Badger Cull

Angela Smith Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I challenge Government Members’ attempts to portray this subject as an urban against rural issue, as they did with fox hunting. I am a west country MP. Admittedly, I represent an urban constituency, but I occasionally venture outside Bristol. I know from representations made to me from people in south Gloucestershire and the Forest of Dean area, Somerset and around the west country that there is widespread opposition to the badger cull, including opposition from people in rural areas, from farmers who do not want the cull on their land, and from people across the board. It is totally wrong to say, “Only townies who don’t understand the country or farming are opposed to the cull.” It is incredibly patronising to say that the many people who have written to me and MPs who represent rural areas do not understand the science. I have looked at the science.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

The Chair of the Select Committee, a Conservative, spoke of one nation and one countryside. Does my hon. Friend agree that the device of dividing the country between town and country is unhelpful?

[Kerry McCarthy]

That device is completely unhelpful. I have taken an interest in food policy in my time in Parliament—I introduced a Food Waste Bill. Food policy is about farming only to an extent, but people eat food, including in urban areas. Food policy is also about food distribution networks and supermarkets. It is completely ludicrous to portray the issue as one that is just for farmers.

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[Daniel Kawczynski]

Of course, we will be arguing about the science, and both sides feel strongly that their scientific arguments are correct and that they have the correct scientists’ feedback on their side. That will continue throughout the debate.

[Angela Smith]

I echo the comments by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) about how much sympathy we all have for farmers and the dairy industry. We have to deal with this disease. However, the years that the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) mentioned—1997 and, more recently, 2007 to 2012 were marked by one event that changed the picture of disease in cattle, and that was foot and mouth. Will he comment on the contribution that foot and mouth made to increased cattle movement and the decrease in testing for bovine TB in cattle?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

In the few minutes I have, I would like to focus on my constituents. I am sure that others will take up the hon. Lady’s point.

One of the first things I did when I became a Member of Parliament in 2005 was to form an all-party group on dairy farmers. I did so because of the direct lobbying I received from Mr Stuart Jones of Pontesbury and many of my other dairy farmers, who wanted me to campaign on this issue. More than 190 Members of Parliament joined the all-party group, making it one of the largest in the House of Commons. To my great pleasure, the then Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, joined it—it was the only one he joined in the last Parliament.

We used this caucus of more than 190 Members repeatedly to try to engage with Labour Ministers, and we took the National Farmers Union—many of our farmers came—to meet various DEFRA Ministers and Secretaries of State. I shall not mention all of them, but I am happy to list all the meetings we had; and yet, month after month, year after year, no action was taken, and this disease continued to spread and decimate the industry in our constituencies. A delegation also went to Brussels to meet the European Commission and to Ireland and France to find out what they were doing and how they were coping with bovine TB. We wanted to find out at first hand how the French had managed to eradicate it almost completely, and part of the solution there, as in Ireland and many other EU countries, was a badger cull.

Shropshire MPs have met the Shropshire wildlife trust, whose symbol is a badger. It has more than 8,000 members, making it the largest organisation in our county. The Secretary of State, my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) and I met the trust just last week, and we are having very effective discussions with it as we argue and debate in a professional and peaceful fashion the best way forward. It is extremely important to keep the dialogue going. I highlighted to the trust the triangle in my constituency between Pontesbury, Westbury and Minsterley, where this disease is getting completely out of control. Very kindly, the trust has agreed to come with me to meet my dairy farmers in that part of Shropshire to hear at first hand the problems they are facing.

I am extremely grateful that we have a Secretary of State from Shropshire who understands the problem and who is also a man of great courage, integrity and honour. My dairy farmers and I can trust him to fulfil the commitment he gave the other day that, despite this pause, next summer we will finally start to tackle this problem and take action for our hard-pressed, long-suffering dairy farmers.

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[Sir James Paice]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Several Members, including the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) who introduced the debate, referred to cattle-to-cattle transmission, which is of course a major factor—nobody denies it—that has to be properly addressed. The tranche of new measures to which I referred a minute ago is the third tranche; it started under my watch, but I had already introduced two tranches of much tougher measures. To be honest, the previous Government had done the pre-movement testing as well. The suggestion that cattle-to-cattle movement is not being addressed is nonsense. The other measures are hugely important, but we come down to the fact that no country in the world has got rid of bovine TB—I mean get rid of, not just reduce—without addressing the reservoir of relevant wildlife. In this country, as in Ireland and France, this means badgers.

[Angela Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman’s point has been made repeatedly over the last few days, but does he not agree that we are not comparing like with like here, in that the methodology used in other countries to deal with the problem has been quite different?

[Sir James Paice]

I accept that, not least because the reservoir involves different species of animals. Clearly, we do not deal with badgers in the same way as we deal with wild buffalo in the Northern Territory of Australia. That is blatantly clear, but if we are to address the issue of the reservoir of badgers, there are only two ways of proceeding. Either we vaccinate them—I shall come back to that—or we have to cull them.

I hope that the whole House accepts that no Minister from any political party wants to court the unpopularity or, indeed, face the security challenge caused by this issue. Let us be frank: I, the Minister, other Ministers and officials are all under special security arrangements because of the threats from a small minority of opponents. None of us wants any of that. If there were a better way, we would adopt it. To pretend that we are somehow not interested in vaccines is, I have to say, absurd. The fact is that we have a licensed injectable badger vaccine; no one has mentioned that the Government are making some money available to pay for it where people want to use it. If wildlife trusts want to continue to roll it out, that is fine, but the costs of rolling it out on a national scale are so incredible that I think it is wrong to suggest it is a panacea.

The hon. Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) referred to an oral vaccine for badgers. We believed this would be likely for many years, but I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that, for two reasons, it is now further away than ever. First, the intellectual property will be difficult to get hold of; it is owned by a New Zealand institution. More importantly, the promising first tests have never been repeated. All the tests carried out showed much worse problems. That is because the vaccine is being destroyed in badgers’ acidic stomachs.

On cattle vaccine, I can tell the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that, yes, it has been developed and we know, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said the other day, that it is not very effective, although it has an element of effectiveness—about 60%. Yes, too, the DIVA test—differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals—is well on the way to being perfected. The hon. Lady is right about all that, but neither of them is licensed or officially proved and they still have to go through all the processes, which takes time, however much effort is put into it. What the hon. Lady seriously underplayed, however, is the European context when it comes to the cattle vaccine. I can assure her that, almost from day one of taking office, or within a matter of weeks, I pressed the Commission on this issue. I remember talking to the then Commissioner John Dalli, from D G SANCO, who said, “When you have your licensed vaccine and your licensed DIVA test, then we will start thinking about it, but don’t forget that it is only you, Ireland and possibly France that want this. All the other member states will be against it. Lifting the ban will take many years, so the question is what can be done in the meantime.”

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[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I want to concentrate on the effect of TB-infected herds on farmers, especially in the west country, particularly in Devon. For nearly 20 years, and certainly for the past 15 years, cases have been increasing. In Devon, we started off in 1998 with some 1,700 infected cattle, and now there are 5,000-plus. We should not forget that those farmers who have herds with TB have been restricted throughout that period, when they have been testing their cattle every 60 days. Under restriction, dairy farmers can sell their milk and beef farmers their finished animals, provided that they do not have TB, but they cannot sell any young stock. They are restricted throughout the period, so one can imagine the effect on family farms and their finances.

I declare an interest: I am a farmer. Most hon. Members will not have heard me say anything else but that. Farmers whose cattle are restricted and who cannot sell their young stock see only an ever-rising overdraft. Not to put too fine a point on it, every time the bank statement arrives, farmers feel suicidal. They are trapped because nothing can be done; they cannot rid their cattle of the disease. There is not only the emotional impact, but the impact on all the cattle of being for ever tested. Cattle do not like being put through a crush every 60 days and injected. Would any of us? Those are the sorts of things that we have to face up to.

We have talked a lot today about vaccines, which are always a year away. For 20 years, farmers have been told that. The last Labour Government spent virtually all the time saying that to farmers. I have much respect for the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), but the last Labour Government got very close to having a cull and they chickened out, which the Secretary of State has no intention of doing.

[Angela Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neil Parish]

No, I think not. I want to carry on in this vein.

I object to Opposition Members’ comments that farmers have not restricted cattle movement. There have been a few such cases, but the vast majority of farmers have had ever-stricter regulations imposed on them. They clean those cattle; every summer and winter, they come in and are tested and the TB reactors are taken out. In the spring, those cattle are put back out to grass. I might be being simplistic, but they then graze on grass infected with badger urine. Do not forget that whatever the percentage of badgers with TB, we can be certain that the biggest percentage of infected badgers are where the most TB is in cattle, so they are giving it to one another. However, we are taking out cattle with TB, but we are not taking out and controlling badgers.

We know that the vaccine will not work on infected badgers. Government Members are not bloodthirsty. We do not love the idea of a cull, but we must take out badgers in those areas with the highest concentration of infected badgers. We must not forget that these are pilot culls in areas that have been chosen because they are TB hot spots with harder boundaries. Yes, badgers will cross roads, but with a large motorway, a river or the sea, there will be much less perturbation. We all accept that there will be some, but if it can be restricted, that is right.

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[Neil Parish]

The whole idea of the trial is to get a 70% reduction in the number of badgers—

[Angela Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Neil Parish]

I have not really answered the previous intervention, but I will give way.

[Angela Smith]

The evidence is that the setts are left untouched. That has already been demonstrated. They are often repopulated by healthy badgers, which then pick up the disease.

[Neil Parish]

My point, in answer to both interventions, is that the whole idea of the trial is to carry out a cull of at least 70% of badgers in the given area over a four or five-year period. That is key to ensuring that we cull the diseased badgers. I cannot say which badger will go back to which sett, but I am certain that if we reduce those numbers, we will reduce their movement, and if they cannot spread beyond the cull area, we will see a reduction of much more than 16% in TB in cattle in those areas. It has been found throughout the world that where infected wildlife are culled there is a much greater effect.

The Government are right to carry on with the culls. I respect what the NFU has had to do. Because of the Olympics, it was late in the day before the culls could be started. We are getting towards much darker nights and we have had probably one of the wettest summers and autumns that I have ever known, so now is the wrong time to go forward with the cull. But I dispute the idea that we can do nothing about the situation and that culling badgers in the infected areas is wrong.

Until we tackle those concerns, farmers in my constituency and across the country, especially in the west, will be unable to rest, because they know that more and more cattle will become diseased and more and more restrictions will be imposed on them, and in the end many of them will decide, because of the weather, the price of feed and the disease, to give up cattle farming. Do we not want to see those farmed cattle healthy and grazing in the fields? Of course we do, which is why we need to take action. I very much respect the Secretary of State for sticking to the plan to have a cull.

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[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

In following the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), let me say that I was disappointed at an attempted politicisation of this debate, which has so far been incredibly cross-Bench and non-partisan. What Members are doing today is putting the issue first. This is not about party politics; it is about animal welfare. More than anything else, it is about the future of farming in our country and the attempts that we need to make effectively to tackle bovine TB.

Tuesday of this week was a day on which a degree of common sense prevailed in DEFRA. Although I welcome Tuesday’s announcement, it was only for a postponement and I, along with many others, want to see this madness stopped and will not rest until the Secretary of State sees sense and stops the cull permanently. That is what the motion is about.

Let me be clear: there is no doubt that bovine TB is a major problem. If there is one thing on which I agree with the Government it is that bovine TB presents a serious threat to both cattle and wildlife. Where we differ, however, is on the actions needed to tackle this awful disease. In order to answer that question, one has to ask why, after the successful reductions of the disease in the 1950s and ’60s, it has become more prevalent, particularly during and after the 1990s. I do not believe that the rise was due to an increase in the number of badgers, which is an equation often made by the myth makers.

What is clear is that changes to farming practices are not helping matters. The intensification of farming means that we have ever bigger herds, and all the evidence says that the bigger the herd, the faster the disease will spread within it once it takes root.

Husbandry is another issue that we cannot dismiss. Yesterday in the Lobby we had a visit from Steve Jones, who is a dairy farmer in the Forest of Dean. He described eloquently the often less than ideal conditions in which cows were—and still are in some instances—kept, along with the increasingly intensive regimes to which the animals are subjected. For example, water troughs are often said to rarely be cleaned out. Over time, they can become reservoirs of the disease as the stagnating water collects various bacteria, typically over the winter months. He also talked about the practice of some farmers—not all of them by any means—who, even now, collect the slurry deposited during the course of a farming day, spread it over the land and immediately let some of their cattle feed off those fields.

[Neil Parish]

I cannot believe that the hon. Lady believes that farmers who have had the disease and who have been testing their cattle every 60 days do not clean their water troughs. If she had suffered the same pain as a farmer, she would not make such a comment.

[Angela Smith]

I will not comment on particular instances of the husbandry practices of farmers and how they keep their herds. All I can say is that there is some evidence that water troughs, particularly those kept at ground level, can be a source of the disease and that some farmers do not keep them as clear as they ought to of disease.

It is also argued that cows infected are often not quarantined quickly enough and that animal stress levels caused by pain and suffering can reduce immunity and make cattle more susceptible to diseases such as bovine TB.

As the instances of bovine TB started to climb in the 1990s, the then Secretary of State, Jack Cunningham, asked Professor Krebs to report on the matter and then to conduct the randomised badger culling trials, which have been referred to so often today. The important point is that they still stand as the most extensive study ever completed into the relationship between bovine TB and badgers. A two-page paper produced two or three years later does not stand in the context of the extensive trials carried out as the legitimate view of the scientists.

Although it is true that the independent science group concluded that in the cull areas the incidence of bovine TB fell by 23%, it also found that in neighbouring land outside the culled area the incidence of the disease rose by approximately 29%, thanks to perturbation, whereby surviving badgers move to new areas as a consequence of disturbance.

Overall, the study concluded that the benefits of culling were, at best, modest, with an average reduction of just 12% to 16% in the incidence of infection over a period of seven years. The ISG concluded that

“badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain.”

That point was reiterated by Lord Krebs on Monday when he said in the other place that, after nine years of culling,

“there is still more TB around than there was at the beginning; it is just that there is 16% less than there would have been without a cull. The number is not the 30% that the NFU quoted; that is misleading—a dishonest filleting of the data.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 October 2012; Vol. 740, c. 148.]

Another problem is that the test used to check whether cattle are infected with bovine TB—the so called SICCT, or single intradermal comparative cervical tuberculin test—is not accurate. A recent scientific paper has suggested that as many as two in 10 infected cattle might be missed by the test. That is a staggering 20%, meaning that a significant proportion of cattle-to-cattle transmission of bovine TB may be going undetected and that the role of badgers in the spread of bovine TB to cattle may be overestimated.

Culling, therefore, is not the way forward. Its impact, the science tells us, would be marginal, and if we get it wrong, the results could be disastrous. It is demanded that 70% of badgers in the pilot culling areas must be culled; otherwise, the incidence of bovine TB could get worse—hence this week’s U-turn. Given the lack of credible assessment of the number of badgers in the pilot areas, it is difficult to get the 70% figure right. Equally, it is also difficult to avoid breaching the law by killing too many and taking the species to the brink of extinction in the specified areas.

When I started my contribution, I said that bovine TB is a major issue for farmers and I stand by that. I want the Government to take the opportunity over the next few months to work more intensively on developing the badger vaccination programme, which all experts believe is a better way forward in diminishing the instances of bovine TB in that species. We also have to do more to develop a vaccine for cattle, which is the long-term answer to this problem. I am told that there is now a suitable DIVA test to identify and separate cattle with bovine TB from those that have been vaccinated, and that it is in the process of being licensed.

I appeal to the Minister to take seriously the points that have been made, to invest in getting the cattle vaccine licensed and on the table, and to talk to the EU to get it sorted.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I remind Members of my declaration of interests.

It is very good news that we are having this debate on St Crispin’s day, because what we want from the Government is the sort of leadership that we had on St Crispin’s day 597 years ago. I see my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State as Henry V in this particular act.

We have talked a great deal today about the science involved and the views that scientists take. I would like also to look at the extraordinary coincidence of the growth in the badger population and the re-emergence of TB among cattle. We heard an excellent speech from the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who showed the advantages of age and approaching the status of being an octogenarian. That is much to be admired, but one of the things he missed out in his speech was the fact that the fall in TB in cattle was coincident with a programme of exterminating badgers through gassing. Oddly enough, when that stopped in the 1980s, so the incidence of tuberculosis in cattle started to rise again. It is also worth noting that where there is the largest badger population, so there is the most bovine TB. Can it be purely coincidence that Scotland, which has a relatively low badger population, has very little bovine TB, but the west of England—including, of course, God’s own county Somerset—has a high incidence of bovine TB? As the badger population has increased—the figures drawn up in 1997 showed a 77% increase in the badger population—so that has coincided with an increase in bovine TB.

So yes, we have listened to all the science about what the effects of a cull may be, but we know what happened in Ireland. We heard from the hon. Member—my hon. Friend in many respects—for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) about what happened in southern Ireland and how that saw a 30% reduction. We have also seen what has happened from our own history, yet we are to put all that aside and just say, “Well, there may’ve been some problems with the last pilot.” That cannot be right, and the Government must be right to pursue the strategy that they are following.

We have also talked at great length about the vaccine and the benefit or otherwise of the vaccine in curing the problem. I am glad you are sitting down, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I am going to quote with approbation an official of the European Union, who yesterday said the following in response to articles in the newspapers:

“Vaccination of cattle against TB is forbidden under current EU rules—agreed by all Member States, including the UK.”

That is not such a strong point, because a lot of EU rules are nonsense, but the next bit is much more important:

“This is because there is no effective test to tell the difference between vaccinated and infected animals making it possible to protect the food chain and identify which animals could be exported.”

That was the European Union saying yesterday that there is no satisfactory test. We have heard much talk that there might be tests and that at some future date there will be tests. We have now had years and years of inaction awaiting the tests, yet the livelihoods of farmers in my constituency are being ruined and their lives possibly being put at risk.

[Angela Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I would love to, but I am under strict orders. It is the first time I have refused to give way, for which I apologise to the hon. Lady.

The lives of farmers in my constituency might be at risk. A constituent who lives near me keeps bulls. Bulls are not the softest and easiest of animals and they do not like being pricked in the neck on a regular basis before being moved to perform the duties that they carry out. When this is done to them they become uncomfortable and restless and place the health and safety of that farmer at risk.

Are we really saying that we shall continue to do nothing when we know what we ought to be doing, we know from experience that it has worked, we know that if we act we will have a viable dairy industry and make farmers’ lives better, and, perhaps most importantly, as Members have said, we will save more cattle, even if we kill a few badgers?