Debate on the Address

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), who, as always, made many excellent points. I support the Queen’s Speech, which I thought was absolutely tremendous, and congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) on their excellent speeches. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because that is a traditional thing that one has to do.

The most important point facing my constituents at the moment is, as always, tuberculosis in cattle. I keep coming back to this matter because—the hon. Member for Stroud mentioned the animal welfare element in the agriculture Bill—of the need to tackle this disease, and the issues that are hitting farmers time and again in the countryside. They all come down to the failure of the skin test to correctly identify infection in cattle. There is good news: a new test, the Enferplex TB test, has been approved by the World Organisation for Animal Health—or the OIE. It is an antibody test, and it is more reliable and more accurate. It will genuinely give us, as a nation, the opportunity to find the disease both in cattle and in badgers and to correctly identify it. Until we can do that, the progress we make will never be as good as it should or could be.

There is also work under way on enhanced skin tests and DNA in blood tests, but neither of those are approved by the OIE. The OIE does not approve any old test. It is a respected, proper international body and we need to know what the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is doing to make sure that these tests are adopted and that the fight against tuberculosis is successful.

I have farmers complain to me time and again of the heartbreak of watching their beloved animals being put down. To make matters even worse, they then get a message saying that, during the test later, there was no sign of infection in the animal. Those tests can take up to six months to culture but, by then, of course, my constituents are unutterably miserable and have been treated appallingly, so we need to move on. We need to use science to help to fight this horrible disease in cattle and to ensure that the badger population, which is healthy, is protected. The culling has been proven to work. The peer group review and the science add up. If you do it properly, you can reduce the incidence of outbreaks in cattle and, of course, that is good not only for the farmers and the cattle, but for protecting the healthy population of badgers.

[Matt Western]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very important point about some of the challenges that are faced in our rural communities, particularly by our farmers. When I speak to farmers in Warwickshire—there are very few in my constituency—they are very vocal about the concerns about TB. I have learned that one of the challenges that they face, or that we face, is that so many of these tests are undertaken by specialist vets, who are often from the EU—from eastern Europe. If we do not have that skilled migration coming from eastern Europe, the delivery of vets and their supply to rural communities will be under threat.

[Bill Wiggin]

That is a very good reason to have a better test and to win the battle against the disease, and then we will not need to do so many tests because the cattle will be clean.

[Dr Drew]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. There is even better news: there is now—within five years—the prospect of a cattle vaccine. Under the old enzyme linked immunosorbent assay test, we could not separate those that had been vaccinated and those that had not. I gather that that is now happening. Is that not much better than some of the things that are going on?

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

The problem with vaccinating against bacteria is that it is much harder for the creature—whether it be human or animal—to fight a disease unless it is under pressure. That means that, if the disease is prevalent, a vaccine is much more successful than if the disease is not. Although I would welcome an effective vaccination, BCG in human beings is only 60% effective. But because we all do the same things, and because we can use antibiotics, that is enough to create the herd immunity that, as a society, we need. Unfortunately, we are not winning this battle particularly successfully in the human population, and it is becoming increasingly prevalent. Although I want to welcome every step of science that protects my constituents and their animals, vaccines alone will unfortunately not do it. But if we do everything, we can triumph.

One of the things that has been bothering me is the situation for our sheep farmers—our shepherds. What will they do if we leave the European Union, which takes such a large proportion of our lamb? We produce 3% of the world’s sheep, but 25% of the EU’s sheep. We produce a third of the EU’s sheepmeat and are the sixth largest producer in the world. The average person in the UK eats 1.9 kg of lamb a year—including you, Mr Speaker, as I am delighted to see from your signalling. That is about the size of a family joint per year. We can do better than that. If our sheepmeat market is threatened, we could double consumption. That would actually make us a net importer of lamb. Some 64% of our product is actually consumed domestically, so the idea that the New Zealanders—who have a 90,000-tonne opportunity to sell into the UK already, but who have never fulfilled that quota—will flood our market is for the birds. We can eat our way to success even if everything goes wrong, and I am a great advocate for that, as the House can see from my aerodynamic dimensions. We produce 298,000 tonnes of sheepmeat per annum, worth £2.216 billion.

The other thing that is really upsetting me at the moment is dog meat in China. I have seen the way that these poor people in Hong Kong are being treated, and I think our reaction has been rather quiet. One of the things we ought to be doing is using our status in the world to set an example. The example that my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) and I seek to set is to make it illegal to eat dogs—not least because nobody eats dogs in the UK, so resistance to this law should be pretty minimal. It would set an example to the world. The horrendous torture that goes on for more than 10 million dogs in China is so unbelievably revolting and cruel that, if we can do even the smallest thing here, we should do it.

We care about animal welfare, and today the Prime Minister talked about banning live exports. This is a difficult subject for me. Exporting animals for slaughter abroad is obviously not ideal. It would be much better if they were slaughtered nearer to where they live. We are constantly told that the EU sets these high standards for animal welfare, yet they clearly are not high enough for live exports. That is why our Government want to stop such exports. That is perfectly understandable, but surely when we leave the EU we can have much higher standards for transporting animals. Actually, I think the UK does it very well already, and the NFU has some excellent suggestions as to how this could be done. This is one of the EU failures that people do not talk about but jolly well should.

There are other things in the Queen’s Speech that matter to my constituents. I am particularly pleased that railways and buses have come up. Railways really do need to take the passenger to the end of the line, particularly if that is in Hereford. It is no good stopping off in Worcester, Malvern or anywhere else that is jolly nice but where the people do not live; trains really do need to reach the end of the line. There is a wonderful man called Dave Morris, who runs the bus companies in my constituency. I have been appalled by the way in which bus companies treat each other and seek to compete in order to put their competitors out of business. We need reliability in our buses, and preferably slightly thinner buses that can fit down country lanes.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

As we look at the increasing dysfunctionality of our public transport system—outside of London especially—we can see that is actually a case of a natural monopoly. There should be further control from a central planning point of view; having further co-ordination, franchising and other co-operative models of municipal control would be far better. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Bill Wiggin]

I would love to agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am not sure that the buses will ever be completely satisfactory in my constituency. We have a fairly sparsely populated group of people and more roads per capita than any other county. That means that getting a bus when one wants it to where one wants to go is extremely difficult. However, it has got a lot better since I was first elected. In order to get to Tenbury Wells, one took a bus on a Monday morning but could not get back until Thursday afternoon. Things have, believe it or not, got better.

Another gripe I have is this vegetarian nonsense. I have absolutely had it up to here. Someone who really cares about the planet should eat grass-fed meat. There is no way that human beings can consume grass. It makes sense to turn the grass that grows across 60% of our country into protein, and the way to do that is to allow a sheep or cow to eat it and then consume the animal.

Of course I understand that these animals can produce methane from enteric digestion, but that methane is part of the cycle. The manure goes back into the soil and it is a natural cycle. Once someone starts to add fossil fuels through their tractor or their fertiliser, they totally alter the carbon footprint of the crops they are producing.

Therefore, having a plant-based diet is not going to save the planet. All those people nibbling away on soya beans grown on the burnt-out former forests of the Amazon are doing immense harm, not least in lurking outside here and making people stick in a traffic jam emitting carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, NOx’s and all sorts of other vile fumes—[Interruption]—especially the ones from Stroud, who are causing no end of trouble. Most of all, they are upsetting people like me who really care about climate change. I wrote a book about it. I have to tell the House that I slightly spoilt it by putting a picture of myself on the front, but that did not matter: it was a really important subject. Turning people away from doing the right thing, which is what these people and their vegetarianism are doing, is absolutely disastrous. We are leading the world, and to go out of one’s way to beat up the world leader for something they are doing right strikes me as very poor politics indeed.

I welcome various other parts of the Queen’s Speech. The rule of law matters so much to my constituents. We have the lowest crime, I am happy to tell the House, but that does not mean that people do not feel frightened or nervous, or care about seeing police officers. Seeing more of those is a wonderful and important thing, so I welcome that. I agree that the punishment needs to fit the crime and that it is no good giving a long sentence and then the criminal who has been found guilty serving only half of it. Who are we trying to fool—the families of the victims? It is very important that we have honesty in our sentencing.

I welcome the hospital building, particularly in Hereford. I think I still have a photograph of me chasing Alan Milburn and trying to get more beds for Hereford County Hospital in 2001. Now, finally, those beds are about to arrive, as the wards built by the Canadian army in the second world war are finally dismantled and replaced with a 21st-century building. The same is true for the funding of our schools. I am sure that all colleagues have, like me, visited their local schools and heard the plea for more money. The bit that has always been incredibly difficult is to explain why, if someone lives in Westminster, their children receive twice as much money as the children of someone who lives in Ledbury. That cannot be right. Raising the funding from the bottom up will be welcome because it does not take from those who have higher needs, but it does lift the base. That is surely the best way to ensure that our children get the best possible start in life.

I shall close with the thought that these people who care about the climate, care about the future of our planet and want to do the right thing should be encouraged and not put off. They should start eating pasture-fed meat with the Pasture for Life logo on it so that they know they are not only saving the planet but bringing about the highest levels of animal welfare, which I know all our farmers, particularly those in Herefordshire, strive for, care about and deliver.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(David Rutley.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.