Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman has been pursuing this issue. As he will know, at the December Council we argued strongly for measures to be taken on bass. We pressed the European Commission to take emergency measures to ban pair trawling, which was done in the new year. We are currently discussing with other member states and the Commission the possibility of a bag limit for anglers, and also catch limits for the remainder of the commercial fleet. I can also tell the right hon. Gentleman that we are considering raising the minimum landing size nationally.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

May I urge my hon. Friend to review the application of the rules relating to the ban on the return of fish that might survive, particularly hand-lined mackerel? I have some experience of this, and I know that the vast majority survive. It is absurd for fishermen to be told that they cannot return those fish.

[George Eustice]

Mackerel were included in the pelagic discard ban that was considered last year, but we are giving serious consideration to the survivability rates of white fish, particularly flatfish such as sole and plaice. I shall be happy to look into the specific issue of mackerel hand-lining in Cornwall, and to keep it under constant review. We did manage to secure an exemption for the Cornish sardine industry, which was a big success.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. There will be short-term cash-flow pressures on farmers who are currently receiving low prices and in some cases have quite high costs. I have had a meeting already with the banks to discuss this and to encourage them to show forbearance. As the Secretary of State said earlier, we have also been encouraging HMRC to show forbearance to those farmers facing difficulties, and I will continue to monitor the issue closely.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

May I urge the Government to reconsider their policy? Although they offer support for bovine TB badger vaccination projects in edge areas, they do not provide that same support in so-called hot-spot areas. I have been working with the Zoological Society of London on a project which has just been very successfully rolled out for its first pilot this year in Penwith. I urge the Government to look at that seriously, because projects in hot spots could make a telling and important contribution to bearing down on bovine TB.

[George Eustice]

I have met the hon. Gentleman to discuss this issue. He is aware that we have made an offer at DEFRA to give some support to that project in his constituency, notably to provide it with free vaccines and some equipment. However, the edge area vaccination scheme is in the edge area for a very good reason: the vaccine does not cure badgers that already have the disease. There is logic to using the vaccine in the edge area, to create a buffer to prevent the spread of the disease, but less so in the high-risk areas.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

The evidence does not bear out what the hon. Gentleman says. On delays to payments, benefit payments are now made more quickly—93% are paid on time—and hardship payments are now available alongside sanctions.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

What percentage reduction in badger numbers did the two pilot culls achieve, and would it be inaccurate to say it was far more likely than not that both culls failed to meet the target of a 70% reduction?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The chief veterinary officer was clear that the cull in Somerset showed that culling helped to reduce disease. There were issues in Gloucestershire with criminal activity and sabotage.

Fishing Industry

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), although I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will resist her suggestion that the Scottish Minister should represent the whole UK. As my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) knows, that would certainly be an issue in our part of the world. Under the principle of relative stability, areas south of the Scottish border have had a difficult deal for decades, and it would be remiss of us to present the UK case as if it were primarily a Scottish issue.

[Sheryll Murray]

To clarify, to report back to the House, someone has to be a Member of Parliament. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that for us to be represented by a Member of the Scottish Parliament, who could not report back to the Chamber, would be quite inappropriate?

[Andrew George]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, although I think this is a bit of a sideshow. Given that the Minister will be representing the UK, I do not know why we have had this rather unnecessary skirmish.

In my short contribution, I do not want to repeat many of the issues that other Members have articulated extremely well; there is much consensus, and I want only to repeat some of the themes. I think we all supported the reforms to the common fisheries policy in 2011 and the principles promoted in those reforms, but the situation now indicates that some of those principles are unravelling to the detriment of the fishing industry. That is the issue I primarily wish to address today.

In my opening remarks, I should also reflect on the enormous contribution that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) has made to fisheries debates over many years. We have agreed on much, but we have disagreed occasionally. Certainly, as I indicated to him the other day, I strongly disagreed when he decided to change his name by deed poll from “Haddock” back to “Mitchell”. It was a great disappointment, but I shall forgive him.

It is also appropriate that we reflect on the risks taken by those who work so hard to put fish on our tables. I engage in these fisheries debates every year, but when I reflect on my earliest days in the House, I remember that when I arrived here in 1997 we lost seven fishermen to the sea: three fishermen died when the Gorah Lass sank in St Ives bay early that year, and when the beam trawler Margaretha Maria went down we lost four members of our local community. If it was not already evident, that brought home to me how much of a risk these men were taking to ply their trade. Safety within the industry has improved, and as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) said, the statistics suggest that we are not losing as many lives in the industry as in the past. Nevertheless, it is an extremely hazardous profession and the risks remain high.

I agree with the sentiment of what the hon. Member for Great Grimsby said about marine conservation zones, but I believe that we should be doing precisely what the Government are doing and rolling out marine conservations zones. I served on the Committee for the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, which introduced MCZs. I encouraged the then Government to adopt the amendments that I was attempting to introduce at that time, which were to the effect that the designation of the marine conservation zones should be based on science alone, but that the conservation plans for the zones should be subject to wider consultation. Unfortunately, it is the other way round in the Act, with consultation taking place before designation, and then no obligation to conduct consultation over the management plans. I am pleased that the Government are now taking note of the views of the industry and other stakeholders in the rolling-out of marine conservation plans and I think that is the right way forward. We must also ensure that the fishing industry is viewed as a major and very significant stakeholder and that we marry the interests of marine ecology with the sustainability of the fishing industry for the future.

I mentioned that I was pleased with the outcome of the common fisheries policy reform because of its emphasis on management for the long term. I and many others have campaigned for many years for more power to go to regional management. The right hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) mentioned the issue of a ban on discards, and I expressed my concern about implementation because of the difficulty of distinguishing between intended and unintended overcatch in the fish quota.

[Sir Robert Smith]

Everyone recognises the need to end discards, but the feedback we are getting now is that we need to phase it in much more gently, so that we can learn lessons and ensure that we do not do any unintended damage to the whole operation.

[Andrew George]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I know that the Government are phasing this in next year in respect of the pelagic sector and in the demersal sector thereafter. Lessons certainly need to be learned during the roll-out of the discard ban, particularly at the early stages, and we then need to adjust the method of implementing the discard ban in the light of those lessons.

My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall made an excellent speech and she was absolutely right about the implementation of the minimum sustainable yield targets. If the purpose of the 2011 reforms was to manage for the long term, one of the disbenefits stemming from implementation of the MSY proposals is that it is resulting across many sectors in significant short-termism, creating shocks within the industry, all of which are contributing to an environment that makes it much more difficult, in my view, to advance sustainable fishing. Management conservation has thus become much more difficult. The Minister will be aware of concerns not just about the many sectors already mentioned, but about the western waters area VII crab sector. The clunky and short-term approach is having a seriously detrimental impact on that sector in my part of the world.

I conclude, as I am keen to stick to the time limits, by wishing the Minister well in the forthcoming European Council discussions. I want to reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall about the importance of fighting to continue and to strengthen the protection of our 6 to 12-mile zones and of strengthening the role of regional management—an issue that we have not emphasised enough in these discussions. Many methods by which we can resolve the difficulties identified today involve making more decisions locally ourselves within the regional structure.

Dairy Industry

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

That point is accepted by the farming unions, but as my hon. Friend rightly points out, offsetting those difficulties through diversification schemes is often easier said than done. The uncertainty of the future of dairy farming gives rise to the issue of whether farmers can obtain the necessary funding to enter diversification schemes or more adventurous marketing schemes on the back of a dangerously fluctuating short-term horizon. However, I take on board his well made point.

Some solutions have been put forward by the retailers themselves, so there are silver linings to one or two clouds that we have referred to. To cite ideas from one particular retailer—I am trying to avoid naming individual companies, so that I am not bombarded with rebuttals and the like when I leave the Chamber—those solutions include working with processors to create greater transparency in the supply chain, and enabling farmers to see how prices are set in order to create better trust within the supply chain. That is a new way of working that has not been seen before in the industry, and it will create benefits for farmers, consumers and the industry. For example, the price paid to farmers will be worked out every three months, based on a rolling average of indexed butter and milk powder prices. Those commodity prices are publicly quoted, and in each case there is a futures market, allowing farmers to look ahead and hedge or protect themselves against price movements. That will allow dairy farmers better to predict milk prices and plan accordingly.

That idea comes from an e-mail from somebody who took the trouble to contact me recently. However, if I may use a rather clumsy analogy, it aligns what we are discussing with the principle of a fixed-term mortgage. If the industry is prepared to enter into an arrangement in which it can play the futures market, we can have contracts that are perhaps fixed for a longer period. If contracts can be fixed both between retailer and processor and between processor and farmer, we will be able to look at one-year or two-year contracts, or perhaps—maybe I am being over-optimistic—even further ahead than that.

Yes, of course, there are risks. There are risks to each person in the chain, but surely we can inject a degree of certainly into the industry to eliminate the risks and the downside from which people are suffering, which affects not just farmers, but everyone who relies on farmers in some shape or form.

It is a promising way forward if the retailers are beginning to recognise that there is a need for a transparent contract system based on being able to look ahead and take an average price over a future period. There would then at least be recognition that we are looking at the end of the unacceptable practice of simply sending a text message to a producer to downscale their milk price in two or three weeks.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is no press release attached to my intervention. He has got to the nub of a constructive proposal, but at present the groceries code adjudicator is limited in what she can do. Improving the adjudicator’s powers and the code would enhance the solution that the hon. Gentleman is constructively proposing: a direct relationship between the retailer and the producer of the goods coming into the supermarkets.

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman plays nicely into the completion of my contribution. I want to quote from a farmer in my constituency, not a particularly large farmer and certainly not a militant one, but someone who has worked hard on his holding for a long time and reinvested every penny in his business:

“The important bit, and the message which we are struggling to get across, is the”

groceries code adjudicator

“needs to use her powers to investigate the relationship between the Retailers & the Processors. If the Adjudicator would look at the paper trail between the likes of”

x and y,

“she would find millions of pounds, which could result in a minimum of 3p per litre back to the producer. This would turn the job round immediately as it would go to the nonaligned producers. If this was followed up & she had the guts, it would open up the biggest can of worms ever in the dairy industry. The problem is the Retailers & Processors will fight this all the way because it's their extra profit that is cleverly hidden.”

That sounds provocative and it was written with passion, but it highlights a belief and a feeling that is probably replicated throughout the UK dairy industry. We now have an opportunity to correct that, thanks, dare I say it, to the price crisis that most farmers are experiencing. We have a chance to correct it with Government, retailer and processor action, and through greater awareness and willingness to accommodate changes from the producers.

I hope that other hon. Members will produce their own anecdotes and views, so that the Minister can form a view that he can put to us at the end of the debate and that will, above all, encourage all those who are struggling, but on whom we rely to secure a longer-term sustainable business for the benefit of UK agriculture.

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?

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I think that that question is one for the House authorities—perhaps the Leader of the House can deal with it later at business questions. I am not frightened of large businesses producing food efficiently. I refer back to what my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) said. We should wake up to the fact that there is not unlimited safe food beyond these shores. There is a huge increase in world demand for food, and we should concentrate on having good, efficient farming that produces food for our population and enhances the environment.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Nevertheless, the Government have established the principle in the benefits system of placing what I think is a reasonable cap on taxpayer-funded handouts. Does the Secretary of State agree that if that principle is okay for welfare recipients, it is also right to place a reasonable cap on taxpayer-funded handouts to people who do not actually need them?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. First, it should be put on the record that we agreed to a degressivity of 5% of £150,000, so there is a reduction, but I do not think we should be frightened of having large, successful farming businesses in order to feed this country.

Migratory Birds (Malta)

Andrew George Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Randall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is absolutely right. I regret this problem with a few people in Malta, because the ties between our two countries are immense.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate and on the case he makes. In congratulating the movement in Malta and the Government’s approach, is he not shocked that Chris Packham was detained by the police for highlighting the abuses going on in the country?

[Sir John Randall]

I do not know the exact situation, but it seems on the surface that that was not the best move.

In March, 33 MEPs from 10 member states wrote to Environment Commissioner Potocnik saying that

“the Maltese government has sought to justify the derogation through inaccurate reports and unreliable and even fictional data.”

Will the Government call on Janez Potocnik, the EU Environment Commissioner, to ensure that the directive is properly enforced in Malta?

Bovine TB

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

The idea is to establish a buffer zone on the edge, and I am delighted by the positive response from Members in the House. We will look to consult on how we bring in various groups. I am delighted that there might be volunteers, as the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) mentioned. The extent of this will be the number of people we can actually get involved. The number of cattle slaughtered in Britain last year was 32,620 perfectly healthy cattle, which is more than 90 a day. The numbers for badgers killed in the culls was 955 in west Somerset and 924 in Gloucestershire.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I wish to challenge my right hon. Friend’s assertion in his statement that there is no point in undertaking any vaccination in the hot-spot areas, not least because the Department’s own trial in Stroud, a hot-spot area, has demonstrated significant improvement. In addition, we have a significant programme ready to roll with the Zoological Society of London in the Penwith area of my constituency. Will he and his scientists meet me and my scientists so that we can explore this issue?

[Mr Paterson]

I am perfectly happy for my experts to meet my hon. Friend’s, but the categorical advice I am getting is that, sadly, once a badger is infected with bovine TB, the current injectable vaccination does not make them healthy. The vaccine is difficult to deliver—as I have said, a third of badgers are trap-shy. So even if we catch the remaining two thirds and inject them with a vaccine, they will not become healthy, and that is sad.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I will follow up with a response to my hon. Friend’s letter. The Department for Transport is looking at what support may be made available to help with ports. We are considering whether fishermen will be able to receive additional help from the business support fund, which, as I said, is being administered by local authorities, but I am happy to look into the individual cases he raises.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Welcome as the package is, I seek further reassurance from the Minister. Fishermen are having difficulty engaging with the scheme. If they have purchased the replacement pots already, they cannot receive any recompense, and the pots also have to have been lost on land.

[George Eustice]

On the latter point, I do not think that that is the case, but the Marine Management Organisation might want to see some evidence that the pots have been damaged or lost. In many cases, the MMO accepts a straightforward statement signed by a fisherman. There is an issue with retrospective payment, as the European Fisheries Fund does not allow for retrospectivity and we have had some discussions with the Commission. We are trying to get a better handle on how many fishermen are affected—we think it may be somewhere between 15 and 20 fishermen—so we are looking into this issue, and I had a meeting with officials on it just yesterday.

Badger Cull

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to a debate on this subject, as I have done on a number of occasions. It is important to commence my remarks, following those of the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), by saying that, coming from a rural constituency, and indeed a farming background, I think that the important point needs to be repeated once again: what we are talking about is the impact of a disease on the lives and livelihoods of farmers and their families. The impact of this terrible disease is, I believe, the biggest issue the farming industry currently faces, certainly south of the border.

Given all that, I think that we need to be reminded why we are here. Sadly, this is not about the welfare of the badger—of course, it should be—but about the future of the farming industry. It was on that basis that I first engaged with this issue, at the beginning of the randomised badger culling trials some 15 years ago. I was a member of the then Agriculture Select Committee that was looking at the issue and I strongly supported the roll-out of what was effectively evidence-based policy making introduced by the previous Government, and indeed proposed by Professor Krebs as a result of some earlier work under the previous Conservative Government. It was about building up an evidence base on which to go forward with a policy to bear down on this terrible disease, which is having a devastating effect on livestock farmers, especially in some parts of the country, such as west Cornwall.

[Bob Stewart]

Is this debate not about the welfare of cattle, the welfare of badgers and the fact that this horrid disease is spreading across the country more and more? We have to do something to find a solution.

[Andrew George]

Absolutely. This is, of course, about the impact the disease has on a whole range of wildlife, including badgers, but the primary focus, and the reason this is being driven, is the economic, emotional and social impact it has on the farming community and the viability of many marginal livestock farmers, particularly in my part of the world.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about evidence, and I think that we all agree totally that that is the right way forward. Does he not accept that the Government ignored the evidence and just went ahead with the culls? Everything that they were warned would happen has indeed come to pass.

[Andrew George]

I am on the record as having cautioned the Government about the roll-out of the two pilot cull projects.

I want to ground my comments on the evidence from the randomised badger culling trial. Some 15 years ago my constituency was selected as one of the triplets, so we had a proactive cull in part of the Penwith moors. I backed the cull because it was on the basis of evidence-based policy making. I followed with great interest the outcome of that research and its conclusions, which found that reactive culling had no part to play in the management of bovine TB in the livestock industry, and that proactive culling could have a meaningful impact only if carried out in a thorough manner that achieved a high level of cull consistently over a long period, which meant that it had to achieve a 70% cull rate within the hot spot areas and across a wide enough area. If the Government chose to adopt this policy, it was important that they did so in such a robust manner that it would have a real and demonstrable impact. My concern about their approach is that they wanted to do it in a manner that would not be at great expense to the public purse and therefore at the cost of the farmer, although of course the state had to step in to provide the support with policing costs, at great expense in the case of both the pilot culls. The outcome of this work ran the high risk of making the situation significantly worse.

That is why, as a result of looking at the Government’s proposal, I proposed in my constituency the introduction of a community-led badger vaccination programme across a wide area—200 sq km. We are going to roll this out significantly later this year on the Penwith peninsula, working closely with the Zoological Society of London, which has now decided to take on a management role in it. Professor Rosie Woodroffe, who has been mentioned several times already, will be taking the lead on the project having originally been involved in the independent scientific group overseeing the randomised badger culling trials.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Whatever our views on this subject, one need only remember what the Secretary of State himself said in this Chamber in October 2012:

“It would have been quite wrong to go ahead when it was not confident of reaching the 70% target and could have made the position worse.”—[Official Report, 23 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 847.]

Those are the Secretary of State’s own words. I wonder whether we are now getting from certain Government Members mere bluster to defend an absolutely abhorrent policy that is not helping the farming industry and certainly not doing anything for animal welfare either.

[Andrew George]

I think those who called for this debate were anticipating, or hoping, that the IEP report would be out by now, as it should have been. That would at least have ensured that the information was already in the public domain and had not been disputed by the many people who will have seen it. I think we can make a number of reasonable assumptions about the figures in the report regarding the lack of effectiveness of the two pilot culls. We have a significant amount of evidence to go on—and it will be found to be sound—that those projects failed to achieve even a 50% cull of badgers, even in the Somerset area where it is considered to have gone slightly better than in Gloucestershire. In these unfortunate circumstances, we have to move forward on the basis of the information that is currently in the public domain.

I wish to conclude my remarks with a couple of straightforward points. First, a number of people have alighted on a report from DEFRA this week that has highlighted the fairly significant fall in TB reactors in the herd across the country—down from 37,734 in the period until December 2012 to 32,620 last year. That has happened before the impact of the pilot culls or anything else can be taken into account, which might mean that a lot of the other measures that this Government and the previous Government have engaged in are beginning to show some effects. That cannot be ignored.

Secondly, I want to refer to the collective research that was brought together by Professor James Wood at Cambridge about a year ago. I do not have the document with me, but it showed that even in the herds that had been given the all-clear after a reactor, up to 25% continued to have latent TB within them. In this debate we are concentrating significantly on vaccinating rather than killing the badger population, but we should be concentrating a great deal more on biosecurity measures and ways in which we can bear down on the latent disease that still remains in the United Kingdom livestock industry. Even though it has been given the all-clear—

[Roger Williams]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew George]

I will, but I am probably testing the patience of others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Mr George, it is not my patience you will be testing; it is that of your colleagues who are patiently waiting to speak. For the third time, I remind Members that they must speak for eight to nine minutes, including interventions. Mr George, you have been speaking for 11 minutes.

[Andrew George]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I will bring my remarks to a close by reminding people that I believe that vaccination is the way forward. It is the cheaper alternative for the Government, it is likely to be more effective, and it never runs the risk of making the situation worse.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

I want to say a little about what we have done to progress an oral vaccine. We are spending £1.6 million a year—

[Andrew George]

The Minister referred to the trials that were about to commence in the Penwith area with the support of DEFRA, which is providing the vaccine ampoules, which is much appreciated. He said it was only seven. It was only a small trial of the methodology, not of the numbers.

[George Eustice]

I expect my hon. Friend will do better next year.

As I said, we are spending £1.6 million a year developing an oral vaccine. We have made some progress on the dose required for that vaccine, and it is around 10 times more than would be needed for an injectable vaccine. We have also made some progress towards identifying a bait that would be successful, and we have made some progress towards linking the vaccine to fats that can help get it through the digestive system. But there are drawbacks even to an oral vaccine. Not all badgers will take it, and some badgers may eat more of it than others, so it will never be 100%. But we accept that nothing in this challenge is 100% and that is why we are pursuing it.

On injectable vaccines, I have had representations from my hon. Friends the Members for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) and for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) to look again at whether we could refocus some of our vaccination efforts, either in the edge area, as the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) suggested, or around the east Sussex area. I have said that we will look closely at that. As several hon. Members have pointed out, we are doing some work in that area now, and we would be willing to develop that further.

On cattle vaccines, the Secretary of State met the commissioner on this just last week. We are continuing to do some work to develop a DIVA test. Field trials will take three to five years, so as a number of hon. Members have pointed out, it will be eight or nine years before we can get export clearance for the use of such a cattle vaccine. However, we are committed to taking this forward.

I agree with hon. Members that improving the control of cattle movements is an important tool in the fight against TB, but I simply point out that we have done a lot already. We now have annual testing in the high-risk area, and four-yearly testing across the whole country. We have banned practices such as approved quarantine units. We now have radial testing in the low-risk areas where we get an outbreak. We have stopped cattle going to major shows since July 2012. We have introduced risk-based trading to help farmers manage the risks. We have an ongoing consultation about restricting movements and introducing pre-movement and post-movement tests to common land. We are introducing deductions for farmers who are late in having their TB test, and we have reduced the pre-movement testing window from 60 to 30 days. So we are doing a huge amount, but I accept that we should be constantly looking to improve and do more, and we are looking, as the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) suggested, at whether more could be done, for instance, on biosecurity measures.