Badger Cull

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

An effective Opposition would debate early-day motion 189.

I must draw to the attention of the House the fact that I keep pedigree Hereford cows. I test them annually and I have 13 of them. Without getting misty-eyed, they all have names and I am as fond of them as any person is of their pets. I want to protect them from disease, so I vaccinate them against every illness that I am allowed to vaccinate against, and would vaccinate against TB if it were legal. I follow the movement restrictions and I try to do all I can to prevent my cattle from being exposed to TB. I do not believe that that makes me any different from any of my constituents who farm.

I also care about other animals, and I remember the excitement I felt the first time I saw a wild badger. These are magical creatures of the dusk and I want to make it clear that I want the highest standard of care for the badger, just as I do for my own animals. Many of my kind-hearted, caring constituents have written to me asking me to vote against the cull, but I fear that that would cover only half of this enormous and unpleasant decision, the other half being the need to put diseased badgers out of their misery.

When Labour was in office, I was asked by a constituent to table a parliamentary question on advice on how to put down humanely an injured badger found on the side of the road. I was told that people should consult a solicitor before taking any action to put the badger out of pain. I do not believe that we should stand by when badgers are dying in agony.

[Sheryll Murray]

Has my hon. Friend heard that bovine TB has spread to domestic animals such as cats and dogs?

[Bill Wiggin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: TB is found in hedgehogs, cats and dogs, and even sheep. It affects people, usually only those who drink unpasteurised milk. The disease can reach any species, because M. bovis is a species-jumping illness.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Given the devastation caused by the disease in our region and the area neighbouring our county, will my hon. Friend work with me and other neighbouring MPs to convince the Secretary of State that when the trials are successful they should be brought to our region—Herefordshire and Shropshire—as soon as possible?

[Bill Wiggin]

I would make the point that these are pilots. The Opposition have made it clear that they believe they are untested. Well, pilots are by definition untested. Once we have evidence that the proposal is effective, of course we can take informed decisions. There are 300,000 to 500,000 badgers in the UK, and they do well in areas such as our counties, where cattle thrive in some of the most beautiful countryside in the country. Herefordshire is one of those counties. The number of badgers exceeds the number of foxes, and they are most likely to be killed by disease or in road traffic accidents—some 50,000 a year are killed on our roads.

There are valid and worrying arguments about perturbation. The perturbation effect was confirmed by trials that used cage trapping. It is not clear whether it was the trapping or the killing of the trapped badger which caused the perturbation effect. That is a worrying challenge to the argument on vaccination. If perturbation is caused by trapping, vaccinating badgers that may already be infected is likely to be as risky as culling. How can we prove that that is right or wrong without electronic tagging? Badgers have little ears, and would lose an ear tag. I do not think that trimming their fur, which is being done at the moment, will provide the sort of robust scientific evidence that we need.

Despite that concern, I still favour badger vaccination for populations confirmed as healthy, and I would draw the attention of the House to the success of the Dutch in using vaccination to combat foot and mouth disease. We must use vaccination to protect healthy badger populations, particularly those that border infected populations. We know where the disease is not present, as we use cattle as an indicator species. Perhaps that is something the Government can address when they look at the efficacy of culling.

Vaccination costs money, and we spent £90 million on TB control measures in 2010-11, including testing and compensation. Every time a farm breaks down, it costs £34,000. Over the past 10 years, bovine TB has cost the British taxpayer £500 million—the equivalent of Birmingham’s 1,200-bed Queen Elizabeth hospital. If we do nothing and maintain the status quo, allowing the disease to spread once again, over the next 10 years the cost will be £1 billion, which is two 1,200-bed hospitals. Given the financial situation, I think all Members would agree that spending £1 billion on the effects of bovine TB without even trying to cull sick animals would be hard to justify even in the most urban constituencies.

The extremely charming and erudite badger cull opponent, Dr Brian May, asked:

“What would we do if this were our children? We would vaccinate…them.”

EU Council Directive 78/52/EEC explicitly prohibits vaccination against bovine TB in cattle. I therefore urge the Secretary of State not to make us wait until after the referendum in 2017. Surely this is a good reason for leaving the EU, if nothing else. What would be the cost of defying the directive? How much money would be put at risk? What would be lost if the EU banned our cattle exports? What would the French do about our dairy products? [Interruption.] I heard the Minister say, “Quite a lot”—he should tell us how much. Only the Government can tell us so we can have an informed debate. In the meantime, we should go ahead with planning for cattle vaccination.

The Commissioner wrote to the Secretary of State saying that a new vaccine was 10 years away. Ten years would mean £1 billion, or another 1,200-bed hospital. The Secretary of State needs to use every weapon that he can to fight the disease. All cattle have passports, so if we chose to vaccinate we could stamp the passport, “Vaccinated— not for export”. We could use the DIVA test when DEFRA was satisfied that it was proven.

I favour better tests. I received two letters from constituents whose cattle were slaughtered. Those cattle passed the skin test, but they were found to have lesions in more than one organ and were condemned. If they had failed the test, the owners would have received compensation, but because lesions were found they were condemned, and my constituents lost the total value of those cattle. We therefore need better tests. Let us introduce the PCR test that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State championed in opposition, and let us make sure that farmers can choose gamma interferon tests if they want them.

I do not want to see badgers suffer. The Secretary of State used to keep them as pets, and he does not want to see them suffer either. The badger is a much-loved animal, including in Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows”, but unfortunately badgers are a reservoir for TB. Reducing the infected population is the principle that we use for cattle, but which we ignore in wildlife. An experimental pilot cull in the highest-risk areas, with barriers, will prove or disprove whether culling is worth rolling out in other high-risk areas. People should realise that it is a scare tactic even to suggest that the whole badger population is at risk from culling. It is not. Only badgers in the highest-risk areas, where it is thought that one in three badgers has TB, would be culled. The total number at risk would be 5,000—less than 10% of the number of badgers hit by cars every year.

Mr Badger in “The Wind in the Willows” said:

“People come—they stay for a while…they build—and they go. It is their way. But we remain.”

Let us do all that we can to ensure that healthy badgers do.