There is no single solution—no silver bullet—so we must use every possible means at our disposal. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said, strict controls on cattle movement must be applied, loopholes closed and measures tightened, a point I will come back to later. However, that alone will not reverse the inexorable spread of this devastating disease. The wildlife reservoir in the high-risk areas cannot be ignored, and it needs addressing urgently. That is why the Government have developed an ambitious and comprehensive strategy for combating the disease, with the aim of achieving bTB-free status for England within 25 years while maintaining a sustainable livestock industry. I thank my noble friend Lady Parminter for her comments on our intention to eradicate the disease.
The strategy emphasises that robust cattle controls must be combined with tackling the reservoir of disease in badgers, drawing on demonstrably successful approaches from around the world. It includes a comprehensive set of controls focused on the different disease risks in different areas of the country. The strategy also covers the development of new tools to control bTB such as diagnostic tests, alternative badger controls and, indeed, vaccination. Tackling the reservoir of disease in badgers is a key element of the strategy and we are committed to making it work. In this matter we must be guided by the experience of other countries which have successfully rid themselves of this terrible disease.
We have clear evidence from the randomised badger culling trial on the role of badgers in the spread of the disease in endemic areas. Work by Professor Christl Donnelly, to which the noble Lord, Lord Trees, referred, suggests that up to half of all cattle herds found to have TB in the high-risk area of England contracted the disease directly or indirectly from infected badgers. The evidence also shows that, carried out in the right way, badger culling will make a significant difference in reducing the incidence of TB in cattle. Other countries, such as the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, Australia and the United States, have eradicated or greatly reduced the levels of bTB by culling infected wildlife in combination with tight cattle controls.
The results of the RBCT have been used to estimate that culling over an area of 150 square kilometres could reduce new herd incidence of bTB by an average of 16% over nine years: enough to stop the incidence of bTB continuing to increase and even begin decreasing it. We proceeded with pilots this summer to test the assumption that controlled shooting is a safe, humane and effective means of reducing badger numbers. These four-year pilots are closely managed and monitored by the licensing authority, Natural England. The independent panel of experts is now considering the information collected during the pilots. Its report to the Government in the New Year—to answer my noble friend Lady Parminter—will inform the decision on the wider rollout of badger control in those parts of England most severely affected by this disease. The report will be made available to Parliament and the general public. We have always been clear that these were pilots from which we will learn lessons in advance of taking any decisions. We expect to be in a position to take such a decision by the end of February.
Turning to questions raised by noble Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked why the cull had been cut short in Gloucestershire. The decision that the licence for the extension should end was taken following discussions between the cull company in west Gloucestershire, Natural England and the NFU. The end of the cage-trapping season was agreed by the cull company and Natural England as a sensible point to stop activity. The decision was based on the decreasing number of badgers seen by contractors over the preceding weeks, which made achieving a further significant reduction in future weeks unlikely. Given that this was the first year of controlled shooting of badgers, it was uncertain how the winter would affect badger behaviour, but it was deemed likely that even fewer badgers would be seen due to the onset of cold weather, when they tend to stay underground for longer.
The noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Krebs, referred to perturbation. The RBCTs concluded that larger areas would offer greater benefits. The Gloucestershire area is 311 square kilometres and the Somerset one is 256 square kilometres. These are very substantially larger than those in the RBCTs. In the pilot culls, we were able to emphasise hard boundaries around the cull areas: sea, significant rivers and dual carriageways, each of which produces a significant challenge for badgers to cross. We are also conducting biosecurity measures, including vaccination, in the buffer zone around the cull areas. These are some of the lessons of the RBCTs on which we have been able to capitalise.
The noble Lords, Lord Knight and Lord Krebs, and my noble friend Lord King referred to population estimates in the context of a prospective rollout of culling in future years. Estimating badger populations is difficult, as is the case for all wildlife populations. However, the fact that it is difficult does not mean that we should avoid tackling disease in wildlife. When looking at lessons learnt in the pilots, we will look at how the efficacy of culling could be best assessed in future. In the RBCTs, as many badgers were removed as possible rather than having a fixed target. This approach, repeated each year for a number of years, resulted in an estimated 70% removal rate. This was not based on an estimate of the badger population in the area; instead, an estimate of the reduction of the badger population was made based on field signs and road kill over four years.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, said that in Gloucestershire, the proportion of badgers killed was not more than 40%. It is worth saying that the most effective culls during the RBCTs had removal rates of between 64% and 76%, with an average of 70%. However, three areas had initial culls of lower effectiveness, with removal rates of below 40%. Those areas with low reductions caught up in subsequent years so that the reduction in population at the end of culling was comparable to those areas with good initial culls.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about the advice from the Chief Veterinary Officer. That advice was that a further increase in the number of badgers culled over the initial six-week period would improve the disease-control benefits achieved even further and enable them to accrue earlier. It was his view that a further significant reduction of the badger population in the first year would increase the likelihood of disease benefits in cattle over the full four years of the cull. A copy of his advice to the Secretary of State on the case for extending the culls in both Somerset and Gloucestershire was made public on 18 October.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about costs. The costs of the pilots must be put in the overall context of tackling the disease. Each TB outbreak costs an average of £34,000 and if left unchecked the disease will cost the taxpayer, as I said earlier, approximately £1 billion over the next 10 years. We must start tackling TB in wildlife to bring the disease under control and begin reducing the bill to taxpayers. We will know more about the costs of the pilots once the final figures have been disclosed and scrutinised.
The costs of the police efforts in Gloucestershire, for example, are likely to have been higher than expected. However, the uncertainty around costs provided an additional reason for the decision to proceed cautiously with two pilots before considering wider roll-out, where many of the current costs will not apply. The pilots will enable us to test our and the farming industry’s cost assumptions for areas where there is uncertainty, such as policing, and take these into account in a decision to roll out the policy more widely. As planned, costs will be reviewed after the conclusion of the pilots when all the information is available.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked about vaccination. As noble Lords know, there are practical difficulties in using the injectable badger vaccine, including the cost and the fact that each badger must be trapped by a trained and licensed operator. Crucially, the vaccination does not cure already infected badgers and provides only limited protection to a proportion of uninfected badgers. Furthermore, unlike culling, we do not know what effect vaccinating badgers has on TB in cattle. Developing an oral badger vaccine remains a top priority for the Government. It is still at research stage and we cannot say when it will be deployable in the field, but we are progressing with this work as fast as possible and any additional spending will not speed the process up.
My noble friend Lady Parminter and the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked what we will do with the independent expert panel’s advice. The independent panel was established to provide a robust scientific peer review of the analysis of the data gathered during the pilot culls to support an assessment of the humaneness and efficacy of controlled shooting. When the panel has finished reviewing the output of this monitoring, it will submit its assessment and conclusions to Ministers. The panel will not be making recommendations about the humaneness of controlled shooting, but its conclusions about the robustness of the data will enable Ministers to make informed decisions about its use as a culling method in future years.
Measures are in place to ensure that the evidence base resulting from the pilots is robust. This is the first time a cull of this nature has been carried out and there are lessons that we can learn from the pilots. The panel’s report will be published in due course after it has been submitted to Ministers, along with the supporting evidence, and in deciding how to proceed we will consider it extremely carefully.
I have a number of other answers that I would like to have given noble Lords and I undertake to write with various answers. The noble Lord, Lord Trees, spoke about the Welsh Government providing funding for vaccination. We are providing the same amount of funding as the Welsh Government to help start-up vaccination in the annual TB testing area, and the fund will also be used to subsidise training and competence certification for staff and volunteers of voluntary and community sector organisations wishing to become lay badger vaccinators.
Although we have much to learn from this year’s experience, conducting two pilots has been a significant achievement and is another major step towards halting the spread of bovine TB. In helping us to achieve this, local farmers and landowners have undertaken the pilots in both areas, often in difficult terrain and weather, and in the face of a sustained campaign of harassment, intimidation and widespread criminal activity. I pay tribute to those undertaking the pilots for not wilting in the face of this and for showing commendable restraint in the manner in which they have conducted themselves throughout.
Controlling the disease in wildlife has to remain a key part of our TB strategy. No country has successfully dealt with TB without tackling the disease in both wildlife and cattle. Unless we tackle bovine TB in badgers, I fear that not only will we never eradicate it in cattle and free our livestock farmers of a huge burden but that we will see the disease in cattle and that accompanying burden continue to grow and spread until the disease is endemic throughout the whole of England. This Government are resolved to prevent this happening and to achieve freedom from TB in 25 years.