Badger Cull

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely; there is no place for illegal activity. It is interesting that the Government are ignoring the advice of the scientists—not animal rights extremists—who went out, faced down those animal rights extremists and stood in isolated fields across the country to deliver this cull. The scientists did that in the name and the cause of science—and they have said that this cull will not work. They are not in any way soft about this issue, and it is worth re-emphasising that point.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I understand that the Government are rightly insisting on vaccination on land adjoining the culling areas, but the hon. Lady has not mentioned the costs of that. To do that job properly, this will have to be rolled out over at least four years.

[Mary Creagh]

That is right. Vaccination has to take place every year because of the life cycle of the badger. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that point. I know that a fund was made available for vaccination, but it is not clear how much of it has been spent. I think it was supposed to be match funded by farmers. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us on that.

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[Mr Paterson]

I do not think that is a very accurate statement. We have very strict movement controls and our farmers find them difficult to adhere to; they put real pressure on farmers.

If we are to tackle bovine TB, we must not only maintain rigorous biosecurity and strict cattle movement controls, but bear down on the disease in wildlife.

[Andrew George]

rose—

[Mr Paterson]

This really will be the last intervention I take for a while.

[Andrew George]

My right hon. Friend will recollect that the randomised badger control trials studied not only the effects of culling on the badger population and the prevalence of TB, but the actions of homo sapiens, and their capacity to intervene and to disrupt trials. Such actions were a factor in the trials and are a factor particularly prevalent in the UK but not prevalent in many of the countries he has named.

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know that you are an assiduous reader of Hansard, Mr Speaker, and you probably remember every one of my 600 parliamentary questions on this issue, one of which revealed that, as my hon. Friend suggested, 56% of the traps were tampered with during the Krebs trials and 14% were actually stolen. That is one of the lessons we are learning from the trials—there might be a more efficient and humane manner of removing badgers.

Anyone who has looked closely at this issue will see that a comprehensive cattle testing programme, combined with restrictions on cattle movements, remains the foundation of our policy. Restrictions have been further strengthened over the past year to reduce the chance of disease spreading from cattle. In January, we introduced a new surveillance testing regime and stricter cattle movement controls, which means that we will be testing more cattle annually and working hard to get in front of the disease, to protect those parts of the country where bovine TB is not a major problem. We will continue to maintain the significant effort we have put into enhancing cattle controls and combating cattle-to-cattle transmission.

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[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Continuing on the same note as the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), in my speech I will encourage the Government to do as they say they will do, which is consider and keep available to them all the tools in the box, including vaccination. I, like the hon. Lady, believe that vaccination offers the most effective means of getting on top of this disease.

It is worth reminding ourselves of the impact that bovine tuberculosis has on farming communities. To see how it has affected farmers in west Cornwall over the past 30 years, people need to talk to farmers and understand the impact of getting TB reactors in their herds. The impact is not only financial, but emotional: there is an effect on confidence in the farming community, because many farmers live in fear whenever vets come round to undertake the tests. It is vital that people fully appreciate that.

We would all claim that we support a process of evidence-based policy making, but today’s debate demonstrates the constant risk among politicians of using policy-based evidence making, whatever one’s perspective. Having looked at the balance of evidence provided by the best-informed scientific expertise on this question, especially from those involved in the RBCT and others, it is clear to me that the Government are running a high risk of making the situation worse in those areas where they proceed with the cull. I simply point that out.

I strongly supported, as did all parties at the time, the previous Government’s approach and the randomised badger culling trial. In my area, I faced down strong opposition from animal rights activists and others to the proactive cull in particular, so I have been there, done that and run the gauntlet of strong and extremely vociferous protests. As I say, there is a high risk that we could end up making the situation worse.

The Ireland study has been referred to on several occasions. It is worth saying that the four areas selected were among the most isolated in the country, and had badger populations that were extremely small and disparate. The nature of those populations is quite different from the nature of the badger population in Great Britain; the likelihood of migration and perturbation was bound to be significantly lower in the Ireland populations. We cannot say that the situation in Ireland is representative of what we have in the UK.

On vaccination, Professor Rosie Woodroffe and I are working on a proposal. We have been to see the Minister with responsibility for farming, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who has been supportive of us developing our proposal to roll out, using volunteers, a five-year vaccination programme across the whole Penwith peninsula—200 sq km—which clearly has the hard edges of the Atlantic around it. The Government’s estimated cost of about £2,200 per square kilometre would be significantly reduced by about 50% through the use of volunteers. We already have a large team of 50 or more volunteers who have come forward. We suspect that we can offer vaccination and wildlife holidays in the area for people who get involved in the programme. Clearly, only a very few people who are trained and licensed to undertake the actual injection of the vaccine are needed.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman have any idea of the complexities of dealing with the physical act of vaccinating a wild animal?

[Andrew George]

Absolutely; that is fully understood. Indeed, many people working on our wider advisory group are already doing this work. We have consulted the Killerton estate in Devon, which has been doing this for a couple of years. Professor Rosie Woodroffe is trapping badgers in that area at this very moment; she is working with farmers on her own programme, which is funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. There is a great deal of experience and knowledge going into this, as well as understanding of the challenges of rolling out such a programme. I have a great deal of experience of this, too. We believe that we can proceed with a very effective programme, with the proper support of landowners in the area, though taking on 200 sq km is a significant challenge.

[Roger Williams]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his proactive stance, but we have heard how difficult it is to estimate the number of badgers in an area. How will his group be confident that it has vaccinated a percentage, if not 100%, of badgers in the area?

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. We have the involvement of a scientist who was very much involved in the randomised badger control trial, Rosie Woodroffe; she is supported by a team of scientists from other academic institutions and scientists who were involved in the RBCT. She is already undertaking a survey in the area, because there is field work going on there. Those scientists understand the science of undertaking a rigorous survey of the badger population in the area. Costed into the project’s overall business plan is not only the surveying, but scientific monitoring, because we need to get rigorous information on the scientific outcomes, so that lessons can be learned and the project can be rolled out further.

We have consulted widely; we have spoken to many of those who have experience of undertaking such work in the countryside, as well as farmers in the area, the major landowner—the National Trust, which is of course already on board—the wildlife trusts and others, and we are confident that the programme could be very effective. We are talking about an area where, in the RBCT, there was only 50% compliance with the trial, so a licence would never have been given, even if one were applied for. This programme could be rolled out very effectively, and could be very successful. It would also be less costly than a cull. We are hoping to introduce cattle measures as well. For that reason, and because we want to keep an open mind on the issue, although I believe that the pilot should not go ahead, I will abstain in the vote on the issue tonight, because I want to make sure that I get Government support for my vaccination programme.