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.

Badger Cull

Charles Hendry Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Westminster Hall

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

I add my congratulations to those given to the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) on securing the debate. It is critical that MPs should be properly involved in future decisions about the control of TB, and that those decisions should be voted on by the House.

The pilot badger cull can be judged only a spectacular failure, including against the Government’s own terms of reference. No one is leaping to premature conclusions because some of the figures speak for themselves. The policy specified that a minimum of 70% of the badger population should be removed within a single six-week period but, as colleagues have said, contractors are estimated to have removed 65% of the population in the Somerset zone after nine weeks of culling, and less than 40% of the Gloucestershire population after 11 weeks and two days.

We know that killing too few badgers over an extended time frame not only risks further reducing the already modest long-term reduction of new herd TB incidence in cattle that the Government were predicting, but crucially is likely to make things even worse for farmers because of perturbation of the remaining badger populations leading to increased prevalence of bovine TB infection among badgers.

The pilots were also supposed to determine the humaneness of controlled shooting as a method of culling badgers, but only 155 badgers have been subject to post mortem examination during the pilot culls—almost 100 fewer than the low number that DEFRA originally said would be examined. There are no guarantees that all the badgers will have died as a result of shooting. Like me, hon. Members will have heard reports of contractors picking up badger carcasses from roadsides, for example, to meet their quotas.

I have asked the Minister how many of the badgers submitted for post mortem examination were killed as a result of free shooting. He assures me that any cause of death other than shooting would have been identified, but he has so far been unable—perhaps unwilling—to give me the numbers. The issue is important because it impacts on whether we have sufficient evidence to judge the humaneness of controlled shooting. I hope the Minister will provide the information today.

I am anxious that any assessment of humaneness should take account of badgers shot and wounded but not immediately killed. DEFRA has not released details of the exact criteria that the independent expert panel will use to determine humaneness. Having observed the shambles in the pilots to date, I have no confidence that the remainder of the process will be scientifically robust.

The pilots have proved conclusively that shooting is ineffective in removing the number of badgers required if there is to be any chance of reducing the incidence of bovine TB. We know that contractors resorted to cage trapping, which has been more effective than shooting and which any badger expert could have told DEFRA about before the start, but it is more expensive and ineffective overall compared with the alternatives to culling.

I want to make two key points. First, vaccination is a far better way forward.

[Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that newer approaches to vaccination are emerging and could reduce the cost significantly? Is she aware of the work of the Sussex badger vaccination project, which has a team of volunteers who want to vaccinate? Such organisations should be given a chance to demonstrate their work.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention. I agree with him absolutely, and I am familiar with the Sussex badger vaccination project. As he rightly said, it is a service run by volunteers to offer landowners and farmers in East Sussex the chance to vaccinate badgers at very low cost, thereby providing a humane and less controversial method of tackling the disease. It has said that there is strong evidence that a programme of badger vaccination, combined with a robust cattle control programme, will produce better medium and long-term results than culling in eradicating bovine TB. It has many volunteers on hand to do that. It is just one example of how we could, with the right political commitment, take action that would make real gains in reducing bovine TB and its terrible consequences for our farmers.

The cost of the culls has spiralled out of control when the increased cost of cage trapping and expenditure on policing is taken into account. Based on analysis of DEFRA’s estimates, badger vaccination would cost the equivalent of £2,250 per sq km per year compared with the estimated £2,400 price tag per sq km for the pilot culls. Vaccination is the cheaper option and many other figures show that culling is even more expensive than the DEFRA figure that I cited.

My second reason, and the last point I want to make, is that vaccination works. It reduces the probability of infection by 70 to 75%, even allowing for the fact that not all badgers will be reached and that vaccination needs repeating year on year to include new cubs. It is still more effective and more cost effective than shooting, not least because vaccination allows the badger population structure to remain in place, granting considerable benefits for disease limitation.

My plea is that the Minister should focus on vaccination and rule out gassing, which is inhumane and ineffective. I have asked questions about that, and I am concerned about the responses. Investigation of a cattle vaccine should be a priority to provide some chance of getting rid of the disease.

Oral Answers to Questions

Charles Hendry Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

One of the absurdities under the last Government was that they wanted things done online but farmers did not have the ability to do so. That is one reason why we have made roll-out of rural broadband so important. The hon. Lady knows that it is on the verge of being rolled out in her area, which will be of great benefit to some remote communities.

[Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)]

What proportion of those living in rural areas have not just slow broadband, but no affordably priced commercial broadband at all, such as the village of Isfield in my constituency? Will the Minister liaise with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that these “not spots” are given priority in the roll-out of superfast broadband?

[Richard Benyon]

Beyond 2015, the intention, with the extra money that has been allocated, is to get superfast broadband to 99% of properties. I have seen technology that gets good quality broadband to very remote communities, so I hope my hon. Friend’s constituents will soon be online and able to compete in the global economy.

Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Charles Hendry Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) on a very fine speech, and I also congratulate everyone who has made a maiden speech today. It was a real pleasure to be in my place, especially to hear the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). I always believed that his father would one day look down on us all—I just did not think that it would happen this quickly.

I was concerned when the Secretary of State opened this debate by talking about consensus. I have been involved in the energy industry for almost 40 years, and if we had had some consensus over those decades we might not be in the mess we are in today. How can we have consensus when the Secretary of State opposes nuclear power, and his party is cautious—to put it mildly—on the use of coal? The Liberal Democrats in my area are completely anti-coal, no matter where it comes from or how it is burnt. Some of the partners in the new coalition are climate change deniers, so confusion is more likely than consensus.

Confusion is the last thing that we need in this debate, because we have had far too much delay already—and I blame the previous Government as much as the current one. My Government, in their 13 years, did not do as much as they should have done. In particular, they did not wake up quickly enough to energy security issues and the use of coal, especially coal from the United Kingdom. However, they did wake up to those issues more quickly than the Government before them, who spent 10 years decimating the coal industry in this country, which is an issue not just in the interests of security of supply, but because we were leading the world in clean coal technology. When we closed the coal mines in the 1980s and early 1990s, that clean coal technology went down the drain along with access to some of the most impressive coal reserves to be found anywhere in the world.

The Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change spent the last year and a half going through some of the many issues, and making good progress with little partisanship. However, we must face up to certain problems. For example, there is a huge skills gap across the energy sector, partly as a result of the privatisation of the industry in 1990s, with companies focusing on shareholder profits and driving costs down, not on investing in training and skills. Another question is where the finance will come from. It is estimated that we need £200 billion in 10 years if we are to meet the challenge facing us. If we compare that with the fact that in the past 20 years £100 billion was spent on upgrading the water system, we can see the scale of the challenge.

We have an opportunity to have the most integrated energy system anywhere in the world, with wind, tidal, nuclear, coal and gas—as long as it continues—and we must get to grips with that as a matter of urgency. We must also recognise that the national grid is not fit for purpose. I notice that the coalition’s document talks about building an offshore grid, and I welcome that, but we also need to put right the problems with the onshore grid. We have a regulator that, by its own admission, is not fit for purpose. Thankfully, it began to realise, with its report “Project Discovery” last year, that it was not doing the business—something that we have all known for a long time—and we need to make it do the business.

I intervened on my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State to make a point that I have raised several times already and will continue to raise—that this country is importing coal from countries where miners are being killed in their thousands every year. China kills six and Ukraine seven miners for every million tonnes of coal it produces. It is a scandal. If it was young, Asian kids stitching leather footballs, we would refuse to let the produce enter the country, but because it is energy, we close our eyes.

I want to raise another matter with the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change: the increase in fatalities and injuries in the UK. Over the past 10 years, as the number of mines and miners has decreased, major injuries have almost trebled and fatalities have risen fourfold. I hope to take that matter forward with the new Secretary of State and energy Ministers.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

I would be pleased to receive a delegation from the hon. Gentleman and others similarly concerned about those issues. I take them very seriously indeed, and I will be keen to address them at the earliest possible opportunity.

[Mr Anderson]

I appreciate that. I realise, from the work that the Minister and I did together on the Energy and Climate Change Committee, the genuineness of that offer, and I will certainly pursue it with him, interested colleagues and people in the mining industry.

In the past five years, there has been a huge step change in the north-east in relation to the opportunities and potential for finding a way forward in an economic way using the new green jobs. We have seen the potential of carbon capture and storage, and along with the university of Newcastle upon Tyne we are developing the potential of underground coal gasification to access some of the billions of tonnes of coal that still lie under the North sea. We hope to build wind turbines on the bank of the River Tyne, using the Narec facility in Blyth, which is developing cutting-edge wind turbine technology. The Secretary of State mentioned the development of electric cars by Nissan, and in my constituency, we are developing the infrastructure to charge those cars.

The reality, however, is that all that is being held together by one organisation—the regional development agency—and when we from the north-east say, “Do not do away with the RDA,” we do not say so because we like quangos or because we want to see civil servants kept in jobs; we say it because the RDA works. It has worked in the development of a low-carbon economy, and it is working in trying to make sense of what has happened at Corus. We believe that, if the RDA is removed, it will have a major impact on the economic development of our constituencies and our part of the country. I urge the Secretary of State to argue with the Treasury that the RDA in the north-east is a special case.

In preparing for this discussion, I looked back to the Queen’s Speech in 1979, because, from the commitments in the Conservative party manifesto, it seems that what it suggests is the way forward for the country now is similar to what was suggested in 1979. That Queen’s Speech read:

“My Government will give priority in economic policy…through the pursuit of firm monetary and fiscal policies.…and increase competition by providing offers of sale, including opportunities for employees to participate where appropriate… Members of the House of Commons will be given an opportunity to discuss and amend their procedures, particularly as they relate to their scrutiny of the work of Government… Legislation will be introduced to promote greater efficiency in local government… My Ministers will work to improve the use of resources in the National Health Service and…facilitate the wider use of primary care… Measures will be introduced to…control…immigration… My Ministers will take steps to…reform…the general law.”—[Official Report, 15 May 1979; Vol. 967, c. 48-51.]

There is nothing unusual there. It is what I would expect from a Conservative party trying to get back into power after 13 years in the shadows. However, I did not expect it to be supported in its attempts, unfortunately, by the Liberal Democrats, but it has been. The latter have signed up to a Thatcherite agenda: cuts to welfare; attacks on the public sector; attacks on workers’ terms and conditions; unemployment used as a tool of public policy; attacks on democracy; and attacks on political party funding. We have, indeed, gone back to the future. And what else? There is good news for the bosses: corporation tax cuts; national insurance for employers stopped, but national insurance for employees increased; and a review of the pension age, so that those who have worked all their lives will have to work even longer—it does not matter that they might have started work at 15, because in the near future, they will have to continue until they are 66.

Then there is “freeing up schools”—again, a matter of ideological dogma, with the terms and conditions of teachers and other classroom workers to be put out to the highest bidder—and the privatisation of Royal Mail, with the pensions, pay and jobs in the Royal Mail to be put at risk. Then there is political reform. I was surprised during the election campaign—although I probably should not have been—to hear the Liberal Democrats talking about the link between the trade unions and the labour movement as corrupt. That is an absolute slur on one of the biggest democratic organisations in this country.

The people in Blaydon had a clear choice in the 2010 election, and 7,000 of them made that clear choice when they voted for a gentleman called Glenn Hall, a man who stood firm and true in his beliefs, which were those of the Conservative party. Some 7,000 of my constituents said, “We’ll vote for that,” whereas 61,000 said, “No, we do not want that,” 13,000 of them saying, “We support the Liberal Democrats.” However, they did not support the Liberal Democrats to put the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) into No. 10 Downing street. Unfortunately, Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches have let those 13,000 people down, because they have let the Conservatives back in with an agenda that takes us back to where we were 30 years ago, and we are going to end up in the same situation.

The people who voted for the Liberal Democrats in the north-east of England are now seeing the reality of what the Liberal Democrats have done and the mistakes that they have made. People such as me and other Members will ensure that they continue to see those mistakes. The excuse of the Liberal Democrats is: “It’s all about Greece.” Well, there is only one thing that the Liberal Democrats in this House have shown in connection with Greece—and that is that they want to climb the greasy pole.