Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tracey Crouch and Daniel Kawczynski

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch]

I have already answered the question about the timeframe. We must look at this in detail and an economic evaluation is taking place. The Government have no plans to introduce a sports betting right. The new model for horseracing will replace an existing arrangement for transferring funds from betting to horseracing.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

10. What steps the Government have taken to improve mobile phone reception and broadband service in rural areas.

Badger Cull

Debate between Tracey Crouch and Daniel Kawczynski

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick). I start by paying my own tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for making it to the debate today. She is incredibly brave to do so. I am also grateful to her for doing so because she had asked me to open the debate on her behalf, had she been unable to be here. I thank the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), not only for her contribution today, but for all her work on the issue over a number of months now. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us to have the debate. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is a timely one and a good opportunity for us to focus our minds on the issue.

We need to take the debate back to basics. There has been much criticism from those who have been pro the cull that those of us who are anti the cull do not understand, because we do not have bovine TB in our constituencies. I am one of those MPs: we have very little BTB in Kent—but I want to keep it that why, which is why I am against the cull. I fear that the pilot culls will show that they spread the disease wider. I have spoken to my own farmers, who initially expressed disappointment with my position, but I said to them, “I don’t want to see this nasty disease in Kent. My fear is that if we continue to go down this route, that is exactly what will happen.”

The subject is emotive, as we have seen today. Everyone has spoken passionately, but it is important to stick to the facts. The debate is about how the current situation stands and about how we best move forward to eradicate bovine TB from our cattle.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend says that she has been talking to her farmers in Kent. How much time has she spent talking to farmers in places such as Shropshire, who have been badly affected by bovine TB, to listen to their perspective?

[Tracey Crouch]

I have not come to this conclusion lightly. My hon. Friend might recall that when I first spoke on the issue in this House I had initially been in favour of the cull, because I thought that it was the right way to support farmers. Having looked at the facts and read the science, I completely changed my mind. I do not come to this on an emotional basis; I decided about it after reading the initial scientific reports that have been published.

I am enormously sympathetic, as is everyone in the House, to the farmers who have lost otherwise healthy cattle, because they have been compulsorily slaughtered as a consequence of bovine TB. The impact on farmers can be devastating financially and mentally. In England alone, the disease has cost the taxpayer £500 million in the past decade. I wholeheartedly support the Government’s belief that it must be tackled, for the benefit of farmers and for the animals that contract this awful disease. Today, however, we are here specifically to discuss the badger cull and whether it is the correct method of tackling the disease.

We need to remember that badgers are not the only transmitters of bovine TB. Cattle and other animals spread the disease as much, if not more, than badgers. Yet, despite strong opposition in this House, two pilot badger culls have taken place, one in Somerset and one in Gloucestershire. The purpose of the pilots was simply to test controlled shooting as a method for culling. The Government decided that it must be tested against three criteria—effectiveness, humaneness and safety—in order to determine whether the method would be successful and whether it should be rolled out more widely and implemented as the policy to eradicate bovine TB.

It took a leak from the IEP for people to find out precisely what the Government’s measure of humaneness was. It was defined as whether a badger died within five minutes of being shot. The leaked IEP findings outlined that up to 18% of culled badgers took longer than five minutes to die, failing the test for humaneness. I am interested to know whether the published report will have those same figures in it, but we will wait and see. In addition, Natural England released a set of compliance reports that show some badgers were shot in the wrong body area, or were wounded and had to be shot a second time. Other badgers have been found outside the cull area with atrocious fatal injuries, but, to be fair, we do not know if they were shot by licensed marksmen or by those taking matters into their own hands. We have to be careful about some of the details suggested by some groups, which are nevertheless rightly concerned about the cull. On the first of the Government’s own criteria, however, the cull has failed. Those with genuine concerns about animal welfare are right to be upset by the findings in the leaked report.

I must stress that this is not only an animal welfare issue, however, and that leads me to the second of the criteria—effectiveness. Even after significant downward revision of estimated badger population numbers and the pilot culling periods being extended, the target of a minimum 70% reduction in badger numbers—needed to slow the forecasted rise of bovine TB by a mere 12% to 16%—was not achieved in either pilot area. In Somerset, the central population estimate was revised down from 2,490 to 1,450 badgers and the six-week maximum period was extended to nine weeks. In Gloucestershire, the population estimates were revised down from 3,400 to 2,350 badgers and the six-week maximum period was extended to just over 11 weeks. Initial estimates suggested that in Somerset 59% of the revised estimate of badger population were shot, a total of 940 badgers. In Gloucestershire, a lower figure of 30% was initially suggested, totalling 921 badgers. The leaked IEP report has revised the Somerset figure down further to 50%,

By removing fewer than the target number of badgers over an extended period, the pilot culls have deviated widely from the conditions of the RBCT, which determined the minimum percentage that needed to be culled to ensure it would be effective. That does not even take into consideration the effects of perturbation. The social structure of badgers means that when disturbed in this way, they are likely to flee outside the areas they would otherwise stay within, thus increasing the number of animals at risk of infection. It is likely that the pilot culls will have seriously perturbed the remaining badger populations in the two cull zones, which in turn could lead to an increase in the prevalence of bovine TB among the remaining badgers and a subsequent increase in the risk to cattle. The lower the percentage reached, the larger the effects of that. So not only have the Government failed to achieve the second part of their criteria, but they have quite possibly worsened the problem through perturbation.

Leaving aside the additional policing costs incurred, which appear to be substantial, I believe that although there are minor concerns about the safety, there is, on the whole, no issue with that criterion being met. However, despite the Secretary of State’s premature declaration to the House last year that the pilots were a success and that all three criteria have been met, it appears that that is not the case and that only one was.

There is a viable alternative that has been proved to be effective, that is humane and costs less, with no unforeseen astronomical policing costs to be incurred: a vaccination programme combined with better biosecurity, and stricter testing and movements of cattle, as is currently being undertaken in Wales, with great results. In further support of that method, I looked back to our previous successes with tackling bovine TB. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) made the point that in the 1960s TB in cattle was brought under control using a strict and very high level of cattle testing, movement restrictions and biosecurity measures. Only when those measures were relaxed and then abandoned altogether did incidences increase again. Surely that is the appropriate way to bring cattle TB under control while we await a useable cattle vaccine.

A licensed injectable vaccine for badgers presents practical challenges in its administration, but it has been shown to be extremely effective, reducing the risk of becoming infected with bovine TB by 76%. Additionally, and importantly, it has a herding effect, which means that when more than a third of the social group has been vaccinated, the risk to unvaccinated cubs was reduced by 79%, as a 2012 study shows. Vaccinations not only have the potential to reduce the risk of vaccinated animals and their unvaccinated cubs becoming infected, but they eliminate the problem of perturbation and animal welfare concerns.

In conclusion, the pilots were an experiment to find an effective method for dealing with bovine TB. What is the point of doing an experiment if we are going to continue regardless of the results? The test has shown culling to be inhumane and ineffective, so I urge the Minister to reconsider the policy of culling and move forward with a more effective method, as has been done in Wales. However, if he intends to go ahead with the cull, he must prove he has the support of the House by bringing forward a motion in the name of the Government and giving Members the opportunity to vote for or against his policy, based not on emotion but on evidence, which he knows shows the culls to be the shower that many of us warned they would be.

Electric Vehicles (Vulnerable Road Users)

Debate between Tracey Crouch and Daniel Kawczynski

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Tracey Crouch]

My hon. Friend is a great champion of those with autism, and I congratulate him on all the work he has done on the issue. He is absolutely right that those of us without a learning or physical disability do not necessarily understand the challenges that those with disabilities or impairments face. While we all accept and recognise the need for the growth in more environmentally friendly cars, we have to remember the other challenges that come with them.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

As one who represents a rural constituency where we are campaigning for more pedestrian crossings in various villages, I should say that the increase in traffic makes this a serious matter. I hope that the Minister will take on board the fact that the issue is acute in rural villages.

[Tracey Crouch]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. My constituency is part-urban, part-rural, so I see the challenges from both sides: the densely populated areas with blind spots and corners and the villages with high hedges and everything else. Electric vehicles are bringing challenges in every part of our community.

I had the great privilege of attending the Kent Association for the Blind forum in my constituency last Friday. I did so as chair of the Medway council disability partnership board. I was asked to attend to answer various challenges, and the issue of electric vehicles was rightly raised with me. Other issues were also raised, such as how difficult it can be to get from A to B, even with a guide dog, or just with a stick. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) pointed out, being blind makes the other senses more acute and it shows how much we rely on them.

I heard an incredibly horrific and distressing story about a blind lady who uses a guide dog and came across a lady with a pram on a path. The lady with the pram refused to go into the road, because it would endanger her children, but the dog was trained not to take the blind lady into the road. There was a stand-off. As it happened, another pedestrian came along and challenged the lady with the pram, who refused to get out of the way. The pedestrian took the blind lady and her dog into the road and around the lady with the pram.

When the hon. Member for North Tyneside was talking earlier, I thought that if that good samaritan had not come along and helped and if that lady had gone into the road and an electric vehicle had been coming—the dog is there to help see and hear and be of assistance to the blind lady—there could have been a tragic consequence. We need to get greater awareness out to wider society, not only of the issues around electric vehicles, but of the issues around the partially sighted or blind. There are many issues in our local environments that challenge the vulnerable.