Badger Culls (Assessment)

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Williamson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. It is important that there is independent assessment of the culls, as there is a real fear of a lack of trust if there is no independent assessment of their effectiveness. We cannot leave it to the Government to determine whether culling has been effective because, as we have seen, they simply ignore the wealth of evidence put before them.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I am following closely what the hon. Gentleman is saying. On the subject of assessment, is his conclusion that the cull should not have proceeded or that it did not take place on the right criteria? The public would like to hear what he and his right hon. and hon. Friends propose for controlling a vicious disease that has an impact on wildlife and domestic animals, as well as a huge impact on cattle, which I am sure many hon. Members will go on to discuss.

[Chris Williamson]

I do not think the cull should have started in the first place, because of the wealth of scientific opinion that I have already outlined. I will come on to the alternative way forward.

I ask the Minister, where is the transparency? The Chancellor of the Exchequer has been talking about the importance of transparent Government, but there is no transparency whatever in this process. Ministers and the National Farmers Union need to get real. The main route of transmission of TB is cattle to cattle. That has been independently verified by numerous experts. Ministers need to end this wild goose chase. To respond to the hon. Lady, we need mandatory annual and pre-movement testing for all cattle, and should impose significant movement restrictions. There also needs to be rigorous biosecurity for dairy farms around the country. That has happened in Wales, where the Welsh Government have gone further and have introduced badger vaccination, a move that the Government would do well to adopt, to address the dreadful disease of TB.

I have a number of questions that I hope the Minister will be able to answer when he responds. The public would like to know—it is in the interests of transparent government that they do—who monitored the latest cull; perhaps he will take a note of that question and respond to it. Will he also say when details about the cull will be published and by whom—will it be Natural England or DEFRA? How will humaneness, safety and efficiency be assessed? Those factors were assessed in the first year of culling.

Will a decision on a third pilot be reserved until after the results are assessed, or has that matter already been decided? Again, it would be helpful if the Minister could come clean on that. Indeed, will there be a third pilot or will the Government go straight to a roll-out? We need to know that as well.

Were any badgers tested for TB during the latest cull? If so, how many tested positive? Last year, a relatively small proportion of badgers killed tested positive. What proportion of badgers killed in this year’s culls were cage-trapped? We need to know that, because, as I understand it, part of the rationale behind the cull was to determine the effectiveness of free shooting.

Why was a different methodology for calculating the number of badgers used in year two from that used in year one? Why does the methodology applying to Somerset differ from the one applying to Gloucestershire? That just does not make sense—how can there be different methodologies from one county to the other? Surely that calls into question the bona fides of the Government’s process.

Finally, does the Minister agree with his own Department’s guidance to Natural England that the badger culls need to remove at least 70% of the local badger population within six weeks to avoid the risk of increasing cattle TB rates? If he does, can he explain why the targets set for this year’s pilot culls have been changed?

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[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I am delighted to contribute to this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) on securing it.

There is a lot of common ground among Members here this afternoon, in that we recognise that TB is a huge problem—both bovine TB and potentially, the spread of TB in wildlife. We are talking about assessing a pilot scheme in one particular reservoir of wildlife, but heaven forfend that it enter into deer or other aspects of wildlife as well. It is not that long since people suffered from TB, and it is only due to the medical science developed in the last century that that has been controlled. The dangers of TB are, therefore, very real.

On animal welfare, there has to be some balance in the argument. We surely have to accept that, if 314,000 cattle are slaughtered, that in itself is something of a potential animal welfare crisis. What we are all trying to achieve is a healthy badger population living alongside a healthy cattle population.

I would like to know about the science. We are the only country in the European Union, and I believe in the world, that has protected badgers. Has that led to the increase that we have seen in the badger population? Has that, in itself, contributed to the spread of TB in the badger population?

I would now like to raise one or two questions for the Minister to respond to. In the previous Session, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee looked at what the cull’s parameters should be, and I applaud the fact that the Government’s pilot scheme seems, to all intents and purposes, to be following those that we laid down. I should add that I welcome the Minister to his place, and I look forward to his summing up the debate.

If we are to tackle the vaccine situation, we need to deal with a number of remaining issues, and I would welcome the Minister bringing us up to date on them. I applaud the work of the Food and Environment Research Agency, which operates in my constituency and other parts of the country. In Wales, the cost of an injectable vaccine for badgers was estimated at about £662 per badger in 2012. An injectable BCG vaccine has been available for use since March 2012, but there are obviously challenges in using it. To be cost-effective, deployment would have to focus on areas where the vaccine would have the biggest impact. The cost of injecting badgers with vaccine is huge. An oral baited vaccine for badgers, which can be laid at setts, is likely to be cheaper and more practical. I would be interested to know whether the definition of such a vaccine has moved on and whether we are closer to that taking place. Furthermore, from the evidence it received, the Select Committee understood that the current skin test to detect TB in cattle would miss one in four infected cows. Liver fluke, Johne’s disease and even pregnancy may have an impact on the result of a skin test.

How much progress has been made, since the Committee adopted its report, on allowing the vaccination of cattle under European law? That is a vexatious issue. How welcome is vaccination among our friends and allies among other European countries? I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) that the treatment and control of TB has not been achieved anywhere unless TB has been tackled in the wildlife population. In the long term, vaccination—particularly of cattle, but also of badgers—would be a good way forward, but will the Minister let us know where we are on the vaccination of cattle under European law and how close we are to rolling out field trials in this country, as required under EU law?