Badger Culls (Assessment)

Anne Main Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Williamson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct in his summary of the position. Of course bovine TB is a dreadful illness, but the way in which the Government have gone about tackling it is precisely the wrong thing to do and is likely to be making matters worse. I do not understand why they are ignoring the overwhelming scientific view that the badger cull should be abandoned and a different approach taken.

I was referring to the opinion of the chief scientific adviser to Natural England, who described the cull as an “epic failure”, and was about to ask, what did DEFRA do in response to such overwhelming criticism? It simply changed the methodology. That was described by one badger expert, Professor Woodroffe, as “very crude”. She went on to say that the Government targets

“are all rubbish because they are based on rubbish data”,

and that

“with the data that is being collected, it will be impossible to know how effective this year’s culls have been.”

The Government did not like the conclusions of their independent expert panel, so they moved the goalposts again by disbanding it, but the new Secretary of State says that the outcome of the latest culls will determine whether there will be a roll-out across the rest of the country.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Is he aware that the BBC is reporting today that a journal of the British Ecological Society has offered to assess the trials independently, in the light of the fact that the independent panel has been disbanded?

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) on keeping up the impetus on this difficult subject.

Across the House, the majority of Members believe that we should tackle TB humanely and effectively. That includes the issue of how we deal with what is seen to be a contributory factor to the problem, namely the spread of TB by badgers. I am a convert to the cause and was pleased to lead the debate in March that showed overwhelmingly that the will of the House was to come up with a better way of controlling TB. I do not think that the House ever intended to control it by inflicting cruelty on another species, while potentially making the problem worse.

On 7 July I chaired a panel discussion with members of the Badger Trust and Care for the Wild, the director of the Humane Society International, an ecologist and habitat and species specialist, and Dr Tim Coulson, a member of the independent panel of experts. The IEP was unhappy that it could not continue with its work. On top of that, Dr Coulson said that he had asked Whitehall officials about a meeting with the Secretary of State but that request was not followed up.

On 16 July I wrote to the Secretary of State asking her to meet the IEP. The Minister replied on 16 August—over a month later—stating that meetings would be considered on a “case by case basis” and that the Department was

“in dialogue with leading vets and scientists”.

Why has it not, as far as I know—unless the Minister corrects this—met the IEP? Anecdotally, Dr Coulson has told me that the Secretary of State replied to his request by saying that she was terribly busy and unable to find a date. Has the Department still not been able to do so?

How can the public have confidence in the Government if the culls are not independently monitored? As I pointed out in my intervention on the hon. Member for Derby North, there has been a kind offer of independent monitoring by the British Ecological Society. Will the Government consider taking that up? I would like to hear an answer to that today. I gather that there would be no cost to the Government. If the Government are to have confidence that they can take the public with them on this subject, which polarises opinion and creates strong passions, they should be able to explain their actions in a way the public understand. The public could then at least find a reason to support those actions, even if in their hearts they do not support the idea of some animals having to be killed to control the disease.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I apologise for having come to the Chamber very recently, Mr Caton; I have been chairing a committee on prison education.

In DEFRA questions last week I saw a glimmer of light, as the Secretary of State said that she absolutely believed in the appliance of science to most of the topics we were talking about, including losing our birdsong in this country. If we apply that to the situation with badgers, there is a small possibility that someone at DEFRA might be waking up to the idea that we need science and proper independent evaluation.

[Mrs Main]

I hope that I am correct in interpreting what the hon. Gentleman says as meaning that if the Secretary of State was listening to the science, the Government would take a different route. Unfortunately, the science—the results of the trials—does not bear out the hope that there was when the trials were agreed. It is important that we do not have a roll-out based on two failures. We should not consider rolling out any Government policy on the basis of two test runs, whether it is a proposed benefits package or something like the poll tax. Surely we should learn from our failures and not roll out a failure elsewhere.

[Bill Wiggin]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Main]

I certainly shall give way to the branch of the NFU that is my hon. Friend.

[Bill Wiggin]

I am most grateful for that tremendous compliment. I suspect that if the NFU had its way, the schemes would not be pilots but would be rolled out into all areas where there is a high incidence of TB. If the science is so important—I suspect that the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) feels it is—will my hon. Friend take this opportunity to condemn the people who are sabotaging these experiments?

[Mrs Main]

I absolutely condemn anyone who sabotages experiments, and I condemn anyone who puts any of our armed forces, police or anyone else involved, including protesters, in any danger. However, my hon. Friend must accept that passions are running high because logical arguments are being made in various debates and by panels that I have chaired, but people are not listening. If we are to prevent sabotage, which is obviously a last resort for some people, we must ensure that genuine concerns are listened to.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I went down to Somerset recently to meet some of the people monitoring the culls. They are there not to sabotage them, but to ensure that the rules are obeyed and that badgers are not shot and left wounded to die slowly and painfully. They are there to ensure that the rules are kept. I met a farmer who did not want to take part in the cull pilot, but wanted to vaccinate her cattle. She had to stand guard at midnight at the gates to her farm to stop people coming on to her land and trying to shoot badgers. It is wrong to categorise anyone who protests against and monitors the culls as trying to sabotage them. They are just trying to ensure fairness.

[Mrs Main]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. Other hon. Members want to speak, so I will not labour the point, but my constituents, who have written to me in their hundreds, have lost confidence in the rationale and the way the problem is being tackled. No one is disputing that there is a problem, but we still do not know how many badgers were killed after having been cage-trapped, when that was expressly excluded originally.

I do not believe that the Government’s method of choice will deliver what the farmers and the Government want, so we must look at the matter again. I for one, and hundreds of people in St Albans who care about the humaneness of the approach, believe that the Government are foolish not to listen to two failures. I do not accept that activists have ruined the trials; I suspect that the badger does not wish to comply with the trials, that the marksmanship has not been up to the job, and that the original premise of using free shooting instead of cage shooting was never a realistic means of dealing with the problem. We must come up with an alternative proposal, and I suggest that cattle movements, vaccination and other methods that do not inflict cruelty on another animal species are the way forward.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

We are making progress. In fact, we have been talking to an accreditation organisation about whether we could get farmers to sign up to a package of measures to improve biosecurity, including keeping badgers away from their farmyards, for example, to try to reduce the spread of the disease.

There is a misunderstanding about the IEP. Last year, the IEP was not out in the field in the middle of the night with binoculars to observe the culls. That was done by Natural England staff last year, and they did it again this year in the same way. The IEP did not carry out the post-mortems on badger carcasses last year. It was done by the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency, both last year and this year. The IEP had a one-off role last year in informing us of how we should treat the raw data that came from AHVLA and Natural England. The IEP was not in the field; it was a desktop exercise. The IEP completed its work, and we do not need to repeat it this year. Do we need the British Ecological Society to repeat what the IEP did last year? No, we do not, because that job was done and completed last year, and this year we have a process that will be audited. If the British Ecological Society has an opinion, it can express a view on this very detailed, 34-page report. People like Professor Woodroffe say that they do not agree with the report, but they have yet to explain why.

[Mrs Main]

Will the Minister give way?

[George Eustice]

I will not give way, because I want to get through as many other points as I can. My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) and others highlighted the situation in Wales and the limitations of vaccination. He is right that it is wrong to read too many conclusions into the fall in incidences of the disease in Wales. The vaccination trials in Wales cover only about 1% of the land area. We are running our own vaccination trials in the edge area. I have met a number of wildlife groups to discuss taking that project forward to check the spread of bovine TB, so vaccination has a role in fighting this disease. Vaccination is part of the Government’s strategy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) mentioned the inaccuracy of the skin tests. We know that the test is only about 80% effective, but where we have a serious breakdown, we often use it in conjunction with the gamma interferon test, which has fewer false negatives but a few more false positives. We can use that where we deem it necessary. The shadow Secretary of State mentioned that the RBCT proves that culling does not work, but that is not the case. The RBCT actually proves that, at the end of the four-year cull period, there was an improvement in the number of breakdowns.

I finish by reminding hon. Members that we have the worst bovine TB situation in the developed world. We cannot let that continue if we want competitive, productive and profitable beef and dairy sectors. Other countries that have faced similar problems, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) pointed out, have demonstrated the route to long-term disease freedom. They show us that addressing the risks posed by wildlife must be part of any coherent and comprehensive approach to tackling this disease.

We now have a very clear strategy for achieving our goal of official TB-free status in England. The approach includes deploying tighter cattle measures, strengthening biosecurity, and vaccinating badgers to prevent the disease from spreading from the TB high-risk area to the edge area. Unlike the Opposition, we are clear that any coherent strategy to eradicate TB must include measures to address the disease in wildlife in TB hot spots. We will continue to use all options available to us today to fight this dreadful disease, which has been out of control for 20 years. Doing nothing is no longer an option, which is why we intend to stick with this strategy.