Badger Culling/Bovine TB

Debate between Angela Smith and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I invited the hon. Lady, when she was the shadow Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister, to come to my constituency and meet some of these farmers, and I invite her to come and meet some of the people who have been involved in this licensing programme. She will find out the hours, days and weeks they have had to spend on this to get a licence. She will be amazed.

[Angela Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is kind to give way. Does he believe that free shooting is acceptable?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I believe that the best way to cull badgers is with traps. Unfortunately in Gloucestershire, protesters have removed and damaged traps, which has made it essential to have free shooting in our armoury, as well as shooting badgers in traps. If there were no interference with the traps, I believe we could—as they have done in Somerset—operate culls on a much greater basis by caging badgers.

I repeat that the 25-year elimination strategy that the Government have announced is exactly right. We must use all the tools in our armoury, including ring vaccination, culls, vaccinations and, indeed, as the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross said, tightening biosecurity. On farms, we legally have to do so. Every year DEFRA has tightened biosecurity, the regulations on pre and post-movement of cattle and the regulations on skin testing. Those are the directions in which we need to go, but we need to eliminate this terrible disease.

Badger Cull

Debate between Angela Smith and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Weir, for allowing me to catch your eye. I grew up on a dairy and pig farm where my father lost his entire pig herd to swine vesicular disease and my mother was frightened that she would lose her entire dairy herd to foot and mouth disease. I can therefore empathise with my farmers in Gloucestershire whose cattle have had to be slaughtered because of this dreadful disease, which causes a painful death for badgers and other wildlife. Last year, 28,000 cattle were compulsorily slaughtered because of their susceptibility to TB. The cost to taxpayers has been £500 million over the last five years and it will be £1 billion if nothing is done over the next five years.

My constituency is fairly close to the cull and the preliminary results are that it has been successful on two counts: humaneness and effectiveness. If the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), who proposed the debate—he is laughing—has a serious accusation about shots being fired above people’s heads, he should report that to the police. They will investigate and if anyone did that, they will have committed a criminal act and should be prosecuted. Let him produce the evidence before he makes such statements.

The real answer is an oral vaccine. The trouble is that it has been around the corner for the 21 years that I have been a Member of Parliament. It solved the rabies problem. An oral vaccine fed to foxes on the continent now renders it sufficiently rabies-free for us to take our pets there.

Much nonsense has been uttered in this debate about the cost of trapping and a licensed injectable vaccine. The realistic figures from the Welsh trial show that that costs about £3,900 per sq km. If that is extrapolated to the Gloucestershire trial alone, the figure each year would be a staggering £1.170 million; I expect that the policing costs of the cull would be less than £1 million. Those who are against the trial cull—I emphasise that it is only a trial cull—should bear that in mind.

Nowhere in the world has a significant reduction taken place without elimination of a significant TB reservoir in wildlife. We saw that in relation to possums in New Zealand, to deer in Australia, and in America.

[Angela Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the social structure of the badger population in Britain is completely different from the social structure and behavioural habits of possums in Australia and New Zealand?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Having watched badgers, I know that when a badger gets TB it goes into the bottom of the sett, dies slowly over a long time and infects other badgers. That is a fact. The disease is painful and must be eliminated one way or another. Surely we can unite around that. It is not something we want in our wildlife or our cattle.

In closing, I want to make one or two points. A lot of nonsense has been talked about the safety of shooting. If it were not safe, we would have seen more incidents in Gloucestershire. My information is that there has not been unsafe shooting and that there has been humaneness. I do not know of any cases of a badger going away to die. Again, if the hon. Member for Derby North, who represents the League Against Cruel Sports, can produce evidence, I would be interested in seeing it. He made many exaggerated claims in his speech.

We must do something about this dreadful disease. Our farmers have to use one of the strictest biosecurity devices in the world to ensure that their cattle are free of TB, and it costs them a great deal of money.

Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Debate between Angela Smith and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I rather wish that I had not given way for that intervention, but, frankly, it says more about the hon. Gentleman than about the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, whom I regard as having the greater stature because of what he has done.

I am amazed that the shadow Chancellor can conclude that severe action did not need to be taken to deal with our deficit. If we had not begun to take such action, the international markets would have taken the lead. Spot interest rates and bond rates would rise sharply. The cost of financing the huge deficit that we inherited would rise substantially. Business failures would accelerate. Unemployment would rise. Ultimately, by not taking the action that we have taken, we would return to recession. I completely take the opposite view from that of Opposition Members, who have said that we do not need to deal with deficit in the way we have now done.

Those siren voices of the Opposition would have led us into greater trouble than we are in now. What we see from the Opposition is a legacy where the gap between the rich and the poor grew in their 13 years in government. I would be bitterly disappointed if the Government’s actions do not lead to the economy being immeasurably stronger in five years’ time. We can then start to reduce that gap and put money into poor communities, exactly as the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) wants us to do, so that we can start to benefit some of the poorest people in society.

It was a huge tribute to the Chancellor that he said time after time yesterday that he wanted to bring the bottom of this country nearer to the top, with some of the measures that underlie the Budget—for example, how he will deal with the state pension. Opposition Members had 13 years to deal with the state pension. More than 1 million pensioners had to go grovelling to the Government and to fill in huge forms to get pension credit. We have now promised that everyone will receive a pension increase linked to earnings, prices or 2.5%, whichever is higher. That is real promise. Pensioners can now look forward to receiving at least a 2.5% increase from 2011.

[Angela Smith]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Labour Government legislated to make the link between pensions and earnings possible in 2008, and that we were timetabled to introduce that in 2012. Will he confirm his Government’s intention to pay the winter fuel allowance next year at the same level as we paid it to our pensioners last year?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I remind the hon. Lady that the Labour party won the election in 1997. The Labour Government had between 1997 and 2008 to do something about that, but meanwhile more than 1 million pensioners had to go through means-testing and fill out huge forms to get pension credit. A considerable number did not want to claim the credit, because they were too proud to do so, and they therefore lived in poverty. In the first few weeks of this new Government, pensioners have got a better deal than at any point under the 13 years of the previous Labour Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I know that she was upbraided by Mr Deputy Speaker a little while ago—it takes a long time to sort out parliamentary language, and references to “you” and the “hon. Gentleman”. She is absolutely right. I was modelling my remarks exactly on Digby Jones, who did a huge amount of work for this country, and spent an enormous amount of time travelling around the world. He had great, in-depth knowledge of huge sections of industry, having served as chairman of the CBI. We need to appoint someone of that calibre, who has the time, energy and availability to be able to do precisely that job.

As I said, the notion that RDAs should have offices around the world competing with one another led to a huge dilution of the UK brand. It caused confusion in the country in which they were located, and it did not serve our interests of attracting foreign direct investment to this country. I have no doubt that Ministers will abolish that structure rapidly, thereby producing much better results. I welcome the proposals for local enterprise partnerships, which are a huge step forward. We can help the private sector by not having a stratified structure of RDAs across the country. We need different structures in different parts of the country, to deal with the problems in each area. We must concentrate Government advice on business sectors, rather than on regions. It was complete nonsense that the Government’s car adviser was based in the north-east, unable to give advice to car manufacturers and component suppliers in Birmingham. We must concentrate on sectors, so that the automotive sector, for example, has a proper advice team in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

We must try to support those sectors that the UK is good at, and see how we can improve their export structure. I say this with hesitation at the moment, but our oil sector was respected throughout the world. Our pharmaceuticals, defence and financial services sectors were respected throughout the world, too, and in line with Sir James Dyson’s recommendations, we must aim to become the No.1 high-tech exporter in Europe. We will do that by concentrating on the new, high-growth market sectors, such as those involving low-carbon and green technologies. Those are the industries of the future, and we ought to concentrate on them. We must also ensure that our universities and their basic research are world-beating, and that companies have the incentive to develop those world-beating ideas into products and services that we can sell in greater and greater quantities throughout the world.

[Angela Smith]

I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says about the potential of our export and manufacturing sectors, but does he support nuclear power, nuclear energy and the supply of components to the nuclear energy industry as one of those sectors that are important for our future?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am very grateful for that intervention. I have always been a supporter of nuclear power, and I am one of the very few Members who have been to Chernobyl and survived, so I can see what goes wrong in the nuclear sector. However, with modern technology—I say this carefully—I can see that the nuclear sector has an important role to play in the range and mix of our power generation.

The Labour Government left us with another really dire legacy, however, because if we do not introduce nuclear power generation to this country I do not see how we can keep the lights going in the next 20 years—[Interruption.] The Liberal Democrats had different views, but they have looked at the problem and signed up to a nuclear power programme, and I congratulate them on that, because it is the right thing to do. We in this House should not come up with ideological dogma; we should all look at the facts and see what is the correct thing to do, which is—[Interruption.] It is all very well the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) pointing at the Liberal Democrats, but we in the Conservative party have had to swallow things that we do not like. We have looked at the facts and seen the correct thing to do. Therefore, I support nuclear power.