Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

An independent audit of the culls is currently taking place. A review is also being undertaken by our chief veterinary officer, which is important. The British Veterinary Association fully supports our comprehensive strategy to deal with bovine TB, and it is about time the Opposition thought about how they would deal with this terrible disease rather than criticise our policy, which has been shown, using international evidence, to deliver.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Bearing down on this terrible disease in cattle must clearly involve evidence-based policy making rather than policy-based evidence selection. Further to the question on the scrapping of the independent expert panel, what will the Government do to ensure that the evidence collected from this year’s cull is presented to the whole of the scientific community that has expertise in this subject?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend; it is important that we base our policies on science and evidence, and I am determined to do that. That is why we are independently auditing the results of this year’s culls, and why we had our chief veterinary officer and our chief scientist sign off the numbers for those culls. It is important to understand that this is part of a comprehensive strategy to deal with this issue. The strategy involves vaccination in the edge zones and cattle movement controls, as well as culls where the disease is rife. It has worked in Australia, and it is working in Ireland and New Zealand. Why will the Opposition not look at the evidence?