Badger Culls (Assessment)

Debate between Lord Redwood and George Eustice

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I welcome the opportunity to respond to today’s debate and thank all hon. Members for their contributions, which have covered a wide range of issues.

This year’s culls finished as planned after six weeks, and we are now analysing the data collected over that period. The data are being independently audited in the same way as last year’s. When the analysis is complete, the outcomes of this year’s cull will be published, so I will focus on our approach to collecting the data and assessing populations this year—issues to which many hon. Members have alluded. That is directly relevant to this debate.

We published our approach to monitoring before the culls started, and I confirm that we carried out the planned number of field observations and far more than the planned number of post-mortem examinations—figures that were both set last year. A lot of information has been collected. The processes used for collecting data are also currently subject to independent audit. We are taking the same approach as last year to ensure that our data are robust.

In August 2014 we published a detailed document setting out our precise methodology, “Setting the minimum and maximum numbers for Year 2 of the badger cull”, and before the cull started we published that guidance to help Natural England set this year’s minimum and maximum numbers. We set out clearly how this year’s numbers were derived for each area, and the paper describes in great detail—it runs to 34 pages—the basis of the estimates and any assumptions made. The approach was agreed by the chief scientific adviser. Estimating wildlife populations is subject to uncertainty, as the independent expert panel acknowledged in its report last year. It is important that we use all valid sources of information, giving particular weight to up-to-date evidence about numbers of active setts, based on repeated observations across the whole cull area.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned the somewhat unscientific outburst by Professor Rosie Woodroffe. I like Rosie Woodroffe—she hails from Cornwall and even went to the same school as my sister—but she needs to compare the approach taken in the randomised badger culling trials with the methodology we have used this year. The reality is that there was no hair-trapping at all in the RBCTs, on which all our assumptions in the fight against this disease are based. In fact, no assessment of the badger population was made at the start of the culls. Instead, once four years of culling were finished, there was a retrospective attempt to estimate what the population might have been at the start—to back-calculate what the populations were. People have talked about the methodology that we adopted being crude, but how is that for crude? The RBCTs did not even assess the population before they started, and then they retrospectively tried to estimate what the population was.

Compare that with the approach we took this year, which is set out in great detail on pages 10 and 11 of the guidance. We took the end point of the population last year as this year’s starting point. We followed the IEP’s advice and used the cull sample matching method to try to predict the end population after last year’s culls. We then used a number of models, which are set out in detail, to take account of population growth. Those models are largely rooted in long-standing population measurements in places such as Woodchester park over many years—there are 20 years of data—to establish how populations change over a given winter. At the end of that process, as with the RBCT, which is all the IEP had to go on, we finally submitted the population to method 4, which is where one looks at the real activity on the ground. There were sett surveys and sett sticking. We have looked at the latrines and measured actual activity in badger setts. That is a kind of reality check, to check whether our data models are giving the right information.

The shadow Secretary of State highlighted the fact that different approaches were taken in Somerset and Gloucester, and asked why. We set that out in great detail on pages 12 and 13 of the guidance. In Gloucester, there was greater consistency in what the models were telling us about the population, so it was easier to meet that condition. In Somerset there was a conflict between some of the models, so it went with the most reliable model, which used real data in real time on real activity in setts.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

What progress has the Minister made with farmers on trying to find ways to improve biosecurity so that there is less contact between badgers and cattle?

[George Eustice]

We are making progress. In fact, we have been talking to an accreditation organisation about whether we could get farmers to sign up to a package of measures to improve biosecurity, including keeping badgers away from their farmyards, for example, to try to reduce the spread of the disease.

There is a misunderstanding about the IEP. Last year, the IEP was not out in the field in the middle of the night with binoculars to observe the culls. That was done by Natural England staff last year, and they did it again this year in the same way. The IEP did not carry out the post-mortems on badger carcasses last year. It was done by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency, both last year and this year. The IEP had a one-off role last year in informing us of how we should treat the raw data that came from AHVLA and Natural England. The IEP was not in the field; it was a desktop exercise. The IEP completed its work, and we do not need to repeat it this year. Do we need the British Ecological Society to repeat what the IEP did last year? No, we do not, because that job was done and completed last year, and this year we have a process that will be audited. If the British Ecological Society has an opinion, it can express a view on this very detailed, 34-page report. People like Professor Woodroffe say that they do not agree with the report, but they have yet to explain why.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Redwood and George Eustice

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. A powerful point for the no case in the referendum—the case against a change in our electoral system—is just that: that so many electoral systems are already in use, particularly in Wales and Scotland, that it could become quite complicated for people trying to remember which system they are voting under. If people are voting under a system other than the current, general system for the national election, they may wish to vote more tactically. One feature of AV is that a natural Liberal Democrat voter who wanted to make their party greener might think it a good idea to vote Green for their first preference and to give the Liberal Democrats only their second preference. That would be a perfectly rational strategy for that voter to make their party greener, but they would need to know that they were voting under that system to make doing so sensible.

However, I have wandered a little from my main point, which is that in order to preserve that impartiality, it is better to say nothing. The whole point of an election is to tease out the issues, so that electors can make their own decisions. In the last general election, the different parties made claims, and we then had to watch or listen to the BBC come out with so-called experts who said that they could find the truth, either by saying that it was between the two parties, or by concluding that neither party was telling the truth and then coming up with the BBC truth. This is a free society, and that was probably quite helpful in the election—if that is what turned the BBC on and what it wanted to pay people good salaries to do—but I do not think that many voters think, “Ah! At last I’ve got the impartial truth! The BBC correspondent has told me that Labour weren’t right on this issue and that the Tories weren’t right on that issue, so I now know the truth.” I think that the elector goes off and forms their own judgment.

[George Eustice]

I want to pick up on the point about impartiality. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the best way to guarantee the impartiality of the Electoral Commission and the information it puts out is to ensure that it has the agreement of both campaigns, which would prevent it from straying into this area? It was said earlier that the no campaign in a previous referendum was putting out misinformation, but in this referendum the NO2AV campaign has called for the Electoral Commission to issue an explanatory booklet because we want that information out there. Does my right hon. Friend understand that that information will be stronger if it is agreed by both campaigns?

[Mr Redwood]

I am grateful for that intervention, from which I learned that the no campaign would like one of these booklets. However, I rather prefer the lock on the door that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex is proposing, as I remain to be persuaded that such a booklet can be phrased in a way that everybody would find fair. The fairest thing to do is to put this lock on the door; then we will know that we have had a fair referendum because everybody will have consented to it.

If the Minister will accept amendment 247, that will be wonderful and my hon. Friends will rest content. If, as I suspect, he will not, will he at least say that he will warn the Electoral Commission not to try to write a definitive document, as it would just be torn to pieces?