Badger Cull

Charles Hendry Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for the debate and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for her work in securing it. Like others, I appreciate her courage in leading it this afternoon.

Let me start by echoing the words of the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess), who is no longer in his place. The debate is not about people who love badgers versus people who love cattle. It is not about those who find a cull distasteful, to use the words of the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), versus those who do not. It is about how we can most effectively address the scourge of bovine TB.

The science points us towards the fact that culling badgers in England is not an effective policy. I wish that the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) were still in his place, because I would say to him that it is him, not me, who has his science wrong. I might also be tempted to point out to him that although I know I am guilty of many sins, I am not aware that I have been guilty of spreading bovine TB myself. That was among the many things he accused me of earlier this afternoon.

Let me be serious. It is important that we address the clichés. Even though I represent an urban constituency, I have spent a lot of time with farmers. I was a member of a European Parliament special committee on foot and mouth disease and I visited many farms and sat with many farmers in their kitchens. I am under no illusion about the enormous distress they experience at the thought of the destruction of their animals. I have cried as they have cried facing the loss both of their livelihoods and of animals that they love. This is not a competition about who loves animals most; it is a debate about the evidence for what works. There is no monopoly on either side of the House on caring for animals. What there is, I think, is a determination among some of us to try to look at the evidence with a bit more rigour.

I welcome this debate, because it is important that MPs are properly involved in any future decisions about the control of bovine TB, and that those decisions are subject to a vote in this House. As other hon. Members have indicated, the pilot badger cull can only be judged a spectacular failure, including against the Government’s own terms of reference.

The leaked IEP report makes it clear that the pilot failed two of the Government’s tests. It failed on humaneness, as more than 5% of badgers took longer than five minutes to die, and it failed on effectiveness, as fewer than 50% of badgers have been killed in either pilot area. Yes, those are only leaks, but we know that they echo the empirical evidence of so many people who have been monitoring the culls. We know, for example, that one of those culls took more than 11 weeks and that people involved in those culls stopped free shooting quite early on because it was not effective. We know as well from the people who were following those culls that many of the animals were not shot in a clean way.

It is not the case that, because this report has not been published, we cannot make statements about it. I wish, as others do, that the Minister had brought it forward earlier. As one of the co-sponsors of the debate, I can say that, when we went to the Backbench Business Committee, we fully expected the report to be out. The reason we wanted it out fairly swiftly was that we know that this Government have a habit of moving fast without consulting Parliament. They did that when they extended the culls in the first place—the extended period did not come back to Parliament for a decision—so it was right to ensure that the Government heard the views of the constituents whom we represent.

The leaked IEP report makes it clear not only that the pilots failed some of the tests that the Government set, but that costs have soared, particularly when policing costs are taken into account. Preliminary estimates put the pilot costs at an eye-watering £4,000 per badger killed. Shockingly, despite that, the Government have refused to rule out the extension of culling in up to 40 additional large areas in the west and south-west of England in the coming years.

Much has been said about the importance of evidence-based policy making. Let us remind ourselves about what some of these scientific experts have said about culling. Others have already quoted Lord John Krebs, who called the cull policy “mindless”. He was one of the architects of the landmark 10-year culling trials that ended in 2007. He said:

“The scientific case is as clear as it can be: this cull is not the answer to TB in cattle. The government is cherry-picking bits of data to support its case.”

Lord Robert May, a former Government chief scientist and president of the Royal Society, said:

“It is very clear to me that the Government's policy does not make sense.”

He added:

“I have no sympathy with the decision. They are transmuting evidence-based policy into policy-based evidence.”

I want to highlight some of the myths associated with the culling strategy and to suggest some alternatives. Before I do that, let me state again that I absolutely accept that bovine TB is a serious problem that needs to be tackled. However, the evidence shows that badger culling makes the problem even worse for some farmers, and risks making it worse for all of them. Today’s debate is not about whether we want to protect cattle or badgers; it is about the most effective way to protect cattle, which, as the evidence shows, is not by killing badgers. That is not because badgers do not necessarily contribute to the cattle TB problem, but because badger culling tends to increase the proportion of badgers infected and to spread the disease to new areas. That is because of the perturbation effect, as fleeing badgers spread the disease further afield while the vacuum caused by culling attracts new badgers into newly vacated territory.

[Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)]

The hon. Lady will be aware that there is a high-risk area in Sussex, which spreads broadly from her constituency to mine. It is a fairly ring-fenced area. We understand the nature of the problem there, and it is causing real difficulties. Does she recognise that that is an ideal example of where vaccination could be made to work? As the disease is geographically confined, we could see the effects of perturbation and whether, with vaccination, there were different issues that could be managed more effectively.

[Caroline Lucas]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and completely agree. I know that in previous debates, he has raised, as I have, the work of the Sussex badger vaccination project, a volunteer-run service that offers landowners and farmers in east Sussex the chance to have badgers vaccinated at very low cost, thereby providing a humane and less controversial method of tackling the disease. I hope that as many farmers as possible in the area will take up that offer.

I want to talk about some of the myths about culling. One that even DEFRA is promoting—we have heard it several times already today from Government Members—is that results from places such as New Zealand support the strategy of badger culling in the UK. Let us be clear that there are no badgers in New Zealand. The wildlife host there is the brushtail possum, an invasive species introduced from Australia. Possum ecology is completely different from badger ecology. Although culling reduces TB in possums, rather than increasing it, that result cannot simply be transposed to a different species with a different ecology in a different country. Professor Charles Godfray of the Royal Society of Biological Sciences puts it clearly:

“Differences in the regulatory and social structure of farming, the countryside, and the ecology of the different reservoirs all mean that lessons from other countries have to be taken with great caution.”

The bottom line is that bovine TB is too important for us to be cherry-picking the evidence. As we reflect on the pilot culls, it is essential that we put science at the heart of future policy.

Similarly, evidence from the Republic of Ireland has been cited to support claims that culling badgers will help to control TB in England. As with New Zealand, the evidence shows that TB reductions cannot be attributed solely to culling. Crucially, Ireland has much lower badger densities than England, so the badgers respond differently to culling. In England, culling has consistently increased the proportion of badgers with TB. The evidence most applicable to the TB problem in England is information collected in England.

We have heard that during the pilot culls, when the Government’s policy on badger control was in place, the conditions deviated massively from the conditions of the randomised badger culling trial, so any reliance on the results of the RBCT in predicting the likely outcome of culling is completely invalid. Let us not forget that even in the best case scenario the RBCT only reduced the incidence of bovine TB by between 12% and 16%. In other words, even if we were to take Herculean measures and do absolutely everything in the right amount of time and as cleanly as possible, we would still not be tackling at least 84% of TB in cattle. That is what makes me feel that it is even more important to look at alternative strategies, and chief among them, as many other Members have said, is badger vaccination.

Badger vaccination makes sense for a number of reasons, but I want to mention just two. The first reason is that it works. It reduces the probability of infection by between 70% and 75%. Even allowing for the fact that not all badgers will be reached and vaccination needs to be repeated year on year to include new cubs, it is still more effective and more cost-effective than shooting, not least because vaccination allows the badgers’ population structure to remain in place, granting considerable benefits for disease limitation.

Vaccination does not remove infected badgers, but it makes it more difficult for those animals to pass infection to other badgers. Over time, the infected animals die off, and the proportion of infected badgers is expected to decline. That contrasts with culling, which increases the proportion of infected badgers and spreads infection in space.

The second reason is on grounds of cost. Vaccinating badgers is cheaper than culling them, for at least three reasons: First, the poor performance of free shooting suggests that both culling and vaccination would entail cage trapping, with vaccination slightly cheaper because there is no need to dispose of carcases. Secondly, vaccination is unlikely to require policing. As other members have said, DEFRA estimates the cost of vaccinating badgers to be £2,250 per sq km per year, while policing the first two pilot culls alone cost roughly £4,400 per sq km. Thirdly, as with the example of the Sussex badger vaccination project, many wildlife organisations can draw upon hundreds of volunteers to help with badger vaccination, markedly reducing the costs.

As I have said in all the other parliamentary debates on the subject, we also need to devote more resources and political capital to overcoming the challenges with cattle vaccination, as well as to addressing the role that modern husbandry practices can play in placing chronic stress on intensively farmed animals. Professor John Bourne, chair of the independent scientific group that oversaw the RBCT, stated in his final report that

“implementation of cattle control measures outlined in this report are, in the absence of badger culling, likely to reverse the increasing trend in cattle disease incidence.”

Improving biosecurity must also take priority, as well as stricter testing and movement restrictions. We can see that measures are already playing a part in bringing down the incidence of bovine TB. Others have mentioned the figures recently released by DEFRA showing that during 2013 there was a 14% reduction in the number of cattle slaughtered as TB reactors or direct contacts. We have also seen the evidence from Wales, where a combination of biosecurity, cattle movement restrictions and vaccination is being used to reduce bovine TB, and where the number of cattle herds with the disease fell by 23.6% last year.

This is a complex topic, but my asks of the Minister are simple. First, he should look at the evidence and stop the badger culls for good. He should grant no more licences to shoot badgers, and stop wasting time, money and energy on an approach that is making matters worse. As others have said, bovine TB is too important for us to cherry-pick the evidence. As we reflect on the culls, let us make sure that we put science at the centre of future policy. If the Government were minded to continue with any kind of culling programme, they absolutely must come back to this House first and subject that decision to a vote, because I am convinced that we would win it.