Badger Cull

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

Devon is the county worst affected by bovine TB in the entire country. Six thousand cattle were slaughtered in 2010, and there were 800 herd breakdowns. My constituency is arguably the most densely infected. The toll is taken not only on thousands of animals representing generations of toil and long family traditions of rearing and breeding, which are destroyed by the fatal hand and the stroke of the pen of the inspector who finds a reactor in the herd. There is also the human toll on the families, which has been well described and I will not dwell on it.

I sat on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the last Parliament and participated in the production of its report. It was authored not only by Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, some of whom are in the Chamber, but by some very distinguished Labour Members, for whom I came to have considerable respect for the neutral, impartial and thoroughly disinterested way in which they grappled with the problem. It was not necessarily in their interests to subscribe to the political solution that we subsequently recommended, but the report was clear in its recommendation that culling needed to play a role in a package of measures, no one of which would be successful in either dramatically reducing or eliminating the disease.

We had to grapple with the science in making our recommendations. The summary of the report draws attention to the problem that we found as we interviewed the various witnesses who appeared before us. It was apparent that the independent scientific group, which had overseen the random trials, concluded that, in principle

“modest reductions in the overall incidence of cattle TB would result from simultaneous, coordinated and repeated culls of badgers over extremely large areas of the countryside”,

which it defined as around 300 sq km,

“using skilled staff and ideally within geographical barriers to badger movement”.

However, the ISG concluded that

“trying and failing to achieve this”

would

“make matters worse”.

Thus, it was not practically or economically feasible to carry out culling on that scale. It was for that reason, and not for any principled reason that culling might not have a reductive effect, that the ISG rejected culling as contributing meaningfully to the elimination or reduction of the disease.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), in his tenure as Minister of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, have looked at the conclusions of the Krebs trials and the ISG and drawn the inevitable logical inferences. Professor Bourne, Professor Krebs and the ISG concluded that modest reductions were possible provided the culling was carried out in a sustained way, efficiently and over a significant terrain.

All that those who currently have stewardship of policy are doing is taking that in-principle conclusion, which nobody can doubt is contained in the ISG’s report, and applying it and saying, “Let us try. Let us have this controlled experiment in these two areas.” They are adding one more dimension that was not included in the Krebs trials, and that is hard boundaries. The sea, large rivers and motorways all have an inhibiting effect on the movement of badgers, and if we place that dimension into the mix, we can help to reduce the effects of perturbation. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire said, it was not that there was no reduction inside the core area. There was in fact a 23% reduction. That figure, however, was obtained by counting done in the first 12 months, but many scientists believe that the first 12 months of the Krebs trials should be disregarded because of the time lag before the measures took effect. Many scientists believe that the correct figure is 27%.

The problem was not that the trials did not have a dramatic reductive effect within the culling area but that it spread disease on the outer boundaries. As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said, two things have happened. First, continuing analysis has demonstrated that those perturbation effects diminish with time, and, secondly, we are able to put in place hard boundaries that should reduce that effect. I contend, therefore, that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is drawing the logical inference and conclusion from the scientific evidence. That is why he said that he was applying the science and that that was a common-sense and logical thing to do, and it is why his decision deserves the support of every Member and why it commanded the support of the Labour-dominated Select Committee in 2008, when precisely that recommendation and prescription was suggested.

I urge the House to understand that we do this not out of some bloodthirsty desire to kill, as was shamefully and disgracefully suggested by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), but because it is a serious reaction to a pressing problem. It is sincerely intended to tackle a disease that badly needs tackling for the sake of the country.

Dairy Farming

Geoffrey Cox Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) on his informed and interesting presentation of the problems affecting the dairy industry. I do not propose, as the Minister would almost certainly have predicted when I rose to my feet, to tackle the problems, serious though they are and requiring pressing and urgent attention as they do, of the unfairness of the contractual situation between dairy producers and the processing and retail industry. It is manifest that the situation is crying out for action and I hope that after the 13 months of careful reflection that the Minister, who has responsibility for agriculture, has given the problems, ably assisted by those who sit behind him, we will see a courageous and powerful response from the Government to the legitimate interests and concerns of the vital industry that those of us who are in Westminster Hall today represent.

In standing up to speak today, I do so, as I have done many times in the past six years, to raise the subject of bovine tuberculosis in the House. I represent Torridge and West Devon, a constituency in the south-west that is probably the area of the country most densely affected and infected by bovine TV; it is certainly one of the three worst affected areas. I do not propose that the solution that I have long advocated for my own constituency should apply across the board to each area of the country where bovine TB is found. Manifestly, a solution that is appropriate to a densely infected hot-spot area will not be appropriate to an area where bovine TB is only found in widely scattered parts.

However, the Minister will know that I rise to speak with a sense of real concern. He, probably more than anybody else in the Government and possibly more than anybody else in the House, knows well the corrosive, attritional, distressing and unhappy effects of bovine TB. They not only affect the infected animals—the cattle that are slaughtered and the badgers that die appalling deaths as their lungs literally liquefy as a result of being infected by TB—but the farming families and communities who daily have to endure the strain, stress, upset and sheer unhappiness of watching their herds being destroyed, their livelihoods threatened and their farms placed under the sterilising restrictions required by the bovine TB regulations.

I know that the Minister appreciates the situation because he has visited my constituency on many occasions. I have seen him sit down in farm kitchens and I have seen him address larger audiences of farmers, doing so with an empathy and instinctive understanding that does him credit and wins the trust of those who listen to him. For the six years that I have been in the House, I have been intensely grateful to him—first while he was in opposition and now that he is in government—for those visits to my constituency and for the words of reassurance and the empathy that he has offered to the farming community that I have the privilege to represent.

Nevertheless, the Minister knows what I am about to say next; it is time to deliver. For six years, we have told farming communities in the UK that if the Conservative party reached the corridors of Government we would take hold of the situation and tackle this dire emergency that, like a flame slow burning, is consuming farm upon farm throughout the south-west. We have told farmers that we would not fail to have the moral courage to bring the only solution that will deal with the problem for the areas I represent.

The Minister knows what I mean. We cannot rule out a policy of limited, targeted culling; indeed, we must urgently embrace such a policy. It is the only way to tackle the issue in Torridge and West Devon and it is vital that the Government now firmly embrace that policy, as it is the only one that will yield results.

As the Minister knows, I was a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the last Parliament and consequently I do not propose for a moment that we apply a simplistic solution; nor do I suggest that culling alone is the only prescription that will bring success. As he also knows, I have long advocated, and I long criticised the last Government for not implementing, a full package of measures on the cattle side, biosecurity and all the areas of animal husbandry that need to be improved, including vaccination when we can see it. However, we cannot have a package of measures that does not include culling where it is necessary, such as those densely infected hot-spot areas where the risk assessment concludes that it is a necessary part of any prescription or solution. We cannot exclude a cull.

The Minister has sat with me and listened to farmers in Torridge and West Devon as they explained why they feel so strongly that a cull is necessary, how they have taken steps to prepare for it and how they feel it could be carried out. I know that he has been looking at the problem of bovine TB and that it has preoccupied him; it is probably one of the major priorities that he has been dealing with. Consequently, I hope that he will forgive me for expressing the real anxiety and apprehension of farming communities in the south-west that the Government may be losing their nerve.

I very much hope that that is not the case. I was at the Devon county show a couple of weeks ago, and, as ever, the exchange of views was frank and robust. The Minister had recently appeared on television and had apparently said that we may not even have a cull. I appreciate that at this stage he must be considering a policy that is based on evidence and that is carefully fashioned to the reflect the existing scientific knowledge of the subject, but there is growing concern among the farming community that the Government may not be living up to the height of expectations on this question.

I urge the Minister to take the opportunity this morning to deal with the subject by at least giving encouragement to the people I represent and those who are listening to this debate that he fully appreciates the importance of the problem, and that he understands the need to find a way to ensure that the policies that the Government implement to deal with this disease that is raging throughout the countryside of the south-west will include all necessary instruments.

Of course I understand that the Minister will have a judge looking over his shoulder and that any policy that is subsequently introduced will almost certainly be challenged in the courts by those who wish to suggest that it offends judicial review principles. The Welsh case, which is the only example that we have to go on at the moment, demonstrated that if one did not attach great importance to fashioning a policy that would pass the test of administrative and legal scrutiny, matters could be delayed even further. I have spent the past 13 months patiently explaining to farmers down farm lanes and at cattle markets that that is so. After 13 months, it is to be hoped that the Minister is close to a solution.

The Welsh case did not for a moment propose, nor did the judges ever say, that to make culling an instrument of policy was unlawful. As the Minister knows well, the Welsh case simply criticised a logical flaw in the way that the Welsh Assembly and its Executive had gone about consultation on that specific matter and that specific formation of policy. It would be relatively simply avoided with care and preparation by this Government.

I cannot be privy to the private discussions, the policy formations and the preparations that the Minister is involved in. Perhaps all the things I have said today are entirely redundant and superfluous—I very much hope that they are—because the Minister is about to cause a sigh of relief throughout the south-west by announcing a new policy on the control and eradication of bovine TB. When he does so, the feeling across the countryside—in Devonshire, in Cornwall and in all the parts so badly affected by this pernicious disease—will be of intense gratitude and admiration for the moral courage and consistency that the Minister will have shown. During my six years as an MP, the Minister has been a friend to the farming communities that I have the privilege of representing, and by announcing the policy that I urgently press upon him, he will prove himself, once and for all, to have been a friend who stood by them at a time of crisis and emergency.

I hope that the Minister will rise to his feet to deal, of course with the matters that my hon. Friends raise on the importance of fair contracts, but with bovine TB, which is probably even more important to the dairy farmers listening this morning in the places that I represent, waiting anxiously for what the Minister is to say. So deeply afflicted is the south-west—specifically the areas that I represent—that I urge him, when he rises this morning, to have in the front of his mind the families he has met, the farms he has visited, the herds he has seen and the pride in the eyes of those who look after them, and to reach out to them and give them the courage and encouragement that it is our duty to permit them—saying to them that the Government understand the problem and are coming forward with the solution that those families so fervently and expectantly await.