Badger Cull

Barry Gardiner Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Bovine TB is a £100 million problem in cash terms but a much larger human problem for dairy farmers, who are devastated year after year by having to destroy herds that they have nurtured for years and sometimes generations. I do not wish to engage in an either/or dispute, but to speak about what can be done between now, when the cull has been stopped, and next year, when, if the Secretary of State is correct, a cull will go ahead.

Before that, I want to respond to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), who said that the Labour party was close to a cull but chickened out. That was not a fair remark. I was a Minister when the ISG report came in, and I remember the hours and weeks of deliberation on it. We never saw this as a virility test, and it should not be seen as such by any Government. It is a tremendously serious issue. It was the Labour Government who authorised the trials in the first place. We did so because we wanted to see if they would work, and the decision that was ultimately taken was an honest one based on what we understood of the science of the trials.

The ISG report concluded that substantial reductions in cattle TB could be achieved by improving cattle-based controls, and I welcome the measures that the Government will be putting in place from next January to increase those controls. I simply ask that the Secretary of State provides financial support to farmers carrying out their duty to put in place those increased controls, including on cattle movement through zoning and herd attestation, the pre-movement testing of herds before new cattle are allowed to join them, the quarantining of purchased cattle and the shorter testing intervals. All those things were set out in the ISG report as ways to improve the situation—not as solutions, but as improvements. I am glad that the Government are taking renewed efforts to put them in place, but I hope that when the Secretary of State winds up the debate he will recognise that they will be burdensome and costly for farmers, who should therefore be recompensed and incentivised appropriately to ensure the success of those measures. Those controls should be supported by measures to improve biosecurity on farms, particularly around feeding and water troughs, which hon. Members from both sides of the House have mentioned.

Let me be clear: I will vote against a cull, but I recognise that the Government may get their way. Therefore, when and if the Government go ahead with the cull next year—and in the following three years, because it will take place over a four-year period up to 2016—I would ask the Secretary of State to do one further thing in the next nine months: change the licence condition to allow only cage trapping and shooting, rather than what is referred to as the “controlled shooting” of badgers. He has said that he wants to proceed only on the basis of sound science. I welcome that commitment, and I trust that he will therefore recall that the independent scientific group pointed out that culling required “co-ordinated and sustained effort” and that what it called the “modest overall benefits” came only from a clinically executed trap-and-shoot exercise. Free shooting of badgers was no part of the scientific trials that form the only basis for a sound policy. Indeed, the Game Conservancy Trust stated:

“A…problem with shooting at or near the sett”—

that is, free shooting—

“is that a wounded badger will almost certainly attempt to bolt underground, preventing a second shot (and preventing safe disposal of the carcass).”

If the Secretary of State persists with the cull next year, I would urge him to use the next nine months to change the licence conditions and stop the free shooting of badgers.

I desperately want to see a solution to the scourge of bovine TB. Sometimes we find it difficult to accept that we do not have a solution to a problem. Ultimately, I believe that oral vaccination of both cattle and badgers will bring us that solution, but any frustration at the lack of a current solution should not lead us to adopt a false solution. The proposed cull is a false solution, and I shall vote against it.