Badger Culling

Debate between Gary Streeter and Richard Drax

Monday 27th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Richard Drax]

I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. Does he agree that those who oppose the cull look at the badger as a friendly, lovable animal, which in effect it is not? Factually, the badger is responsible for destroying bee hives, hedgehogs and ground-nesting birds such as skylarks, grey partridges and meadow pipits. [Interruption.] That is true. It is also responsible for the loss of wood warblers, nightingales and stone curlews. Those are facts. The badger is a danger, and like all wild animals that have no natural predator—just like deer and foxes—it should be culled, so that numbers are maintained.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. A reminder that interventions should be brief.

Weather Events (South West England)

Debate between Gary Streeter and Richard Drax

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Streeter]

I agree—it is the main link, although the M5 and A38 are pretty good in terms of bringing all the many hundreds of thousands of visitors who will come to us at Easter. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), who represents Dawlish so ably, that the south-west is certainly open for business.

If our big problem is peripherality, the solution to that is connectivity. This is where our rail link is so important. Yes, superfast broadband is important, as is the M5-A38 link, but as we have just heard, we do not have an airport at Plymouth any longer—there are airports at Newquay and Exeter, but not in Plymouth, which is the engine room of our sub-region—therefore our rail link is extremely important.

I remember a trip to India in 1990s with some Indian business people, just after the monsoon had struck, as it does every year in India. A frustrated Indian businessman said to me, “This is what is holding us back. Every year our physical infrastructure is overwhelmed by the weather and often is swept away and we have to start all over again.” We do not want to be in that position in the far south-west. We must have in place robust infrastructure that underpins our connectivity.

Let me mention the impact on Devon. There was, of course, flooding, which my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot talked about. By the way, just after the Dawlish breach, iconic pictures, now on the BBC’s “Spotlight” archive, show my hon. Friend raging against the elements, overlooking this breach, almost trying to turn back the storm and doing her utmost for her constituents in fighting for urgent action, which, of course, has followed. Those pictures will live with me for a long time. King Lear has nothing on my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot.

Of course, we have had flooding before, but the battering our coastline took was a new thing this year. In 2012, we had a lot more flooding inland, but it was the coastal attack that was so spectacular this time. There is a worthy scheme to compensate some businesses that have felt the impact of these storms and help has been announced for people in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, but no help has been announced for the people of Torbay or Plymouth. This may be an oversight. Perhaps a civil servant thinks that Devon includes Plymouth and Torbay, which, of course, geographically, it does; but legally it does not. Will my hon. Friend the Minister please look into that to ensure that those businesses on the seafront in Plymouth that were swept away by the storms are compensated in the same way as those along the Cornish or Devon coastline? My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) would make the same point for his constituency if he were here.

[Richard Drax]

Might I remind my hon. Friend about the Dorset coastline, too?

[Mr Streeter]

I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon. Of course, that is right. He will no doubt make that point in his speech, which we anticipate.

Although we are talking about weather, the main focus of our attention today is rail resilience. Network Rail has responded quickly and I pay tribute to it. On the very day of the Dawlish breach, it attended a meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport, here at Westminster, and it was obvious that it was going to grip the situation. It gave a six-week timetable, which has slightly slipped because of further storms, and is getting on with it. I understand that it has 100 people working 24/7 to fill up this wonderful hole, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot described it. Congratulations to Network Rail on such a rapid response. The Secretary of State has also responded quickly, and it was good to see the Prime Minister coming down and taking personal control.

I, too, thank First Great Western. It gets hammered and gets a lot of criticism, but it has responded. Perhaps it took a couple of days, but it has now responded well. The service that it is putting on for many of my constituents is excellent.