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The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd, and to participate in this important debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). She is extremely well supported in her long-running campaigns on these issues by the Badger Trust and the Save Me Trust, which are the sources of much of the information she shared. I agree that we have moved forward. The tone of the debate has become far more measured, and indeed better for tackling the problem.
This is a very personal problem for me. My grandfather died from TB, and I gave up my Longhorn cattle 10 years ago because of the prevalence of TB up our valley. I was keeping cattle for pleasure rather than serious business purposes, and I really did not want to infect next door’s precious Jersey herd. For me, TB has very personal connotations, and I know well that it is a very dangerous disease in all species—human, bovine or badger.
Bovine TB definitely represents a threat to the cattle industry. Over the past 12 months, we have compulsorily slaughtered 26,000 cattle in England to control the disease. We all agree that badgers are implicated in the spread and persistence of bovine TB. We know, and we have seen the evidence in the Downs study—although not all agree—that the badger cull has led to a significant reduction in BTB in the areas in which it has been carried out. We also know that many people hate the idea of culling badgers, and of course nobody wants to see a protected species culled more than necessary.
As my hon. Friend said, there is no single answer to the problem of bovine TB. It is a very costly problem for the taxpayer: we spend about £100 million a year on testing, compensation and culling cattle. We are open-minded in DEFRA about how we should continue to tackle the problem, and of course we work closely with the devolved Administrations and scientists further afield to look at what solutions are available to us. It is important that we retain that open-minded view as we look to the new stages of this dreadful disease.
Matt Rodda
I am pleased to hear that the Minister and DEFRA are working with the Welsh Labour Government and that there can be a process of learning from how they have moved on from culling. I appreciate the economic pressures that farmers are under at this very difficult time. I hope there can be consensus so that we can move forward, and I am grateful to the Minister for working on that basis.
Victoria Prentis
It is important that we continue to work with our partners in the devolved Administrations wherever we can. There has been a certain amount of angst up the border between England and Wales as a result of the difference in policy—it is a very high-incidence neighbourhood—so it is very important that we work together wherever possible.
The tools available to us include culling where necessary—I have no doubt that it will be necessary during outbreaks; I make no secret of the fact that, where there is an outbreak, culling may be the only answer for both badgers and cattle—and vaccinating cattle, which for me is the goal. Many of us received the vaccination in school; it is not that different in humans. What we need to do is develop a test that does not give a false positive reading if a cow has received a vaccine. The test is currently being trialled and worked on. We started field trials in June last year and hope to have them completed this winter. The results are not yet published. We are still hopeful, though, and we are very much working towards 2025 as the date for having a real vaccine for cattle that can be rolled out widely. For me, that will be the game changer.
Vaccinating badgers is also a solution. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said that the Government need to put some welly into this, if I may put it like that. I say politely that the Animal and Plant Health Agency now has 28 full-time vaccinators working hard to vaccinate badgers in the vaccination window, although not all badgers need to be vaccinated. We need to be clever about this.
As hon. Members can imagine, vaccinating badgers is a very difficult process. Initially at least, it has to be done annually, to make sure that the vaccination is effective. If there has been a significant cull, the badgers that are left can be vaccinated in a targeted way. We vaccinated about 1,500 badgers last year and expect that figure to be higher this year. We have introduced a simplified licence to cut the administrative burden for those who wish to vaccinate badgers.
Vaccinating badgers is definitely one of the tools in the toolbox, but is not a simple thing to do, nor is it entirely great from an animal welfare perspective, because badgers need to be attracted, trapped, vaccinated and then released, and then trapped again, which is not without its difficulties.
Caroline Lucas
I appreciate the Minister’s points about vaccination. I appreciate that there are no silver bullets, but vaccination is probably a lot better than culling. Could she clarify one point? The Government have promised an end to badger culling post 2025 but reserved the right to cull beyond 2025 in certain epidemiologically important conditions. What are the criteria for those conditions? My concern is that that is a very big loophole and that, when there are Ministers in post who are perhaps less concerned than she is, it could be used to continue the cull in a rather more indiscriminate way than I think she intends.
Victoria Prentis
I do not think I am able or indeed qualified to give the hon. Lady the reassurance she seeks. If a cull were to be licensed, that would be done with the chief veterinary officer, who would be able to advise the Minister at all stages of that process. What I would say is that, certainly as I see it, we are currently experiencing a decline in bovine TB in high-incidence areas and we are pleased by the way the graph is going, although we are by no means happy with the situation. TB remains a real scourge for our cattle farmers, but things are going in the right direction.
If there is an outbreak, it seems right that the Minister, whoever that is, or the chief veterinary officer, depending on the circumstances, is able to take the decision to cull cattle, badgers or other species where necessary, as is the case with other prevalent and harmful diseases. I know from my family experience that TB is a peculiar illness that can manifest itself in different species, at different times, at different speeds and in different ways. I do not think it would be appropriate for me to set out what would cause angst to the chief veterinary officer at any one time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford referred to husbandry, which is also important. We have worked on strengthening cattle testing and movement controls. We have worked to improve biosecurity on farms and when trading, as well as simply keeping badgers away from food and water troughs where we can. We have looked at different forms of double fencing, to ensure that there is not cross-holding contamination. The ibTB website enables farmers to look at the history of the cattle they are buying, and at the disease status of nearby farms.
We have all learned a great deal from the covid pandemic, probably not voluntarily. We have learned to use a range of measures to control disease. It is not all about washing our hands thoroughly and “hands, face, space”; it is about vaccines, lockdowns, antivirals and treatment methods. We need to retain our learning from the pandemic when considering the scourge of bovine TB. I am pleased with the reductions we have seen in high-risk areas, but this remains a difficult disease for the farming industry to cope with. I am determined that we continue to work on all fronts to come up with the right solutions.
Question put and agreed to.