Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Owen Paterson

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

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

T2. If the Secretary of State is so assiduous and so passionate, how come he got nothing in the Queen’s Speech on the environment—the only thing mentioned is shale gas and fracking? Has he heard the “Farming Today” programme recently, which described the common agricultural policy deal as a “greenwash” which will do nothing for wildlife in this country?

[Mr Paterson]

I listened to “Farming Today” yesterday and today, and I made it very clear that this is a disappointing CAP reform. The hon. Gentleman might wish to reflect on the fact that his previous leader, Mr Tony Blair, gave away a huge slug of our national rebate in return for CAP reform and totally failed to deliver. We are going to deliver £3.5 billion through our pillar 2 schemes for environmental work which he will approve of.

Flooding

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Owen Paterson

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who raises an important Welsh point that we heard earlier. Obviously the Welsh Government were represented in the meetings of Cobra, and I talked with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales only this morning. I think that the appropriate route would be to write to him, because clearly consequentials have been cited in relation to the large Welsh coastline.

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

I remind the Secretary of State that when there has been flooding in my constituency it has been an awful experience, but it can also be months, and sometimes years, before homes are habitable again. It is a miserable process. Does he agree that the Environment Agency has come out very well from the recent troubles with flooding and inclement weather. Should he not now do something to restore morale in the Environment Agency, which he is well known to dislike, because its staff are very unhappy about the way they have been treated by his Government over the past three years?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful for some of the hon. Gentleman’s comments, but I honestly have to disagree. I have been to see people from the Environment Agency on the ground. Last week I was in Addington, where they were manning the control centre. Only this morning, I was near Maidenhead looking at the Jubilee river, in absolute pouring rain. Those guys have been working all over Christmas and their morale was absolutely tremendous. They are, quite rightly, really proud of what they have done. They have worked their guts out under very difficult conditions, and they have delivered. We estimate that approximately 1 million households are protected through the work of the Environment Agency and all those working in local councils. I am always struck by the real spirit among people in the Environment Agency and their determination to deliver, whatever the conditions. That also goes back to what happened at the beginning of January, when they were working overnight filling breaches on the east coast. I have the deepest respect for the hon. Gentleman, who has been in this House for a long time, and I do not like disagreeing with him, but on this occasion I honestly think he is wrong, and I am pleased to tell him so. I really do think that morale among people in the Environment Agency is tremendous—and of course they are buoyed up by the prospect of our very significant long-term programme for flood defences.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Owen Paterson

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

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

2. When he expects bovine tuberculosis in England to have been eradicated.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

I welcome the Opposition Front Benchers to their new positions—the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who is the new shadow Secretary of State, and the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Newbury (Richard Benyon) and for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who have stood down from the Government Front Bench, for their sterling work, for the absolute support I received, and for the sensible advice and experience they brought to their posts. I also welcome two new Under-Secretaries of State, my hon. Friends the Members for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) and for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson). They come from a rural background and will embellish the Department.

The answer to the question from the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is that the Government have recently completed their consultation on a draft strategy for achieving officially bovine TB-free status for the whole of England in 25 years.

[Mr Sheerman]

The truth is that the cull is incompetent—it has been described as such by the lord mayor of Oxford, and the whole May family, including Brian May, say that it is a disaster—but we should not ignore the fact that what is being done to badgers in the west country is morally reprehensible. It is ineffective and inefficient, and ignores scientific opinion. Why does the Secretary of State not resign?

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman supported a Government who did nothing about the disease. Thanks to the policies of the Government he supported, 305,000 otherwise healthy cattle were hauled off to slaughter at a cost to the British taxpayer of £500 million. If we go on as he left it, the disease would double over nine years, we would be looking at a bill of £1 billion and we would not have a cattle industry. The pilots were set up to establish the safety, the humaneness and the efficiency of a controlled shooting by skilled marksmen. It is quite clear that, after the first six weeks, we have succeeded on all three criteria.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Owen Paterson

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. I have said on many occasions—I frequently repeated myself during the negotiations—that we must ensure that the way in which we impose CAP reform is simple and easy to understand. We will not make the mistakes of the previous Government, who caught us up in a horribly complex system that cost us €590 million in what the EU calls disallowances but in what I would call a fine.

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

May I urge the Secretary of State to be a champion of joined-up government? The G8 settlement on social impact investment was a breath of fresh air; can it link to anything in the CAP settlement, so we can get some serious social impact investment in the rural economy?

[Mr Paterson]

As I told the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), we intend to modulate 15% into pillar two, and there are real benefits for the rural economy, the rural environment and rural society from our rural development programme for England schemes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Owen Paterson

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his much more constructive question. The public can play a key role. We know that there is a genetic strain that is resistant; we have seen it in Denmark and Holland. Organisations such as the Woodland Trust can play a vital part in helping us to identify the trees that are resistant so that we can start to breed from them.

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

The Secretary of State may know of my interest as chair of the John Clare Trust, which runs a campaign called Every Child’s Right to the English Countryside. The likelihood of any child’s visiting any green space is halved in a generation. As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), we need an army of people to go out into our forests and woods, to act as detectors of disease, and to help us to fight it. We need that army of people to go into the country’s green spaces and act in the same way as the membership of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, who are good at noticing any decline in the bird population.

[Mr Paterson]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is exactly the way in which we will confront some of these diseases. As I have said, a number of trees are resistant, and it would be enormously helpful if the public became involved in searching for them. There are some 80 million ash trees in the country; officials cannot spot them all, but the public can, and that could be immensely beneficial. I pay tribute to the members of the public who paid a key role during the week in which we surveyed the entire United Kingdom.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Owen Paterson

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

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

12. What recent evidence he has considered on the effects of badger populations on dairy herds.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

The badger culling pilots, which we now plan for next year, will test the effectiveness, safety and humaneness of controlled shooting. Our plans for an independent expert panel to oversee the design and analysis of the data collection have not changed. Monitoring will include field observations and post-mortems. If monitoring indicates that controlled shooting is an acceptable technique, the policy will be rolled out more widely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paterson]

I explained at some length in my statement the other day, in which I spoke for, I think, 90 minutes, that certain circumstances led to the NFU’s decision to request that we postpone. There will be time to prepare. There will be no hitches next year: we will deliver this policy.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister might be aware that I made myself very unpopular among Labour Members when I voted against the ban on hunting with dogs. I therefore know what it is like to make an unpopular decision, but the badger cull is wrong: it is wrong because these wonderful creatures roamed this country before we did and it is wrong because it would destroy tens of thousands of living animals. There is no scientific evidence that it would do any good, so the Secretary of State should stop listening to farmers and listen to the great British public and Mr Brian May.

[Mr Paterson]

I respect the hon. Gentleman for his independence of judgment but—I am sorry—we disagree. The science is clear: after nine years there was a 28% reduction in the culled area. If we look at New Zealand, Australia or the Republic of Ireland—I talked to a farmer in France on Monday—we see that there is not a single country that is struggling with TB in its cattle industry that is not bearing down on wildlife and cattle, and we will do that.