Common Agricultural Policy

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Spencer]

I recognise that new technologies may be able to assist, but there will always be not spots—those little black holes—where people are left out of the system. We need to find a way to help those farmers.

I think that the three-crop rule is one of those well-intended European Union rules that will have unintended consequences. My right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) has referred to the fact that many areas are block-farmed. Large contracting companies that help their neighbours with farm contracts and that block-crop from farm to farm will no longer be able to do that, which will lead to a number of extra road miles, inefficiency and environmental damage as a result of the amount of fuel burned and road traffic. That is not a desirable consequence and it will not benefit the environment at all.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I draw attention to my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Does my hon. Friend agree that a solution to this problem would be that every single piece of land eligible to claim should grow three crops in three years, which would eliminate the problems of the mono-cropping of maize in Germany and, as I saw last week, between Paris and Strasbourg?

[Mr Spencer]

If I could extend my hon. Friend’s proposal to three crops in five years, that would allow for a normal cropping rotation of two weeks for oil seed or pulse, followed perhaps by a spring crop. We do not recognise some of the challenges that face UK agriculture today as we take more and more agricultural chemicals out of our toolbox. The rise of resistant black grass, certainly in the midlands and East Anglia, is a real challenge and we are going to have to allow spring cropping to deal with it.

On the 5% greening, I am glad that the Government are allowing hedgerows to be used. We must, of course, move as quickly as we can to incorporate stone walls and other environmentally beneficial margins at the same time. If the mapping has to be digital, I remind Members of the challenges the previous Administration faced while trying to move to a mapping system. If I may use a Sherwood expression, the Minister must make sure his ducks are in a row and that, when we get to that system, farmers can get their payment as soon as possible. If there are delays, and if the system is complicated and farmers have to wait for their single farm payment, will the Minister engage with the banking sector to make sure that the banks support farmers through that break in cash-flow and that there is other such support?

In summary, three things matter to this nation: that we are well fed; that the environment is maintained and protected; and that, in order to deliver those things, we have profitable farmers. At the end of this monumental process of CAP reform, I hope that we can deliver all three of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

Well, I think there was quite a degree of consensus. I suppose we have to recognise that the last Government gave up a chunk of our rebate supposedly in order to get CAP reform, but that did not work either. I want to stay on the substance of the issue before us this evening, however.

In terms of applying this basic approach of keeping the pillar one payments as simple as possible, when it came to greening we were clear we wanted to have the flexibility to allow farmers, for instance, to use hedges to count towards their environmental focus areas.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The inclusion of hedgerows as being eligible for pillar two payments is one of the Government’s successes. On that point, while many areas of the country have hedgerows as field boundaries, there are other areas, such as the Cotswolds, that have stone walls as field boundaries. May I ask him to press the Commission hard that those sorts of landscape features should also be included for payment?

[George Eustice]

There were serious administrative difficulties in terms of allowing hedgerows and all landscape features to count towards the environmental focus area, because each one has to be mapped, and we took the decision in the end that hedgerows were so important to many parts of the country that in the first year we should include those hedgerows and endeavour to get the mapping done, and where it could not be done in year one—we have three years to complete the mapping— farmers would self-declare the hedgerows. We do not rule out adding things like stone walls in years two or three, once we have got hedgerows in place. The task of mapping every single individual feature on every farm is an enormous one, however, and we therefore wanted to start first with hedges, before moving on to things such as dry stone walls.

Badger Cull

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) for his point of order. It is not in fact a point of order for the Chair, but it is a point that the House has noted. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) has been helpful in providing information to the House.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I always understood it to be a convention of this House that if any Member quoted from a document in the public domain, the document should be tabled before the debate, to be available to every hon. Member so that they, too, may quote from it. I do not believe that the document is yet in the public domain—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. That rule applies to Ministers; it does not apply to a Back Bencher addressing the House.

The matter is now at an end. The hon. Member for St Albans is referring to the report, which may come up and be debated for the rest of the afternoon; it is not for the Chair to rule on where the report ought to be. The hon. Lady is quoting from it, and I am sure that Members will listen carefully to what she is saying. They will then be able to deal with her points, with or without the report before them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

We would love to know. We would love to know what the Government think of the report, but we have not seen it yet.

I have always preferred vaccination, and I believe that it should be targeted at healthy badger populations where the chance of a badger being infected is low but likely to increase due to their proximity to infected populations. This means vaccinating healthy badgers working inwards, geographically, towards the centre of infection. Professor Woodruff gives an excellent speech on the benefits of an immune population and how we can achieve that. This should also apply to cattle, and I am more than willing to do everything possible to help the Government achieve cattle vaccination.

There are endless arguments to suggest that vaccination is better than culling. I am more than willing to accept those arguments, but they cannot apply unless they apply to both species. We need to redouble our efforts to prevent damage to our export markets from vaccinating cattle. It is not widely known that meat from infected cows showing less than one lesion already makes its way into the food chain. It is also the case that milk from an infected cow is safe to drink after it has been pasteurised. Therefore, there is no reason why pasteurised milk and vet-inspected meat should not be available for export from vaccinated cattle. I think the House may find that it already is.

After the pathetic European response to the horsemeat scandal, I do not believe that the European Union has a strong case to ban our exports. The response from the European Commission is unhelpful and is another reason why, if for no other, we should leave the EU. I hope the Secretary of State will join me in campaigning to leave the European Union and one of the benefits will be that we can vaccinate our cattle.

If we are going to base our decisions on science, we should ensure that the scientists have been heard.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am delighted, Madam Deputy Speaker, to catch your eye in this debate. I draw Members’ attention to my declaration of interests. However, although I am a farmer, I do not have any cattle and therefore do not have any financially beneficial interests to declare.

I take no pleasure in talking about this dreadful disease. I am sure that everyone here today can at least agree that we have a serious problem. Given that the UK has the third largest dairy production and the fourth largest beef production in the EU in an industry worth about £8.4 billion, I want to ensure that that industry is not in any way jeopardised. We should all agree that badgers are at least part of the problem. Professor Donnelly has stated that nearly 50% of bovine TB incidents can be attributed to infectious badgers.

I think that this should be a cross-party issue. I hope that Members on both Front Benches can agree on a TB eradication policy, because whoever wins the next election will want to continue with it. I think that this debate is premature, and that it is impossible to come to some of the conclusions mentioned in the motion until the full copy of the report is available. I gather that the Government are about to publish a TB strategy, and until it is available and the Secretary of State has had a realistic chance to consider the report and the way the Government will go forward, we should not have this debate. Indeed, the timing now is unfortunate.

On 2 April, the Royal Society is to hold a high-powered seminar on the subject, to which I intend to go to learn the very latest scientific opinion. I agree with the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that we should proceed on the basis of sound science—that obviously makes sense—and of cross-party agreement.

I stress to the House that we are talking only about trials. Let us try to learn the lesson from the trials. The lesson may be that we do not continue with them, that we do continue with them or that we continue with them in a different way. Let us at least try to learn it, and do it sensibly and maturely and in a low-key manner.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend also agree that we should learn lessons from other countries? The fact is there is no country in the world that has got on top of bovine TB without addressing its presence in the wildlife population. Ireland, which has culls, has reduced bovine TB by a third in recent years.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend brings me to the very last paragraph of my speech. In the Republic of Ireland, from 2008 to 2013, there has been a 50% reduction in the number of reactors—from 29,900 down to 15,612. For the first time ever, the Government of the Republic of Ireland think that they may well be able to reach TB-free status, which is what we should be aiming for in this country. What we want to see is healthy cattle and healthy badgers.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I have a choice over whom to give way to.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend also aware that Northern Ireland, which has never culled badgers and has no badger intervention in any place, has achieved a reduction of 12%, compared with only 8.9% in the Irish Republic?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Common sense and logic should say to my hon. Friend that a 50% reduction in the south must have an effect on the north because there are fewer badgers. Without the culling in the south, there would not have been the reduction in the north.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman, but it will be the last intervention I take as we have been asked to be brief.

[Albert Owen]

The hon. Gentleman talked about countries. Wales is a country within the United Kingdom, and in February the Minister said that, between December 2012 and November 2013, 33% fewer cattle have been slaughtered because of TB. That is evidence from an area within the United Kingdom where no culling has taken place.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am not an expert on Wales, and I am sure that others who are situated in Wales will wish to speak in this debate and to refute that point. I simply note that there have been only three expressions of interests to extend the injectable trial in Wales. I suggest that that is because it is proving more difficult to carry out than the Welsh Government expected.

I wish to address my final few remarks to the culls and the lessons that are available to us. Although peaceful demonstration is perfectly acceptable, deliberate obstruction is not. Even less acceptable is the destruction of several hundred traps, which are private property and expensive items. That is what happened in Gloucestershire, and it was unacceptable. On learning the lessons, I concede—this is contrary to my former opinion—that the free-shooting of badgers is proving more difficult than was originally intended. In future trials, I expect that we will move towards the cage trapping of badgers and humane dispatch, which seems to be a more satisfactory method than free-shooting. None the less, we will always need free-shooting to back up that system, because some badgers will never go into a trap; they are trap shy.

Much has been said about the one leaked sentence from the report that stated that a number of badgers took five minutes to die. I understand that that was how long it took the person who shot the badger to reach the badger and verify that it was dead. If there are a lot of obstructions in their way, it could well take more than five minutes to get from the place where the shot has been fired to retrieving the badger and proving that it is dead. However, those are all matters of speculation. We simply do not know, because we have not seen the report. When we get the report, we will be much better informed.

Many people seem to be concerned about the number of badgers that are being culled—roughly a few thousand in both trials. They should contrast that with the 30,000 cattle that have to be slaughtered each year under the TB regulations. I understand that many Members in this House are deeply concerned about animal welfare, as indeed am I having had a parent who owned stock all their life, but they should think of this. When a cow is slaughtered under the unacceptable halal regime, it routinely takes more than five minutes to die. If the anti-cull brigade would focus its attention on that, it really would be doing some good.

Much has been said in this debate about vaccination. I understand that the Secretary of State, in a recent conversation with the EU Commissioner, was told that it is likely to be at least 10 years before a licensed cattle vaccine is available. We simply cannot leave our farmers in limbo for that long. Even when a licensed cattle vaccine becomes available, we need an acceptable skin test—a DIVA test—that will distinguish between vaccinated cattle and cattle that have the disease. Under the current BCG—Bacille de Calmette et Guérin—test, if an animal is vaccinated it will show up as having the disease. Members seems to think that a cattle vaccine is an easy thing to achieve, but the real question we must ask ourselves is whether countries around the world, let alone in the EU, will take our cattle exports if they have been vaccinated. That is a really big matter.

I am clear that culling on its own is not the answer, but neither is vaccination on its own. It would be if we had an oral vaccine that we could deliver to badgers, just as we did to foxes when we got rid of rabies on the continent. An oral vaccine has been just around the corner for the entire 22 years I have been a Member of Parliament, yet we still do not know when it is likely to appear.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said, all around the world it has not been possible to eliminate a disease in cattle where there is a large wildlife vector. Whether it is white-tailed deer in Michigan, badgers in the Republic of Ireland or possums in New Zealand, in order to eradicate the disease in cattle we have to eradicate it in wildlife. I want to see a cold, sober debate in which the scientific evidence is fully evaluated, and I want the Government, hopefully on a cross-party basis if the Opposition will agree, to introduce a policy that will work. Let us ensure that we eliminate this dreadful disease once and for all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for choosing the debate and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for introducing it—with great fortitude, I might add, and I commend her for that. I also thank the cross-party group of MPs who secured the debate, which is hugely significant and timely, because the Minister is considering wider roll-outs. We have seen cross-party support for a new way forward and a new consensus based on vaccination and cattle measures.

I thank all Members who have spoken, even those whose opinions I respect but disagree with. There were many good contributions, including by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), who has great experience, and the hon. Members for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams)—we go back a long way—for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). I may not agree with many of the points that they made, but they spoke with passion for their constituents.

Those who have spoken for the motion today and for a considered, cross-party and scientific consensus on the way forward include the hon. Member for St Albans, who made the point that this is not a case of one side against another; my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), for Copeland (Mr Reed), for Newport West (Paul Flynn), for Derby North (Chris Williamson), for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie), for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith); the hon. Members for St Ives (Andrew George), for Southend West (Mr Amess), for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), for Torbay (Mr Sanders) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas); and the right hon. Members for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow) and, lately, for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell). In every part of the Chamber, on every Bench, there have been calm, rational and methodical arguments on why we should have a different way forward.

A number of questions face Ministers today. Why continue to pursue a policy of eradicating bovine TB in cattle involving mass culling of badgers? It proved hugely costly to taxpayers and farmers and was critically flawed, from the first principles, through the methodology to the application in the field. It failed to meet the Government’s own limited tests of effectiveness and humaneness. In short, not enough badgers were culled, and too many were not killed cleanly, but suffered before dying. Culls have diverted stretched police resources from front-line duties to deal with protesters and to ensure public safety, prompting police and crime commissioners to speak out in opposition. Culls are deeply unpopular with the public throughout the country, in town and country alike. Culls are scientifically controversial to the point of flying in the face of mainstream, expert advice, from which, as we have seen today, increasing numbers of Government MPs are making the right and intelligent choice to seek alternative, workable strategies for TB eradication.

Why pursue such a policy when it is so clearly contested scientifically, so deeply flawed methodologically and so evidently failing, and when there are proven alternatives, which are more humane, more effective, cheaper and more publicly acceptable? Why do that when scientists, many farmers, MPs from all parties and Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition are willing to work with the Government on an alternative strategy that will be enduring and effective and garner widespread stakeholder and public support? In all sincerity, despite—in fact because of—those flawed and failed culls in Gloucester and Somerset, it is not too late for Ministers to think again and for us to work together on a better way forward.

Before addressing what has gone wrong with the culls and what can now be done, let me make it clear that Labour agrees entirely and unequivocally that the scourge of bovine TB must be eradicated. It must be eradicated because of the terrible waste of productive cattle, the destruction of pedigree herds, the cash-flow and wider economic impacts on family farms, the psychological trauma for farmers and their families, and the unsustainable cost of compensation payments. Some have pointed out that many more tens of thousands of cattle are slaughtered each year for many other reasons—mastitis, lameness, old age, inability to calve and so on. That is true, but 1% of the total cattle herd, dairy and non-dairy, in the UK is slaughtered because of bovine TB, and that is unacceptable. What also distinguishes that from other reasons for slaughter is that it is a notifiable disease. We have a public and legal duty to bear down on it, and pressing trade reasons to do so, too. On that, we are at one with the Government.

We support the UK and the Welsh Governments for their increasingly stringent efforts, working with farmers, to clamp down on the disease by use of cattle measures. As this is a disease in cattle, the primary resolution will be in cattle measures. Some Ministers give the impression that badgers are the main culprits, yet we know from exhaustive in-field studies that although there is some direct transmission of TB from infected badgers to cattle—it is about 6% of the total—and that that may indeed play a role in subsequent onward transmission, cattle-to-cattle transmission is the major element.

We know also that the most significant spike in TB was linked to the rapid spread of the disease in the immediate aftermath of foot and mouth disease, when the restocking of cattle took place northwards and westwards, often from areas further south where TB was present. In addition, there have been sporadic occurrences in parts of the country and farms where there has been no history of TB, and we must note the presence of TB-free farms in the midst of hotspot areas. All that reinforces the scientific conclusion that stringent cattle measures are key to a successful strategy of eradication. Movement restrictions, risk-based trading, rigorous biosecurity and other measures will play the most substantial part in eradicating the disease.

However, we also need fully to recognise the need to tackle reservoirs of the disease in wildlife, where appropriate. Our disagreement with the Government—it is a profound disagreement—is over the best means of addressing the wildlife reservoir. We believe, as do many farmers and leading scientific opinion, backed by mounting evidence of success, which has been set out before the Minister today, that there is another way to tackle badger TB which has greater certainty of success and avoids the significant risks of a mass-culling programme.

Before I expand on an alternative approach, we have to examine what went wrong with the Government’s culls last year. There was a sequence of dire policy miscalculations, each of which compounded the other and led to wholesale failure. The crucial baseline population of badgers was first overestimated, then underestimated; a risky and wholly untested “free-shoot” approach was adopted, which promptly but predictably failed; more costly cage-trap-shoot methods were rapidly then introduced, yet still too few badgers were culled in the time frame allowed, posing an increased risk of spreading TB; the six-week time-frame was then controversially extended and, again, still too few badgers were killed; and, meanwhile, police patrolled the country trying to maintain order for deeply unpopular culls, and running up bills for the taxpayer.

We now understand from a delayed but leaked Government report that too many badgers died inhumanely, enduring suffering before death. As an aside, I note that the British Veterinary Association, of which I am proud to be an honorary member, predicated its support on these culls being humane—watch this space.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Between 1998 and 2010, the number of herd breakdowns tripled from 1,226 to 3,334, and the number of cattle slaughtered rose sixfold, from 4,102 to 24,000. Given what I am hearing from the Labour Front-Bench team today, can our farmers, who are suffering so terribly from this disease, expect more of the same?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

No, and I refer the hon. Gentleman, who makes a valid point, to the figures for the past three years, which have shown a downward trend.

I say to the Minister that the two key tests for the Government of effectiveness and humaneness have been failed. So let us not keep inflicting this costly policy failure and public relations disaster on farmers, taxpayers and wildlife. Let us learn the lessons from these two failed and costly culls, stop them now and look at the alternative way forward, which can be cheaper, more humane and more effective.

Look instead to Wales, where there has been a significant and substantial reduction in TB, at twice the rate of the decline in England. That happened without culling, but with vaccination and stringent cattle measures. Look to Northern Ireland, where BTB is declining faster, without culling, than in the Republic, where culling is taking place. Look closer to home, in England, where the incidence of BTB began to decline even before the culls started. We repeatedly pointed out that trend to Ministers, who either ignored or denied it. The trend is even more apparent now that Ministers have admitted that the figures incorrectly overstated BTB.

More and more MPs from across the parties, including independent-minded Government MPs, are calling on Ministers to pause and think again. There is a different approach to tackling TB in cattle and wildlife, if only Ministers would listen to the evidence, and to the increasing numbers of MPs of their own party who have lost faith in these deeply flawed culls. We want the Government to work with the science and across political parties to seek a new, lasting consensus on the way forward. Labour, scientists, and many farmers want to do that, so I repeat the offer that I made to the Secretary of State in writing in December: work with us, with farmers, and with the evidence to agree a new, better way forward.

Managing Flood Risk

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am delighted to catch your eye in this important debate, Mr Speaker, and I will certainly adhere to your strictures. I am grateful for the opportunity to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), and I congratulate her on chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and on her clear knowledge of this subject in her speech.

I want to cover succinctly aspects of the performance of the Environment Agency’s and the statutory water undertaker in my constituency, Thames Water. I will then consider some of the problems with the planning system, in particular building on a floodplain and the unknown and uncertain liabilities that has caused, and the difficulties with drainage and with insuring some of those houses under the new Government Flood Re system.

In common with a number of my hon. Friends, a number of houses in my constituency—often the same houses in the same streets—have been flooding for a number of years. This is not just water flooding; it is also sewage flooding. Water flooding is bad enough, but if a house is flooded from a sewer, it is twice as bad because it takes even longer to clear up. I want to examine critically the performance of Thames Water’s underinvestment in the sewerage system in my constituency. Areas of my constituency that are affected cover Moreton-in-Marsh, Fairford, Lechlade, Cirencester, Siddington and South Cerney, to name but a few.

I hold regular half-yearly public flooding meetings in my constituency. They are recorded, with action points, and bring together all the agencies—Thames Water, the Environment Agency, the county district council and relevant town and parish councils. In that way, I can hold officials to account.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

My hon. Friend talks about bringing together the community around flood issues, but one point about resilience, particularly in my constituency, has been the work of the Halesowen flood committee led by Claude Mosseri and his wife Ruth. They have brought together the relevant agencies to do vital work around the Illey brook area of Halesowen. Resilience is very much about local communities taking local action to bring the agencies together.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Before I held the public meetings I found that each agency was shuffling responsibility off to one of the other agencies. It is essential that all agencies and all tools in the box are unleashed to try to solve these flooding problems.

The meetings have produced results in parts of my constituency, but there is still a lot to be done. In particular, problems with sewage flooding arise because the sewerage systems are very old. The moment we have any sort of flooding the water table rises, water gets into the sewerage system, and the pumps are incapable of removing the sewage from people’s houses, leading to very difficult issues. I will be encouraging Ofwat to take a greater interest in this subject—indeed, I will invite it to my public meetings—to see whether we can encourage Thames Water to carry out what it says it will, and invest more in our sewers.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

One problem seems to be that there is no way we can control the water table from going up and down. That is a severe problem, and there does not seem to be a technical solution to sorting it out. That is happening in my constituency more and more.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I agree with my hon. Friend that whether or not climate change is taking place and is caused by human activity, there is no doubt that we are getting an increased number of events with increased rain intensity, and we must therefore have better defences against flooding. There is no reason in the 21st-century why we cannot have sewerage systems that cope with such events. In particular, as I shall come on to say, we need sewerage systems that will cope with new development, which often adds to existing problems.

There is a perception that the residents of the Cotswolds, who live 100 miles away from London but who are still in the Thames Water area, are getting a very poor deal. It is outrageous that all Thames Water customers will be charged an additional £70 to £80 a year for at least 10 years to pay for the huge Thames tideway tunnel, when we in the Cotswolds cannot get the increased investment we need to deal with sewage flooding. The regulator Ofwat has to look at that. The time for talking in the Cotswolds is over. Thames Water has had more than enough time to carry out all its design work. We need more sewerage investment.

Equally, we need the Environment Agency to take the lead in planning how to deal with catchment areas. An exchange took place with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). The answer is not just dredging, but considering the whole catchment area using all the keys in our locker to deal with the problem. That is what I am asking the EA to do in my constituency. For at least three years, it has been talking about coming up with an upper River Churn catchment area plan, but I have still yet to see that plan. Not only do we need to see adequate investment from the EA to deal with river flooding problems, we need to encourage Thames Water to invest adequately to tackle sewerage problems.

On new developments, we have, unfortunately, seen a rash of developers in my constituency. I accept that we all need new houses because the population is rising, but we need—I say this most emphatically to my hon. Friend on the Front Bench—new houses in the right areas. If we build houses on floodplains we cannot complain when we get subsequent problems. In South Cerney, for example, a recently passed new development is right next door to an estate that has had sewerage flooding problems. How daft is that? Fairford and Lechlade have each seen new developments passed for developments to be built on the floodplain. That is also daft.

We need to examine the system we have at the moment. The Environment Agency is a statutory consultee for large investment, but it has to take into account only one-in-100-year events when considering whether a development on a floodplain is viable. That is completely unrealistic and should rapidly be brought down to a design phase of one-in-25-year events. The statutory water undertaker, Thames Water, is not even a statutory consultee; it is consulted by the local planning authority often only as a matter of principle. Even then, all it has to do is to say that the sewerage system is capable of being connected to the new development, not whether the new development will make existing sewage flooding worse or whether the sewer needs upgrading. This is a legal grey area. Thames Water has been taken to court several times for trying to exceed its powers. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister: for goodness’ sake let us look at this and try to get the legal framework correct.

An even more important aspect of the planning system is drainage: sustainable drainage systems. We are building up for ourselves a huge and unknown liability from the lack of proper design of drainage systems. Currently, the local planning authority monitors the drainage system for a new development. Developers, with plenty of funds behind them, employ clever drainage engineers who take their percolation tests in the summer when everything is nice and dry—when, of course, the drainage works properly—instead of being made to take them in the winter when the water table is high. They then ask the developer for a section 106 payment. Often, that payment is inadequate. Under the Water Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton knows, SUDS will have to be licensed by the county council. Until that happens, we have a huge and unknown liability from SUDS, which are often completely inadequate and designed for one-in-100-year events. I say again that they should be designed for one-in-25-year events. We should not be building willy-nilly on the floodplain without thinking seriously about what we are doing.

A lot of my constituents have difficulty getting insurance. The new Government Flood Re system will not cover houses built after 2009, so, in relation to all recent applications where houses have been built on the floodplain, we are creating a problem for ourselves. They will undoubtedly flood at some stage, yet the owners of those houses will not be able to get flood insurance.

I welcome the Government’s efforts to ensure that everyone who buys a house on a floodplain is aware of having done so, but it is one thing for people to be aware of it during the sunny summer months when they buy their houses, and a completely different thing for them to be aware of it in the winter, when the rain falls in bucketfuls.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

Like my hon. Friend’s constituency, mine has been pretty much under water. Does he agree that if we go ahead with many of the proposed flood alleviation schemes—the bigger schemes that are intended for the future, such as the extension of the Jubilee river all the way down to the Thames—far more land will come back into use, and we shall need better planning control to ensure that the flood meadows are not removed from the current system?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. If we concrete over vast areas, particularly on the floodplains, they will no longer be able to absorb water, which is what they were designed to do in the first place. In many instances, they were designed specifically as flood meadows. Worse still, in the event of heavy rainfall they will empty the water into the catchment very quickly. That is what has caused flooding downstream.

I suggest to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that we should consider the catchment areas as a whole, and decide how best to deal with what are to remain floodplains. In my constituency there is a scheme enabling water above Cirencester to be impounded so that it can be gently released when the rainfall has subsided. We should be doing much more of that sort of thing, because it is much cheaper than building expensive houses and then having to provide flood defences retrospectively.

Let me say to my hon. Friend the Minister that, while I commend what the Government have done, we need to look carefully at investment, particularly investment by the water undertakers. It is not a question of public funding; it is simply a question of equity between the profits that are given to shareholders and the profits that are reinvested in sewerage systems. I repeat that it is outrageous that Thames Water is being allowed to charge my constituents between £70 and £80 a year for the Thames tideway tunnel when they are not benefiting from the investment in sewerage flooding systems that they justly deserve.

Let us, for goodness’ sake, look at the planning system. Let us not keep building on the floodplains, because doing so is creating a great many uncertain liabilities for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barry Gardiner]

I am sorry; the Minister is wrong on that point. The 290 projects that I referred to are those that were shovel-ready and scheduled within that four-year period; the 996 projects are the ones that were not. Significantly, 13 of those schemes were in the north-east Thames valley, where more than 350 homes have been flooded, and 67 of them were in the south-west, where 100 homes have been flooded.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made the further point at Prime Minister’s questions that the EA is planning to make 550 flood defence posts redundant. I specifically questioned the Minister in the Westminster Hall debate last week on whether those redundancies will go ahead. He was pressed for time in his summing up and was unable to explain how he considered that the EA could give people the sort of assistance that we have seen over the past two months and to which many hon. Members have paid tribute this afternoon, and I join them in doing so. How will the EA do that with 550 fewer staff? Today, I ask him to tell the House what roles the people in those posts currently perform. Are some of them the people who actually manage the flows of water in the waterways, by monitoring and operating the sluice gates, the weirs, the locks and the pumps? Do they include the people who survey and assess the condition of flood defences. Do they include the people who prepare the maintenance schedules for those defences? Do they include any of the people who have been helped with the clear-up operations? What is of enormous concern is that those skills and expertise might be lost with these redundancies, with the corresponding loss of service and safety to the public in the future.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Barry Gardiner]

I am afraid that I cannot give way because I have to give the Minister time to respond. I have given way quite a lot.

Now the Government have set out their forward projects for capital, by saying that they will spend £370 million a year in 2015-16 and every year through to 2021. The Minister needs to be open with the House today about what percentage of that money in each year will be used for new build flood defences and what will be used for major capital repairs and maintenance. The Committee on Climate Change has been astute in analysing the figure of 165,000 properties that the Secretary of State told our Select Committee were “better protected” in the current spending period when he gave evidence to us last year. It warns that flood risk will actually reduce only for a proportion of the 165,000 properties. Many capital schemes are simply replacing or refurbishing existing defences on a like-for-like basis and to the same crest height. With climate change, many of those homes will be less well protected than when the defences were originally built. The defence may have been repaired, but the risk that it will be overtopped as a result of climate change has increased. Far too many homes and properties are still at risk because the defences that we have are less effective than they once were because of the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather.

As my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor pointed out in his op-ed for The Daily Telegraph just over a week ago:

“Investment in flood defences is now £500 million below what is needed and this risks £3 billion in avoidable flood damage”.

The point that he makes is as simple as it is clear:

“we need to make long term decisions now that can save money in the future”.

He has promised that our zero-based review of public spending must not only eliminate waste and inefficiencies but

“prioritise preventative spending that can save money in the long-term.”

That is the sort of commitment that people get when they have a Chancellor who understands the science of climate change, rather than one whose guru is the chief climate change denier in the other place.

As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said on Wednesday last week, the assessment of how much to invest in flood defence depends significantly on an assessment of the risks posed by man-made climate change. If we are properly to protect the British people against the threat of flooding, we cannot have doubt and confusion within the Government on climate change. But doubt and confusion are what we have from the two Secretaries of State in charge of protecting our homes, infrastructure and industry. The Environment Secretary’s unscientific opinions on climate change and his refusal to be briefed by his chief scientist on the subject are a matter of public record, as is his decision to downgrade flood defence as a priority. The link is clear.

The confusion reached a new height last Wednesday when the Communities Secretary, given the opportunity to show some scientific understanding and rigour, chose instead to cite Lord Lawson. The noble Lord’s dangerous, unscientific opinions on climate science are well known and have no place in the Government, let alone in the answers from a Secretary of State with responsibility for flooding. The fact that the Prime Minister has refused to distance himself from those comments shows that the Government cannot be trusted to get this right. The Met Office has been very clear that such extreme weather events as we have seen are only likely to become more severe and more frequent.

Is the Environment Secretary still refusing to entertain a briefing from his chief scientist on climate science? Will the Minister at least put his own opinion on the record? Does he accept the climate change risk analysis prepared by his officials, which estimates that 1 million properties may be at serious risk of flooding by 2020? Up from the current figure of 370,000, that 1 million estimate includes 800,000 homes. If so, will he tell us whether his Department’s flood insurance proposal—Flood Re—takes account of those additional properties? The Committee on Climate Change adaptation sub-committee has warned that it does not.

The Minister will know that Lord Krebs, as chair of the adaptation sub-committee of the Committee on Climate Change, wrote to the Secretary of State in January and made it clear that the committee was available to the Department to ensure that sound science was the basis for all the Government’s long-term funding decisions on flood defences. Will the Secretary of State accept that offer?

I wish to identify one of the most fundamental recommendations made by the Select Committee in its excellent report. The Committee stated:

“We regret that the current regulatory framework does not permit innovative investment in natural flood defences by water companies and expect Ofwat’s next Price Review to rectify this.”

All too often, we reach for concrete and steel solutions to the problem of flooding instead of looking at soft, green infrastructural approaches. There are notable exceptions, and Wessex Water, for example, operates a catchment management system that pays landowners to manage the uplands in a benign way that retains water and purifies it, instead of allowing contaminated water in need of treatment to run swiftly down the catchment. Land management plays a vital role. The retention of flood water upstream through woodland and ground cover in the uplands is every bit as important as dredging in the lower levels of the catchment. Landowners always seek to dredge the river as it passes through their land. That is the quickest way to try to ensure that their own land is not flooded and the problem is passed downstream. This approach was contained in the Pitt review under recommendation 27. When will this most important element of flood risk management, adverted to in the Select Committee report, be implemented?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Rogerson]

The figures that I am setting out into the future are for capital spending, and we expect revenue amounts to be settled as budgets are introduced for each year. However, the points that the Chair of the Select Committee makes about seeking contributions from all those involved in water management are entirely valid. In her speech she spoke about water company investment in water management that goes beyond the “hardware” side of things and looks more at the softer side of managing water through land management solutions. Ofwat is considering what it does with totex—total expenditure. It is looking at expenditure across the piece, rather than just at capital—the sort of things that appear on balance sheets that, in the past, would have been the focus. I accept that many people want to change that, so the fact that Ofwat has allowed water companies to do more of that will be beneficial.

The right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), who is not in the Chamber today, but who took part in the Westminster Hall debate, pointed out the involvement of South West Water, along with my Department, landowners and managers, in an initiative looking at how water can be retained on Exmoor, which has made a difference to the moor’s catchments. That is a good example of the sort of work that can take place. The Chair of the Select Committee often speaks about what is happening in her constituency with the “Slowing the Flow” project, which is working on land management solutions. She is absolutely right that we need to emphasise the economic importance of investment in flood defences and, indeed, in water management. If we can prevent flooding and take that blight away from land that could be developed successfully, that would make a big contribution. If we can avoid the impacts that hon. Members have discussed, we can make a huge difference to local economies.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Will my hon. Friend address the points that I made in my speech about building on the floodplain and, where it is not his ministerial responsibility, undertake to have a discussion with his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government to address the uncertain but doubtless growing liabilities in Flood Re and SUDS, so that we do not build up a bigger and bigger problem for ourselves in future?

[Dan Rogerson]

My hon. Friend made that point earlier, and a number of other Members referred to the planning process. The good news is that the advice that the Environment Agency gives is taken into account in the vast majority of circumstances. However, there may be examples where we could look at that. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who has discussed the response and recovery aspects of these flooding events at the Dispatch Box on a number of occasions, will have heard that cry, and the national planning policy framework, which the Government have set out, makes it clear that we should not build on floodplains. There are locations, such as those, as we have heard, in the Humber area and so on, where that means no development at all, and the guidance makes it clear that we should see more resistance and resilience built into existing properties. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) made that point in response to an intervention.

Oral Answers to Questions

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2014 Commons Chamber

The Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission was asked—

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

4. What recent discussions the Commission has had on extending the scope of the NAO’s auditing of the Bank of England and any consequent changes to the NAO’s budget.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)]

There have been no recent discussions on extending the scope of the NAO’s role to auditing the Bank of England. As part of its wider discussions of the NAO’s budget in March 2012, the Commission considered the resource implications of the NAO’s new role in implementing the Financial Services Act 2012, in that it appointed the Comptroller and Auditor General to audit the Financial Conduct Authority. The Act did not change the audit arrangements for the Bank itself.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The National Audit Office can audit every single Government Department, the BBC and even the Queen. Why does my hon. Friend think that the Bank of England should be an exception?

Water Bill

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

We have had a good debate today. I welcome the Bill and thank all those involved in preparing it, including my right hon. and hon. Friends. Obviously, a lot of work remains to be done to it in the other place, and we will watch those developments with interest.

I welcome the introduction of retail competition. The Select Committee would like to have seen the primary duty of sustainability in preference to resilience. I believe that too much detail has been left to be fixed at a later stage. I enjoyed the comment from my hon. Friend the Minister on not wanting to rely too much on regulation, because just about every clause calls for implementing regulation to be drafted. We will leave that conundrum with him.

Competition is to be welcomed. It should lead to greater efficiency. In particular, I hope that both the current 2014 price review and the competition provisions permitted following the Bill will lead to more innovation, not least following these weeks of sustained and considerable flooding across the country. I applaud the Government’s search for a partnership approach and for more private enterprise funding for flood prevention measures. I hope that the water companies will step up to the plate in that regard and that other private sector companies might help to fund schemes from which they might benefit.

I believe that there are still opportunities to write other provisions into the Bill before it receives Royal Assent, not least with regard to the partnership approach to flood prevention measures, which has been mentioned this evening, but also for increasing the amount of maintenance that can be done by internal drainage boards. We await the results of the pilot schemes, whereby DEFRA is allowing landowners to permit their own maintenance to be done on the watercourses locally, to see whether that scheme can be rolled out.

It is a joy to me that tomorrow we will see the Pickering pilot project in my constituency reach its final phase with the cutting of the first sod of earth, which will enable the reservoir to be built. It is a great disappointment for me personally, as I am sure it is for many in the country, that the sustainable drainage systems, which are left over from the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, will still not be on the statute book by April this year. SUDS, on their own, will do a huge amount to prevent surface water flooding from entering sewerage systems through the combined sewage pipes that we have heard so much about today and that can cause sewage spills on to roads and, regrettably, into homes and other properties.

Perhaps the most innovative aspects of the Bill that are to be welcomed are those relating to flood insurance. I commend Flood Re, but I hope that the Minister will have listened carefully to the concerns that have been raised today, not least from the Select Committee. We expect to see the same respect and acknowledgment of value for money in that as in other schemes. We will be looking to see that that is confirmed as we go forward.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

My hon. Friend praises the SUDS system, but will she take into account, and ask our hon. Friends on the Front Bench to take into account, the fact that we may be building up considerable liabilities for ourselves in future if SUDS systems are inadequately designed by developers who have clever consultants and local authorities do not have the expertise to vet whether those systems are adequate in the type of floods that we are seeing at the moment?

[Miss McIntosh]

My hon. Friend will have an opportunity to read our proceedings tomorrow and see the debate that we have had on SUDS. For reasons that the Minister has not rehearsed in full, the SUDS regulations will not be on the statute book by April. I am sure that there are very good reasons for that, including those that my hon. Friend raised, but I do believe that SUDS will have a substantial role to play.

If the flood insurance system leaves out leasehold flats, that will be a matter of concern.

Flooding

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 6th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) has elevated “on message” to a new level in that his communication with his local radio station, or a representative thereof, seems effectively to be synchronised.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

May I say to my right hon. Friend that there has been more flood prevention work in the Cotswolds in the past two years than there was in the whole of the 13 years of the previous Government? Nevertheless, some of my constituents in Cirencester and the area have suffered sewage and water flooding for the second Christmas in succession. They really appreciated the work of the emergency services, particularly the Environment Agency. Will he ensure that the front-line services the Environment Agency so generously provided over this period will be maintained and, in particular, that flood maps are rapidly updated, so that they can get up-to-date insurance?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments, which reflect the very good work of the Environment Agency. I want to quote its chief executive, Dr Paul Leinster, whom I have been speaking to daily—I hope that this will reassure my hon. Friend—who has said: “The planned reductions in posts will not affect the Environment Agency’s ability to respond to flooding incidents and the Environment Agency will minimise the impact on other frontline services through the changes.”

Badger Cull

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on the point about the controversy?

[Chris Williamson]

If the hon. Gentleman will let me finish on this point, he will, I hope, be able to come in before the end of the debate.

I hope the Minister will support an independent and systematic review by the likes of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons or the Royal Society. Such a review could evaluate all the scientific, social, economic, ecological and ethical aspects of the Government’s policy. If Ministers are so sure—

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Weir, for allowing me to catch your eye. I grew up on a dairy and pig farm where my father lost his entire pig herd to swine vesicular disease and my mother was frightened that she would lose her entire dairy herd to foot and mouth disease. I can therefore empathise with my farmers in Gloucestershire whose cattle have had to be slaughtered because of this dreadful disease, which causes a painful death for badgers and other wildlife. Last year, 28,000 cattle were compulsorily slaughtered because of their susceptibility to TB. The cost to taxpayers has been £500 million over the last five years and it will be £1 billion if nothing is done over the next five years.

My constituency is fairly close to the cull and the preliminary results are that it has been successful on two counts: humaneness and effectiveness. If the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), who proposed the debate—he is laughing—has a serious accusation about shots being fired above people’s heads, he should report that to the police. They will investigate and if anyone did that, they will have committed a criminal act and should be prosecuted. Let him produce the evidence before he makes such statements.

The real answer is an oral vaccine. The trouble is that it has been around the corner for the 21 years that I have been a Member of Parliament. It solved the rabies problem. An oral vaccine fed to foxes on the continent now renders it sufficiently rabies-free for us to take our pets there.

Much nonsense has been uttered in this debate about the cost of trapping and a licensed injectable vaccine. The realistic figures from the Welsh trial show that that costs about £3,900 per sq km. If that is extrapolated to the Gloucestershire trial alone, the figure each year would be a staggering £1.170 million; I expect that the policing costs of the cull would be less than £1 million. Those who are against the trial cull—I emphasise that it is only a trial cull—should bear that in mind.

Nowhere in the world has a significant reduction taken place without elimination of a significant TB reservoir in wildlife. We saw that in relation to possums in New Zealand, to deer in Australia, and in America.

[Angela Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the social structure of the badger population in Britain is completely different from the social structure and behavioural habits of possums in Australia and New Zealand?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Having watched badgers, I know that when a badger gets TB it goes into the bottom of the sett, dies slowly over a long time and infects other badgers. That is a fact. The disease is painful and must be eliminated one way or another. Surely we can unite around that. It is not something we want in our wildlife or our cattle.

In closing, I want to make one or two points. A lot of nonsense has been talked about the safety of shooting. If it were not safe, we would have seen more incidents in Gloucestershire. My information is that there has not been unsafe shooting and that there has been humaneness. I do not know of any cases of a badger going away to die. Again, if the hon. Member for Derby North, who represents the League Against Cruel Sports, can produce evidence, I would be interested in seeing it. He made many exaggerated claims in his speech.

We must do something about this dreadful disease. Our farmers have to use one of the strictest biosecurity devices in the world to ensure that their cattle are free of TB, and it costs them a great deal of money.

[Tessa Munt]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.

If we keep imposing those costs on our farmers, vast areas of the south-west—the hon. Lady’s constituency area—will have no beef cattle. We will then import more and more beef into this country and we will lose jobs. That has happened in the pig industry, and it will happen in the beef industry.

[Tessa Munt]

Many farmers in my constituency have an enormous problem with DEFRA and its agencies in respect of taking cattle off farms when they have been proved to be infected according to the criteria. If cattle are waiting on a farm, not isolated, for 21, 22 or 23 days before they are removed, how on earth can we say that biosecurity is at a high level? That is not the case.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Nobody would condone any farmer or anybody breaking the biosecurity regime. In fact, the Government, as no doubt the Minister will tell us this afternoon, have tightened regulations still further so that they are some of the toughest in the world. They are imposing a great deal of economic strain on the farmers who have to implement them.

In closing, I simply say that if we want to import more and more of our food, let us get rid of our cattle industry in the south-west by not doing something about TB. For goodness’ sake, let us do everything that we can with the armoury in our box to see if we can at least reduce it, if not eliminate it.

Water Bill

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

We saw bills cut for a period, but then they went back up again. If we talk to our constituents about their memories of water bills over the past few years, both in the run-up to the general election and since in the price review period presided over by the previous Government, we will hear that their experience was that bills were rising.

On the environmental benefits since privatisation, we have seen huge improvements—for example, in bathing water quality—and that is very much to be welcomed and something that we should dwell on. We have had the opportunity to consider how that progress has been made. Of course, we will see further challenging regulation on bathing water quality in future, so it is absolutely vital that the industry, along with everyone else in the community who can influence water quality, is ready for the challenge, to make it even better.

The Bill seeks to look at market reform, because we need water supplies that are resilient to future pressures, while keeping bills affordable and, indeed, minimising the impact on the environment. That is competition not for the sake of it, but to drive greater efficiencies in the water industry and encourage more innovation. The benefits to business customers are obvious: more choice, better customer service and packages tailored to their needs.

All customers, including householders, will benefit from an industry that is incentivised to look for the most efficient way to meet future demand. We know that that works in practice. Last week, I visited a housing development in Rissington in Gloucestershire, where Albion Water—a new entrant—is supplying water and sewerage services. With its innovative solutions, it can provide separate supplies of drinking water and recycled greywater to houses in the development. It can therefore compete successfully against the incumbent water company on price, while reducing daily drinking water consumption by nearly half. That is evolution, rather than a radical overhaul.

Since privatisation, the industry has been successful in bringing in investment, which has delivered huge improvements, as I have mentioned. We have a strong and stable regulatory regime and no intention of disrupting it. That is why we are working closely with the industry to develop future markets.

Market reform is understandably of great interest to hon. Members. They want to know about it from both perspectives: they are concerned in some cases that we might be going too far, and in others that we might not be going far enough. Some Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert), are keen to see competition in the residential sector, but we want to ensure that the change that we introduce is proportionate and that we proceed on a good evidence base. We can learn from the experience of Scotland, where business customers and non-domestic customers increasingly benefit from competition, so we know that the system can work. Competition in the residential sector would be a huge change, so we would have to come to anything that we wanted to do in that area at a later date. However, I take on board my hon. Friend’s comments and am reassured that he is observing that.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

At least half my constituency is supplied by Thames Water. There are consistent rumours that it is thinking about forcing all its customers on to water meters. Will the Bill make it easier for Thames Water to do that?

[Dan Rogerson]

Companies in water-stressed areas will be able to push people towards meters. Of course, new properties are customarily metered now, as a result of existing legislation. As we have heard today, there is a range of views on whether metering is desirable. Certainly, with regard to managing a scarce resource, it is desirable, but we must carefully examine the implications, such as the cost of the investment needed to install meters and the impact on bills, because there are always winners and losers. We need to look at that closely, as we move forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

5. What further progress has been made on encouraging British nationals resident overseas to vote in UK general elections; and if he will make a statement.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

7. What progress has been made by the Electoral Commission on setting a target for increasing the number of eligible overseas voters registering before the next general election.

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)]

Since May 2013, the Electoral Commission has met representatives from political parties and officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to discuss how they can work together to reach eligible electors overseas to encourage them to register to vote. That has helped to inform the development of the commission’s extensive public awareness campaign for overseas voters in 2014 ahead of the European parliamentary elections. Finally, the commission has set a target for its overseas public awareness campaign for the 2014 parliamentary elections to be more than three times as effective as the campaign it ran in 2009.

[Mr Streeter]

Those are all issues that the Electoral Commission has considered and will continue to consider. In particular, it sends press releases and articles to English-speaking newspapers and radio stations in areas that are strongly populated by expats. The Electoral Commission also conducts a rigorous online campaign to try to persuade people of the benefits of voting in a British election.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Is my hon. Friend aware that there are estimated to be 3 million Britons living abroad who could potentially vote yet at the 2010 election only 20,000 were registered to vote? Does he not think that that is a shocking statistic and will he encourage the Electoral Commission to set a target to increase that figure to 100,000 by the 2015 election?

[Mr Streeter]

I certainly agree that it is a shocking figure. Many people are working very hard to try to increase the numbers of British people who are registered to vote. There is a target to increase the number of overseas voters who download the registration form for the 2014 European election to three times the number there were in 2009. If we were to increase the 2010 figure threefold, that would take us to about 100,000 downloads in 2015, which would perhaps be much more beneficial.

Dog Control and Welfare

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure that the Minister will have heard his remarks; I hope he will endorse what the hon. Gentleman has said.

We had only eight sitting days to conclude our work. We are grateful to the 40 or so individuals and organisations who sent written evidence on a tight time scale, and to those who gave oral evidence. That demonstrates the importance that many attach to finding better ways to tackle dangerous dogs. In our pre-legislative scrutiny report, we made numerous recommendations for improving the draft Bill, which we now expect the Government to amend. As I said to my hon. Friend the Minister, the Committee stands prepared to table amendments to improve the Bill if we think fit.

We feel that the Bill shows that the Minister has not fully understood the public concern about dangerous dogs, nor have Government policies matched the action required. Our headline findings are that the Government have failed to respond adequately to public concern about dog attacks and poor dog welfare; that legislation must be amended urgently to protect the public from dangerous dogs; that current laws have comprehensively failed to tackle irresponsible dog ownership; and that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs proposals published belatedly in February are too limited.

The evidence we received from DEFRA and the Home Office did little to reassure us that either Department is giving sufficient priority to dog control and welfare issues. The Home Office approach to tackling antisocial behaviour is too simplistic. Indeed, when we were in opposition, the Conservatives felt that antisocial behaviour was not the right vehicle. The legislation fails to reflect the impact that poor breeding and training by irresponsible owners can have on a dog’s behaviour.

We recommended that DEFRA should introduce comprehensive legislation to consolidate the fragmented rules relating to dog control and welfare. New rules should give enforcement officers more effective powers, and our key recommendation is to include dog control notices, such as those already in use in Scotland, to prevent dog-related antisocial behaviour.

We also found that local authorities need to devote more resources to the effective management of stray dogs or else consideration should be given to returning responsibility to the police. We stand by that recommendation. The Committee agreed that all dogs should be microchipped, as much for animal welfare as for controlling dangerous dogs, and that being able to link an animal to its owner was essential to clamp down on irresponsible dog ownership.

On a personal note, may I remind the House that when we had dog licensing—I am sure the Minister will confirm this—only 50% of dog owners bought a dog licence in any one year? The House and the public expect us to bear down on the irresponsible dog owners who did not purchase a licence and who may not microchip.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee for her excellent speech, and I apologise for interrupting it. She mentioned the issue of dog microchipping, which is extremely important to combat many of the problems that she has outlined with dangerous and stray dogs. It is the Government’s current intention to introduce such a measure in 2016. The position in respect of horses is the same, so should it not be possible with modern technology to accelerate the process?

[Miss McIntosh]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. It is important that we get the measure right. The parallel with horse passports is appropriate, but we need to see the guidance and exactly how the programme will be rolled out. Microchipping is an important tool, but it is not the full answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I am grateful that I have caught your eye, Mr Turner. Dogs’ hackles are up and their hair is on end. I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to the Chamber to respond to the debate, and I hope that he will be able to calm some of the nerves that I will allude to. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) on this timely and important report. Her Committee has done dog welfare a great service.

I have taken a strong interest in the welfare of dogs for a number of years, and have been involved in a campaign with my constituent, Carol Fowler, for the past eight. Highlights of the campaign led to the BBC1 documentary, “Pedigree Dogs Exposed”, which I am sure many hon. Members saw. It graphically exposed welfare issues associated with pedigree dogs and genetic health.

There are some horrific examples—particularly Chiari malformation and syringomyelia in Cavalier King Charles spaniels; as you may know, Mr Turner, the brain grows too large for the size of the skull, causing some sufferers to writhe around in agony before they die. There are many other examples, including boxer dogs having heart diseases and German Shepherds having abnormal hip joint development, causing them to die prematurely. The programme led to the BBC suspending its broadcasting of Crufts, which, given its 42-year history with the broadcaster, was highly symbolic.

I want to touch on four of the issues that several hon. Members have raised. First, we must tackle the horrific business of inherited genetic disease through improper breeding, which can seriously compromise dogs’ welfare. Secondly, we need a proper microchipping process for dogs. Thirdly, I want to talk about puppy farms and fourthly about puppy contracts.

Welfare problems caused by those who buy problem dogs are extensive both financially and emotionally. Such puppies often die prematurely and their owners have to face the associated costs, including vets’ fees, and the emotional trauma that goes with that. I will concentrate on dog welfare today. We should remember that dogs are sentient beings who can feel both pain and fear.

The Government must not wash their hands of all aspects of dog breeding, particularly when welfare problems are involved, and they could use a light regulatory touch with a sector of welfare groups operating properly through the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England. There must be responsible dog-breeding regulation so that puppies are sold to suitable owners and socialised properly, which would alleviate many of the dog control problems to which hon. Members have alluded.

I turn first to the lack of funding. The Animal Health and Welfare Board for England is, rightly, weighted towards farm animals and received £200,000 from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Farm Animal Welfare Council received £280,000. In contrast, the Dog Advisory Council, which is so ably chaired by Professor Sheila Crispin, had to make do with a mere shoestring budget of £28,000 last year. It tried to approach the pet food industry for more funding, but that has so far failed. The Dog Advisory Council has been widely acknowledged as providing the most independent, far-reaching welfare advice of any of the dog organisations.

That brings me to the second, perhaps most important part of my speech, and the issue that is causing so much unhappiness; I hope that the Minister pays close attention. It seems that a new canine and feline sector group has been established, with a surprising lack of consultation anywhere. If there is to be a new organisation, it should be fully independent from any sectoral interests. Only with an independent group will the correct provisions be put in place to protect the welfare of dogs in the UK.

I also question the establishment of the group. I do not understand why it was set up, what the process for the recruitment of its members was, or how the group is to be funded, and I would be grateful if the Minister clarified those issues. Was the group and its membership established under the Nolan principles?

I understand that the new group will be under the chairmanship of Professor Steve Dean. I have met him, and he is extremely knowledgeable about dogs—the problem is that he happens to be chairman of the Kennel Club. It would appear that a cosy relationship has formed between the Kennel Club and DEFRA, which, as I said in a letter to the noble Lord de Mauley, is seriously dividing opinion-formers in the dog world, and compromising, I believe, the welfare of dogs. The creation of the new group and the choice of chairman have created hostility in the dog world. Any chairman of a dog welfare board, I suggest to the Minister, should be able to unite, not divide, that world.

The position of the Kennel Club as a regulatory body seems to have been elevated recently, following a speech from Professor Steve Dean, in which he said that the Kennel Club had the

“primary role as the regulator for the welfare of dogs”,

and had worked with DEFRA to form the canine and feline sector group, under his chairmanship.

There is a fundamental conflict of interest in the Kennel Club’s taking a leading role in the welfare of dogs, as its main source of income comes from the fees that it charges for the registering and transfer of ownership of puppies. Therefore, it is not in the Kennel Club’s interest to restrict the number of organisations by imposing tougher health requirements. Given that conflict of interest, I do not believe that the Kennel Club is the best organisation to be given responsibility for the regulation of dog welfare.

The establishment of any group should at least have had involvement from the Dog Advisory Council, which provides expert independent advice on how best to advance the welfare of dogs. It would have been far more beneficial to build on the Dog Advisory Council’s work, rather than to establish this entirely new group under the Kennel Club’s chairman. The advice given by the Dog Advisory Council is truly independent and widely respected by all dog groups.

If we are to work within the current structures, they must be rigorously independent and have the Dog Advisory Council at their heart. I believe that the Dog Advisory Council should remain in place until such time as a suitable structure is formed that can guarantee the independence and regulation of dog welfare. Following that, a dedicated dog subsection should remain in any canine and feline group, due to the population of dogs and the problems that we have heard about in today’s debate. There are, I believe—nobody quite knows the exact figure—about 11 million dogs and about 11 million cats in this country, but it seems that there are far more problems with dogs than with cats.

Moving on quickly, Mr Turner—I know that you will want me to conclude shortly—I would like to talk about microchipping. I know through a constituent of mine, who is actively involved in the matter, that we are being pressed to do something urgently about microchipping in horses, to deal with horse diseases and the issue of traceability, including dog meat. The technology required for the chipping of dogs and horses is exactly the same. Surely we can accelerate the microchipping process, so that it is dealt with faster than by 2016, as is currently proposed.

Briefly, the third issue is so-called puppy farms, which others have discussed. I quickly comment that the problem is that the farms often produce puppies in environments with inadequate welfare conditions and inadequate genetic disease control. Puppies are often poorly nourished and not properly socialised, so that is an issue that we need to tackle.

The fourth issue, which my constituent, Carol Fowler, was at the forefront of proposing, is puppy contracts. It is important that members of the general public have access to an effective public education campaign about genetic welfare issues. The poor welfare standards of many commercial breeding establishments and dealers mean that many innocent puppy buyers will still purchase a puppy on emotional grounds rather than as informed consumers. Choice of breed can often be based on appearance or even fashion, with little regard to potentially harmful conformational traits or known breed-related genetic diseases, let alone whether a particular breed of dog is suitable for their lifestyle, or whether they should have a dog at all.

The current, unregulated system is failing to protect dogs from suffering from the effects of inbreeding, genetic diseases, exaggerated conformational traits, poor husbandry and the poor welfare that can be associated with the breeding of dogs. The majority of purebred dogs are owned by the general public, who often pay a very high financial and emotional price in dealing with such problems.

The UK claims to be a nation of animal lovers and, on the whole, I am sure that that is true. However, there will be a falsity behind that claim if we do not ensure the highest welfare standards possible. The UK’s standard of welfare of companion animals often falls below that of Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and possibly other European countries as well.

In summary, I believe that the case for an independent regulator for the welfare of dogs is clear. A clear distinction has to be made between a sectoral council, which represents the interests of the industry concerned, and an independent regulator, which will act on behalf of the welfare interests of animals. With the creation of the new canine and feline body, it very much feels as though the poachers are regulating the gamekeepers.

A truly independent body, with statutory powers, would have the capability to ensure both the protection of dog welfare and that dog breeding was carried out to the highest possible standards. Having those safeguards in place would, in turn, alleviate many of the dog control issues that we have discussed today, including that of dangerous dogs. I hope that the Minister will comment on those important welfare issues.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am delighted that we are able to debate this important issue in response to the seventh report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, on dog control and welfare. I welcome the report, which was exhaustive in the evidence it took and in its comprehensive insights on dog control and welfare.

The point has been well made that one difficulty we are experiencing, both in this debate and in governmental terms, is about who champions the matter in Government. A forthcoming Home Office Bill deals with one aspect, while other aspects, such as sentencing, are dealt with elsewhere. In his response, the Minister—good chap that he is—might want to identify the individual who champions the whole remit. In the absence of a holistic reform of dog welfare and controls, and given that we are dealing with it in a more piecemeal way, who champions the issue right across Whitehall? Who bangs heads together? Who chairs the committees in Government? Who drags the Home Office and others together and says, “This is the way it is all going to hang together.”? I think that role is vital, and it would be good to have information from the Minister.

I welcome the debate and thank the Committee members and its Chair, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), for their truly excellent work on this report and others that relate to such issues. It is right to recognise, as hon. Members have done, the intense suffering of many families who have been traumatised, not only through injuries, but through deaths in their families because of attacks by dogs. That includes most recently Jade Anderson, John Paul Massey four years ago and the 79-year-old pensioner, Clifford Clarke. It is true that they and others personify the tragedy of dog attacks, which has been so ably and eloquently set out here today by my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) and for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and by other hon. Members, and in other debates. That gives us the stimulus we need; it is why we need to get this right.

I give immense credit to all the dog and animal welfare charities, the police, the Royal College of Nursing, other health care professionals, veterinarians, postal workers, represented by the Communication Workers Union, and many assorted others who have come together to campaign with immense unanimity and sense of purpose on the issue. I remember at one point a Minister—I am not sure whether it was this Minister, but certainly it was a predecessor—saying to me, “One of the difficulties is that there isn’t a unified voice.”

Well, there has been one for some time, and the people concerned are still pretty unified in demanding what they want; I shall refer to some of the details in a moment. They have played an excellent hand, and for the right reasons. That has to do with the issues that have been mentioned by all hon. Members here today, including the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who has great experience in this area. Those issues include animal welfare and breeding, as well as dog attacks and responsible ownership and what we can do in that respect.

On a personal level, I thank not only the CWU and Dave Joyce, but Mark, a postal worker from Pencoed, who took me out on his rounds delivering letters in my local patch and talked to me about this and other matters. I also thank Tina, who took me around Euston blindfolded with a guide dog. She took me through Euston and across the front of the station, through busy areas, to show me not only the expertise of guide dogs, the immense amount of training that they receive and how easily it can be lost if they are attacked by other animals or scared in other ways, but the real bond of trust that develops and how that trust can be so easily broken by an inadvertent or a deliberate attack on a precious companion animal or guide dog. Jonathan, a black lab, took me round the course, with Tina instructing me as we went. Jonathan was a black lab—not black lab as in Labour, but as in Labrador, although he could have been Labour. I do not know; he did not tell me at the time.

I also thank Blue Cross, the RSPCA, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and others for the time they have spent with me on frequent visits to their institutions to see their work and how a multifaceted approach is needed to dealing with abandonment, stray dogs and breeding; I will come to some of the detail in a moment. On that basis, one message I have for the Minister, or one thing that I would like him to ask today and when his colleagues go into Committee with the Home Office Bill is, why not consolidation? I suspect that his civil servants, good people as they are, will have said, “There is a more pragmatic way to do this. Let’s do a little bit here and a little bit there and so on.” But there are real concerns about that.

It comes down to this point: how do we pull together a very comprehensive range of issues? They are not simply about sanctions, penalties and stepping in after the event. They are about education, early intervention, stepping in at an early stage when we see that there are problems to prevent them from getting worse, and dealing with what is now in some ways the factory turnover of dogs, and other animals, through the internet and elsewhere. How is that to be dealt with if we do not pull things together in a consolidated Bill? We come back to these points. First, who is championing the issue, and secondly, where is the overall strategy? We have little bits here and there. Many of those things I will welcome in my contribution, but other things could easily be lost. We have to do this properly.

One of the biggest lessons for us on the issue comes from what we did with the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. That was a classic case of well intentioned legislation that had perverse consequences, which is why we need to get it right this time. The DDA was poorly targeted, which has led to good dogs being seized from good owners and all the personal trauma and inconvenience that go with that. We see dangerous individual dogs that are not from the four proscribed breeds and thus cannot be seized under the Act.

There is confusion. Veterinarians regularly tell us, “We find it hard enough ourselves to identify whether that dog is from one of the four proscribed breeds, but we know that that one needs to be lifted up, taken away and either retrained or kennelled for some time and re-homed with someone who will look after it.” Alternatively, they say, “We think that dog is dangerous, but we can’t actually get to it to lift it.”

The DDA was a classic piece of well intentioned but not well designed legislation. To get the legislation right this time, I urge the Minister, including in discussion with Home Office colleagues and others, really to think about it, because we may not have another good opportunity for a while to get the detail right and to work on the measure with very experienced organisations outside the House, with the EFRA Committee and its members, who have a great deal of knowledge, and with other hon. Members. Working with those people means occasionally giving way and acknowledging that some points that are well and democratically made from the Floor of the House may trump what the Minister is being told by his very able and expert civil servants.

[Mr Graham Brady in the Chair]

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is precisely the type of issue that needs to be widely consulted on, and that it is much better if there is broad consensus, just as it is much better if there is broad consensus on how the whole dog issue is to be regulated?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Very much so. The hon. Gentleman made that point well in terms of the organisational structure that is now giving input to Government and advising them. He is also right in terms of parliamentary consensus and outside organisations. There has been a fair degree of consensus on the holistic way to take this forward. Blue Cross is not the only organisation that is very strong on education and early intervention; so are many others. There is a degree of consensus on the issue, so the hon. Gentleman is right to urge me, as the Opposition Front Bencher, and the coalition Government to work together and to continue it. That might mean a bit of give and take on some things.

There are many points on which we agree with the Government. I have made it clear to the Minister and his colleagues in the other place that we want to provide support and ensure that the legislation goes through in the right shape. However, on the broad principles, in the long term we have to focus on deed, not breed, and replace crude lists of proscribed breeds with a much more holistic approach.

As to the medium term, we are with the Government, and the police, in their argument that we cannot scrap the DDA, despite my criticisms of it—because it is fundamentally flawed—without looking much more at causes than symptoms, without that holistic approach. For the moment, we have to focus on both deed and breed. We will have to do that until we get the whole package in place. In many ways, I regret saying that. I would like to say that we can turn a switch and do it now, but we are in a process. If we can get it right, we will get to the idea of focusing on individual owners and individual dogs, rather than castigating whole breeds or castigating pet owners or dog owners generally, but we are not quite there yet.

An overhaul of our approach is long overdue. We cannot yet discard one of the few tools that we have in the DDA, crude as it is, but I have to say to the Minister that it is more a blunderbuss than a rifle; it is more a cutlass than a rapier. Innocent owners and innocent dogs get caught up in it as well, which is a matter for regret.

On that basis, great care should be taken in extending the range of the DDA. This is one area where we are concerned about the line that the EFRA Committee has taken, because I understand that it suggested that we might extend it and add to it. I have some concerns about that, because we would be reinforcing the use of the blunderbuss approach. With all the concerns of veterinarians about identifying the right breeds and the development of mongrel mixes—huskies with other dogs and even wolf hybrids and so on—I wonder whether extending the DDA is the right approach. We should be ensuring that we get the mix right: we should be looking at the individual dog, looking at the individual owner and getting the packages in place to intervene very early before the dogs attack and we have to lift them. I am sure we will explore that in the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again, but I believe that we have time to debate these matters, which is a good thing. Does he agree that, if at all possible, such issues should be framed in legislation to keep people out of court but to have the desired result? A system of police warning, followed by a ticket with a substantial fine, if breached, would be one way of doing that.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be on the Committee—I will not be—because I think that is an intelligent observation. If he is not on the Committee, he ought to ensure that that point is raised at that stage. The idea of proportionate intervention may avoid the heavy-handed, further-down-stream measures, if we can get in early with a lighter touch. We also do not want to take unduly disproportionate measures against individuals who might be identified by a neighbour who says, “I’ve had enough of this one. I’ll go in and sort it out.” There must be some evidential test and measure to say whether there is an issue that we need to deal with. I agree entirely with what he said, both in terms of sanctions and the types of measure that could be deployed. We need flexibility, before we lift a dog or take stronger, more punitive action against an owner. In that way, we hope to reduce the number of attacks, rather than wait for them to happen and then take punitive action.

I asked in an intervention when the guidance will be issued. The proposals have been quite a while in fruition in the Home Office, and DEFRA Ministers have been involved as well. I am absolutely convinced that some form of draft guidance is being worked up in DEFRA, the Home Office or both combined, and that that can be presented at the earliest opportunity. For the benefit of taking the measures through and getting them right, the guidance needs to be presented in Committee, not on Report. If the Minister says that he cannot do it, I can tell him that I regularly did it as a Minister. I have been told by a Committee, “We need this next Monday,” and I have had to do it and tell my civil servants, “Do it.” I do not mind how rough and ready it is; we need it to be done.

I hope that the Minister and his expert team of civil servants will be able to provide that guidance so that the Committee can take the provisions apart. If he has difficulty with that, the Committee should, even in the absence of dog control notices, simply lift the current Scottish Executive guidance off the shelf and say, “How do we apply this to the Government’s proposals?” If the DEFRA measures are similar to those in Scotland, and they are going to do the same job, the Scottish Executive guidance should perhaps be the basis for the guidance DEFRA introduces.

I have one final, important point on DCNs. We need to know what protections and appeals mechanisms will be in place for owners. We need to get the balance right to protect good owners and good dogs. What protections will be there for them?

In short, we are not convinced that the Government have got this issue right or that their opposition to dog control notices is well founded. The Committee must urgently be given draft guidance so that we can test not only the Minister’s words and aspirations, but their tangible expression in black and white.

Let me turn briefly to a couple of other issues. We welcome the proposals to extend to private property the ability to prosecute somebody for an attack by a dog. We also welcome the fact that the Government have listened on the issue of trespass, but we will need to test in Committee what trespass entails, and that will include the issue of a property’s curtilage. Sheep dogs or other dogs belonging to farmers, but not just farmers, will often be free to roam in outbuildings. Such buildings are private property, and the dogs will be there for good reasons—often for animal husbandry reasons, because they are working dogs, not pets. We need to test how that will work, because we need to get it right.

In another expert contribution, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) mentioned attacks on innocent political canvassers, although I am not sure there is such a thing. He made a very good contribution, and I hope he is also on the Committee. I will be down in his patch at the weekend, although not on an official visit; I am taking my son down to visit Exeter university’s Camborne campus, which is a fantastic mining, engineering and geology campus. I hope the weather there is good at the weekend.

Attacks on livestock and protected animals are another issue on which we agree with the EFRA Committee, and we need to look at it. Again, this is partly about taking a holistic approach. How do we pull things together so that not only guide dogs, assistance dogs and companion dogs, but a wide variety of other animals, are protected? Such animals are quite easily defined under the protected animal provisions of the Animal Welfare Act 2006. That may be the approach the Government want to look at, or there may be some other way. We certainly do not want to create a new list of animals—“We’ll have llamas, but not alpacas,” and so on. There is a ready-made opportunity under the Act to deal with the issue.

Several Members have mentioned the breeding and sale of dogs, and they are absolutely correct that we have far too many poor breeders. The EFRA Committee is correct that the threshold for licensing dog breeders needs reviewing, and I hope that will be part of the Government’s overall approach. Good dog breeding is to be welcomed, and good prospective owners welcome the fact that a dog has been reared and looked after well and that it has had all the medical treatment and some of the early elements of training, if appropriate, before they take it. However, through ignorance or sheer greed, far too many individuals out there are breeding to no good standard or to no standard whatever. Unfortunately, much of that spills out on to the internet. It amazes me—perhaps it should not—that there is now a trade in all sorts of animals on the internet. We have to accept that.

That takes me to my next point, on which the EFRA Committee also made some wise recommendations. We need to look at how we promote good, responsible advertising for animals on the internet, and the Government are doing some good work on that. We accept that there will be some advertising on the internet, but how do we stamp out the practices of those who are churning out dogs and other animals that will end up abandoned and wasted? Those dogs will wash up in kennelling, with all the costs that go with that, or in places such as Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, or they will be euthanased. That is an absolute tragedy.

I have touched on breed-specific legislation. I want now to touch on education, because we often miss this aspect. Many charitable organisations are doing great work on education, including in areas that commentators will stereotype, saying things such as, “The problem is on that working-class estate down the road.” Such views are not always true; there are plenty of problems with poor ownership and poor welfare conditions across all social groups. Organisations such as Blue Cross and the RSPCA are going into areas where they perceive there is a problem. They use the generous funding people have given them to do educational work. I would like to hear from the Minister how the Government tie that together. How do they assist and encourage that work? What do they add to it? If we are seriously going to tackle this wide-ranging issue, the Bill cannot simply be a Home Office matter—it must cover the other elements I have mentioned.

That comes back to my point about the Minister standing up and saying, “I am the one who is championing this through the whole of Government. I am the one who is banging heads together.” I strongly support the idea that a DEFRA Minister should be doing that, and I hope the Minister can do it. If he does not, I will be more than happy to speak to his colleagues, to bang their heads together and to say, “You should listen to the Minister as he brings forward a more holistic approach.”

There are some great initiatives out there, including Respect-A-Bull, which works with youngsters who go around with what they think are tough-looking dogs. The organisation promotes a responsible approach to dogs welfare and to taking out in public. There is some great work going on there.

I commend the Government on their microchipping proposals, although I repeat my criticism, which the Minister hates, that we have waited some time for them. However, they are there. I also commend the Government on the fact that they have gone further than we anticipated, which is welcome. They are not simply rolling things out stage by stage; they are saying that, on a certain date, we will have only mandatory microchipping.

The Chair of the EFRA Committee wisely said, “Let’s get microchipping right. If that requires until 2016, so be it.” However, I would like the Minister to answer the question posed by other hon. Members: why could this not have happened a little earlier? Are things not in place, and are they preventing us from getting this right by 2015? Is something really holding the process up? There may be good reasons for the delay, but I would like to hear them. I agree with the Committee’s Chair that we need to get this absolutely right. It is a welcome move, but it does raise a number of points, which were mentioned earlier. What do the microchipping proposals mean for the link between the dog and the individual? What do they mean for liability, culpability and people being held to account?

I do not have a dog, although I used to have loads of Jack Russells. I have cats now—I do not know what that says about me as an individual, but there we are. I will have a dog again at some point, when I am back home and retired, and it will be a Jack Russell. They are little dogs; they are lovely, great dogs—I am appealing directly to anybody who is listening who likes Jack Russells. Owners of other kinds of dog are saying, “We hate this guy. Those aren’t proper dogs.” That aside, I like the idea that owners should microchip their dogs and take full responsibility for them. If the dog is lost or strays, the owner should pass the information on, whether to a database or whatever. If the dog washes up in Swansea dogs home, Battersea or wherever, the owner should pay for the kennelling and take the dog back. That raises some interesting issues, but I welcome the Government’s moves, and we will test the proposals.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) raised the issue of liability and sanctions not only for owners who do not microchip, which is a very valid point, but for those who microchip, but do not control their dog or lose control of it. The fundamental question is whether microchipping is a stick or a carrot. Is it simply part of a lost and returned service, or is it more than that? The hon. Gentleman also mentioned adequate enforcement, which was discussed by other Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West.

The hon. Member for The Cotswolds raised important issues about the bypassing of the existing Dog Advisory Council, and equitable access to DEFRA and Ministers. I hope that the Minister will respond, because although the process has been long and arduous, lasting decades, for some organisations, the great success that has now been achieved has been predicated on effective collaboration and getting people to agree. Anything that signals that priority is being given to one or other group would pull that apart, and none of us would want that. I commend the hon. Member for The Cotswolds for his long interest in issues such as breeding and hereditary health problems, and for his well known support for the work done by his constituent, Carol Fowler, to raise the profile of those issues.

I thank all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. They have shown great expertise. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West on the passion she showed, and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree on her interventions; she has spoken with families affected by this issue, and has provided them with access to decision makers including members of the EFRA Committee, Ministers and the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh). It is important to listen to such families and to try to get things right for them.

Fundamentally the issue is about tackling those owners who for one reason or another do not understand about the control and welfare of their dogs—their pets or companion animals. It is also about recognising that the majority of owners are good. We need to design policy that does not unduly affect the responsible owners while leaving the others aside: that must be its thrust. We look forward to working with the Government, and thank the EFRA Committee for its continuing work, which has flushed out some of the issues. I hope that in a few months we will be able to introduce part of what is required, and that the Minister will deal with all the other aspects of the matter. Then we can genuinely and radically take the action that we should have taken at the time of the Dangerous Dogs Acts. They were flawed: let us get this one right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

It might be a good examination question—we sometimes refer such matters to the Law Commission for their erudite musings—but I do not particularly want my Department to spend time on that at the moment. I am not being flippant; I am simply saying that that is not the most pressing thing, because it would not improve the effectiveness of what we are doing.

On microchipping, which several Members mentioned, I am grateful for the support expressed for what we are doing. It is absolutely essential to get it right and that implementation is successful. We are working closely with everybody who has a direct interest, such as the Association of Chief Police Officers, local authorities, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, Blue Cross, the British Veterinary Association, Dogs Trust, the Kennel Club and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We will ensure that, as far as possible, we get the message across to the great bulk of the public that they now need to do microchipping. We are working with database operators and the microchip manufacturers and implanters to address standards and ensure quality and consistency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) made the point that the onus is on owners to maintain the data on the microchip. It will be an offence not only not to microchip a dog, but, just as for a vehicle registration, to have inaccurate information on the registered database.

We have addressed the issue that some dog owners do not have much financial resource available and may see microchipping as a difficult cost to bear: free microchipping is accessible through Dogs Trust, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and Blue Cross centres—35 in total—and some local authorities also offer free or discounted microchipping. I am grateful to everybody working on that, and to the Kennel Club for providing free microchip scanners to all local authorities.

This is a good opportunity to promote national microchipping month. Its launch a week ago was most successful. It was hosted by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton, who is not in the Chamber at the moment. We are progressing on the issue in what I hope is an effective way.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury—

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The Cotswolds.

[Mr Heath]

I am sorry; I am behind the times. It was Tewkesbury. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) that we would love to move more quickly, but all the advice says that we are moving at the most sensible rate to get to our objective. We will ensure that microchipping starts with puppies and is extended to the whole dog population. In my view, the most important thing is to get it right and have something that is usable in tracing back to their owners not just all the dogs that go missing each year, but those that cause nuisance. Hopefully, we will be able to connect them to an owner rather more easily than at the moment.

Of course, some owners will not microchip, just like the huge number of people mentioned by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton who ignored dog licensing procedures when they were in place. There will be some who will simply not want to do it, but at least now there will be an offence. When a dog is found, if it does not have a microchip and we can trace it to an owner, that owner will have committed an offence. No licensing system is perfect, but this will certainly go a long way.

[Mr Heath]

That pre-empts not only the legislation, but the secondary legislation that we are introducing, although of course we will answer in due course. It will be an offence, so there will be a penalty. The offence, in the first instance, will be failure to keep the information up to date, but if the information is there and we can trace the dog back to the owner, it will depend what the dog has done and the circumstances.

I should mention an important point. Having discussed the circumstances, I should give some reassurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) that the courts will be able to take into account the circumstances of the case. We will have to return to the discussion about what comprises curtilage of a property, what a dwelling is and so on.

There is a difficulty of definition. We certainly want to deal with the issue of the postman or the political canvasser who gets bitten by a dog out in the yard or garden, where they have perfectly legitimate business, but we also do not want to penalise the householder whose dog is doing its job of protecting property against an intruder who has no business there. Getting that balance right is critical. When someone is within a house, it can reasonably be assumed that unless they have been invited in, they must give a strong argument for why they have legitimate business in the house rather than being an intruder.

It is different for a garden, or sometimes even a shed. A child going to pick up a football that has been kicked into a garden should not be set upon by a dangerous dog. They may be an intruder, but they are nevertheless not a burglar or anyone with malicious intent. A public interest test must be satisfied before a prosecution can be brought. I hope that the guidance to the prosecuting authority will make that distinction clear. It might satisfy the difficulty that Members have correctly spotted with the definition of what exactly comprises the area that we are discussing.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend has been speaking for a long time and has given us a huge amount of detailed information. Before he sits down, will he comment on the divisive issue of the feline and canine sector council, which is dividing the dog world and making dogs’ fur fly?

[Mr Heath]

I most certainly will. I have the unprecedented benefit of having rather longer than usual to reply to the debate. I hoped that I was making use of it to provide the answers that hon. Members wanted, so I apologise to my hon. Friend if I was taking too long to get to the issue he raised. I have one more thing to discuss first, if I may—dog breeding—because it was raised by a number of hon. Members.

It is absolutely right that breeding is a key element of education, apart from anything else, which is exactly the point made by the hon. Member for Ogmore. People must know, first of all, what is and is not appropriate, and the consequences of breeding puppies. Buyers also need to know whether they are buying a breed that needs a 5-mile run every morning, so they do not keep it in a flat on the 17th floor. They need to know—the hon. Gentleman will know—how adorable a Jack Russell might or might not be before they buy one, and what special requirements it might have.

A sort of ignorant cruelty can be involved when people buy the wrong breed of dog in the wrong circumstances and then find that they cannot manage it. That is sad, because they probably bought the dog for unimpeachable reasons—they love the look of the dog and its nature—but they simply cannot look after it. Education is important.

Another important point was raised by the Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth about the threshold for needing a licence. I would love to be able to give him an absolutely explicit response, so that he could say, “Yes, that’s the answer.” It is not as simple as that, as is so often the case with licensing. Although there is a five-litter cut-off for what is, in any circumstances, considered a business, it is for the local authority to determine who is in the business of breeding and selling dogs when it comes to smaller numbers of litters a year.

There is no definitive term that has the sanction of statutory law behind it; it is for the courts to agree or not agree with the local authority. Actually, there are a variety of circumstances in which that sort of decision comes before the court: there is a degree of flexibility, and trading standards officials must satisfy the court that what they are dealing with is a business in the legislative sense. One litter produced in a 12-month period is unlikely to be considered a business; five litters almost certainly will be, but local authorities have a number of tests that they are asked to apply to determine whether somebody is trading. I will not go into them now, because that is for another Department to determine, but those are the criteria used, and they have the support of case law, if not statute law, in deciding whether somebody falls into that category.

I do not know whether I have satisfied my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth; I suspect that I have not, because it is a vague response. If he is not satisfied, I ask him to talk to his local trading standards officials about whether they feel they have the right legal criteria in place to do their job.

[Mr Heath]

I do not think that it would be a defence to say that there were fewer than five litters. It would be about the circumstances of the breeding programme and the puppies being put on sale. I hear what my hon. Friend says. I will take the matter back to my hon. Friends in Departments with responsibility for that area to see whether clarification is necessary.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds set out clearly why he is concerned about the canine and feline sector council. Let me be absolutely clear that it is not a Government organisation; it is independent of Government. I hope that immediately sets some of his concerns to rest. However, as an independent sectoral body, it could be a useful vehicle that pulls together the views of the sector and feeds them into the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England, which again is not a regulatory body. It simply provides advice for Ministers from the perspective of the users of welfare legislation in the widest sense. Therefore, what we are talking about is not a regulatory or a policy formation body, but a conduit for information, hopefully with the benefit of proper discussion within the sector.

The Kennel Club is one of the bodies represented, and the Dog Advisory Council, which my hon. Friend mentioned, has been invited on to the sector council. I hope that Sheila Crispin will take part, because I would certainly like her views as well. The one thing I stress again is that this is not a regulatory body set up for the purposes of excluding anybody or indeed including one sector to the disbenefit of others. I hope that satisfies my hon. Friend.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I hear what the Minister says, but it seems that the support council was set up with undue haste and very little consultation. Perhaps he will tell us how the chairman was chosen. Was he chosen by open advertisement, for example?

[Mr Heath]

I cannot answer that because the council is not a body of Government; it is independent of Government. Perhaps my hon. Friend needs to have a discussion on this matter with Michael Seals, the chair of the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England. I am happy to try to arrange that for him if it would help. It would be wrong for me as a Minister to assume responsibility for something that is not within my control, but I am, none the less, happy to try to oil the machinery that allows him to get the answers he wants.

I have, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds reminded me, spoken for some time now.