TB in Cattle and Badgers

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Wilson. There have been so many passionate contributions that, in winding up for the Scottish National party, I do not think I can mention them all; I presume that I have a limited amount of time as well. However, I will highlight three in particular.

I commend the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George), who secured the debate, for her nuanced and evidence-led approach to this clearly very sensitive and emotional issue. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch)—this point was made by other Members from across the Chamber, and I commend them for that—mentioned the importance of making it clear that this is not a farmer versus badger issue. She gave alternatives to badger culling, which I am sure the Minister will be interested in pursuing the details of, if he was not aware of them already, because they sound like they are achieving some impressive results. The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) spoke of a human aspect that we must never forget: the devastating impact that this disease has on farmers, their families and the communities around them. There were numerous other contributions from other Members who spoke with passion and often from personal experience.

I suppose I should make it clear that, despite the fact that I am a Brock, I have no conflict of interest. In spite of the name, I have no relatives who are badgers and I know no badgers personally. I will admit, however, to a general liking for the creatures, who seem amiable enough. I certainly have the occasional visit from badgers in my garden in Edinburgh.

I was reading the British Veterinary Association’s website recently, as one does, and spotted a report about the badger culling areas of Gloucestershire, Somerset and Dorset, using data from 2013 to 2017. The BVA clearly considered that this report showed that culling was effective in controlling bovine tuberculosis, indicating a 55% drop in bovine TB incidents. On the face of it, that is clear evidence that the policy is working.

However, it struck me that this is the removal of a species from an area, which in itself raises obvious questions about whether an effective solution is necessarily the best solution and, perhaps more importantly, about the effect of taking an entire wild species out of an ecosystem. What does removing badgers from these localities do to biodiversity? Their diet is mainly earthworms and insects, I think, but they also clean up carrion and windfall fruit and perform other similar housekeeping duties. I am not an expert—we will have to ask someone else—but I assume that their burrowing and hunting habits help to till the soil and move nutrients. An ecologist could no doubt educate us on the benefits to a local ecosystem of having a brock or two in the area; I imagine that there are multiple benefits.

[James Gray]

The hon. Lady has, until now, been making a sensible speech. My memory from my upbringing in Scotland is that there was a scarce population of badgers —almost none at all. If she came down to Wiltshire, she would find a large number of badgers indeed. It is not one or two here and there; we are talking about dozens and dozens of setts absolutely crammed to the doors with ill badgers. These notions—the idea that there are one or two, and questions like: “aren’t they nice?”, “what about the biodiversity?” and “don’t they help till the soil?”—just show that she has absolutely no idea about what life is like in a badger area.

[Deidre Brock]

I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman has greater experience of these things, given where he resides, but I assure him that there are significant brock populations now in Scotland. I will go on to speak about what is happening in Scotland around this issue.

Lastly on the point that I was making, I point to our experience of the effects of wiping out other species in large geographical areas, and to the fact that we often find conservation organisations trying to reintroduce the animals that we have hunted to extinction. England may continue down this road, and that is, to some extent, a matter for England to decide. However, it is worth remembering how much we criticise other nations for failing to protect their wildlife.

[Mr Goodwill]

The cull is not about eradicating the badger. Typically, the population will be reduced to about 30% of what it was before. In areas such as Scotland and north Yorkshire, where we have low levels of TB, the badger population is not a problem. However, in areas where we have large numbers of badgers and high infection levels, controlling—not eradicating—the population at sensible levels might also have good knock-on effects for other species, such as bumblebees and so on, which have been crowded out by the badger.

[Deidre Brock]

That is an interesting point. As I understand it, culling badgers actually encourages them, in some instances, to roam further, because they are not threatened by other setts in other areas, and that potentially encourages the spread of TB. I do not believe that Members have yet raised that aspect of it.

Scotland has, of course, gone down another route. The control of bovine TB in our country is a partnership working success, with the Scottish Government assisting the livestock industry in maintaining Scotland’s position as officially tuberculosis free since 2009. That might be unpopular around these parts at the moment, since it is an EU Commission recognition of how good Scotland is on this. There is a monitoring regime, with movement controls and quarantine where needed. The hon. Member for High Peak spoke about the big drop-off in monitoring by Natural England. Will the Minister help us to understand why that might have happened, and what impact the huge recent cut to Natural England’s funding—since 2014, I think—has had on its ability to monitor?

We have a monitoring regime, with movement controls and quarantine where needed, and that now includes other animals as well as cattle. It is about better animal husbandry, good biosecurity and high-spec testing. I say to my good English friends that that may be a better solution than killing thousands of animals. It has also been very important for trade for Scottish farmers. People cannot trade beasts across the EU, as many hon. Members will know, without their herds being certified as TB free. There are concerns about what will happen post Brexit, and perhaps the Minister can also address that. English farmers may also be concerned that the EU funding, stretching to millions of pounds, for TB control will not be there after Brexit. The question will be how and, indeed, whether it is replaced.

It is disappointing that neither the House of Commons Library briefing for this debate nor any speaker today, I think, has referred to the example of Scotland—officially TB free since 2009. Might I suggest to Ministers and to hon. Members concerned about this issue that they take the time to look to Scotland for some inspiration?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing this debate and, as several hon. Members have said, on the sensitive way she approached a difficult and contentious issue, particularly in her recognition of the trauma this issue causes farmers.

Bovine TB is one of our most difficult animal health challenges. It is a slow-moving, insidious disease. It is difficult to detect. None of the diagnostic tests are perfect. I will come on to that later. It can exist in the environment for several months. There is a reservoir of the disease in the wildlife population, hosted in badgers. No vaccination is perfect. The best vaccine we have is the BCG vaccine, which typically provides protection of around 70%.

As the hon. Lady said, bovine TB also imposes a huge pressure on the wellbeing of our cattle farmers and their families. As many hon. Members have said, including my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), it is a tragedy when farmers have a TB breakdown. Some farmers lose show-winning cattle. For many, their herd of cattle is their pride and joy, and it is utterly soul-destroying to see those cattle lost.

No single measure will achieve eradication by our target of 2038. That is why our 25-year strategy, launched by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) in 2013, sets out a wide range of interventions. Cattle testing is the cornerstone of our current programme. Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), suggested that we are focusing on badgers at the expense of other interventions. That is simply not true. We have a wide range of testing regimes.

There are regular surveillance tests, every four years in the low-risk area, every year in the high-risk area and every six months in hotspots. There are pre-movement tests. Recently, we introduced compulsory post-movement tests for cattle moving between holdings. There are trace tests on cattle that have recently been added to a herd. We have tests on a herd following a sale of cattle to another herd, where that leads to a TB breakdown. We have radial testing in some areas and contiguous testing in others, where there are implications from a neighbour’s farm with a breakdown. Where there are inconclusive reactors, we have re-tests. Recently, we dramatically increased the use of the far more sensitive interferon gamma test, to ensure that we detect the presence of the disease and root it out faster from our herds.

It is not correct to say that our policy is built solely on the contentious badger cull policy. The cornerstone of our fight against TB is and always has been a very thorough testing regime, to remove the disease from cattle. All the demands we place on farmers through testing, despite the trauma concerned and the dangers they pose, are crucial to our fight against the disease. We must continue to be vigilant on this front. That was one of the recommendations from the review conducted by Sir Charles Godfray.

Seven years into our 25-year strategy to eradicate TB, we feel that it is a good time to reflect on the strategy and think about other elements we might want to evolve. That is why the former Secretary of State asked Sir Charles Godfray to conduct a review around the five-year point of the strategy. That was published a little under a year ago. Several hon. Members have asked why the response has been delayed and when to expect it. All good things are worth waiting for. I envisage the response being published soon. I hope it will not be interrupted by an election purdah.

The response to the Godfray review is an opportunity for us to take stock and review the current strategy, seven years in. The shadow Minister offered to work with me on this. When we publish our response to the Godfray review, I will invite him and his team to meet me in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to go through what we are proposing. The tone of this debate has been slightly different from previous debates on the matter. While we will never entirely agree, I detect a sense that both sides can make a step towards one another and achieve a consensus on certain issues. I am keen to try to achieve that. This is a long- term fight—it is a 25-year strategy—so it would be helpful to have cross-party understanding and consensus on elements of it.

This debate relates to Derbyshire. As the hon. Member for High Peak knows, we took a difficult decision to pause a proposed cull in the south of Derbyshire. I understand that has caused great frustration to farmers. We did that to ensure that we can assess how we can have co-existence of badger vaccination and culling in parts of the edge area. That is why we chose to pause it for this year.

Badger culling is a controversial policy. We have powerful scientific evidence to show that the cull is working, despite passionate attempts by some to suggest otherwise. TB was first identified in the badger population as long ago as 1971. A series of trials in the 1970s demonstrated that a badger cull could lead to significant reductions in the incidence of the disease. That was borne out further by the randomised badger culling trial in the early 2000s.

Crucially, a recent independent peer-reviewed epidemiological study, published by Downs and others in the internationally-renowned scientific journal Scientific Reports, showed that licensed badger culling is leading to a significant reduction in the incidence of the disease in cattle in each of the first two cull areas. The study showed that there was a 66% reduction in TB incidence rates in Gloucestershire and a 37% reduction in the Somerset cull area, over the four years of intensive badger culling, relative to similar comparison areas. No significant changes have yet been observed in the third area in Dorset, but that is after just two years of culling. Furthermore, there was no evidence of an increase in the TB herd incidence rates in cattle located around the buffer area. One of the key findings of the report was that the so-called perturbation effect, which was a concern for some when the cull was launched, has not materialised in the culls so far.

The Government do not dismiss badger vaccination, but it is important to remember that the only vaccine we have is the BCG vaccine, which does not provide full protection. We do not have any hard, scientific evidence of how it works on a field deployment scale.

[Deidre Brock]

I may have missed something, but I noted from the Library report that was given to us that the Animal and Plant Health Agency was conducting an efficacy study and that the results were expected later this year. That is a research programme to identify an oral vaccine and a palatable bait. I wonder whether there is any update on that.

[George Eustice]

I think that was dealt with by my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill). In all my time in this role previously, I kept going and persevered with the research to try to identify an oral vaccine, because—in reality—if we want to deploy a vaccine on scale in the wildlife population, an oral bait vaccine would be the answer. I have had numerous submissions over the years inviting me to pull up stumps on that research, but I persevered.

However, I am afraid that in the end we could not get there, for the reason that my right hon. Friend pointed out, namely that a badger’s digestive system is too powerful and it breaks down the vaccine. All attempts to find other ways around that were unsuccessful. It is also the case that when such vaccines were deployed in the field, certain badgers would get a lot of the vaccine and others would get none at all, because there would be a propensity for some badgers to take up the bait but not others. So it is not something that we are continuing with at this stage.

I will pick up on a few points that hon. Members have made. The hon. Member for High Peak raised the issue of cows that were heavily pregnant with calves. She is right that it is an absolute tragedy to cull such cows and in fact a couple of years ago I changed the rules in this area, so that a cow that is in the final month of its pregnancy can now stay on the farm and be placed in isolation. We have even provided that a cow in the final two months of its pregnancy can be isolated, provided that the isolation facilities are sufficiently robust. So I have already changed the rules in that regard, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire pointed out, it is horrendous when a cow that is about to give birth has to be shot on a farm.

The hon. Lady also raised the issue of the badger population in Derbyshire. The reality is that in in her area in the north of Derbyshire, where badger vaccination is taking place, incidence of the disease in badgers is quite low. However, that is not the case in south-west Derbyshire, particularly along the border with Staffordshire, where there is a high prevalence of the disease in the badger population.