Badger Vaccines

George Eustice Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I welcome this debate, which my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) called for. The number of people here today suggests that we could do with more than half an hour to debate some of the issues. I welcome the tone with which my hon. Friend approached the debate. He is right that some people take different views about whether we should pursue a cull strategy, but we all agree that there is a role for vaccination of both cattle and badgers.

I was pleased to have the opportunity to consider the matter in detail in my recent role as a member of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Government’s response to its report was published earlier today and shows that we share a significant amount of common ground on the issue.

Bovine TB is the biggest threat to the livestock industry in England—I was going to say Cornwall, where it is also a threat, as the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) knows. Having lived and worked in the farming industry in Cornwall, I know how difficult the problem is. My family run a herd of pedigree south Devon cattle and in the late 1960s, before my time, they had an incident of TB that wiped out more than half the herd and had a devastating impact on the family farm. My father still talks about it.

By the 1980s, we had almost eradicated the disease, but in the last 10 years there has been a severe deterioration. It has cost the country more than £5 million so far to fight the disease. Last year, we had to slaughter some 28,000 animals. Bovine control is not under control. In Lancashire, the county of my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale, we have seen an increase in the number of herds under restriction and the number of cattle slaughtered in the last year.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

The Minister says that bovine TB is spreading more, and that is exactly why people are saying that culling is not the answer. Scientists involved in a randomised badger culling trial between 1998 and 2005 have shown that culling has not contributed meaningfully to a reduction in the disease and, if anything, has increased it because as the animals are shot, they run away and carry the disease with them.

[George Eustice]

It is generally accepted that, after the initial conclusions of the randomised badger culling trials, there was a significant reduction of some 16% in the cull area in the following years. On perturbation, which other hon. Members have also raised, there was an increase in TB in a ring immediately around the trial areas as a result of perturbation, but the incidence then dropped. Overall, there was a reduction. I point the hon. Lady to evidence in other countries, such as the Republic of Ireland, which has had a cull policy since 2000 with a reduction of around 45% in the incidence of the disease, and the number of cattle having to be slaughtered has halved.

There is no magic bullet and no single policy that can change the situation dramatically. Vaccination of badgers and cattle has a role; wildlife control has a role; dealing with the reservoir of TB in wildlife has a role; and routine testing, movement controls and better biosecurity all have a role. But none of them alone is the entire solution.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

Part of the trial is taking place in my constituency. My first ministerial meeting when I was elected 16 years ago was with Jeff Rooker on this very subject, and only now is any meaningful action taking place. The Minister is absolutely right to say that a whole range of measures is needed to counter the disease, but it has been increasing and farmers have been suffering. We must get a grip on it.

[George Eustice]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I have painted a picture of how bleak the matter is. The disease is spreading and we cannot ignore it any more; we must take action.

Returning to vaccination, which is the subject of the debate, I think it is worth noting that successive Governments have invested more than £43 million on vaccine research and development since 1994. The coalition Government will have spent at least a further £15 million. I say “at least” because the figure excludes what is likely to be sizeable expenditure on the necessary work on cattle vaccine field trials.

[Tracey Crouch]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the response to a recent freedom of information request on 22 September shows a significant reduction in the amount of departmental investment in the oral vaccine particularly, but also in all other research into injectable vaccine and cattle vaccines? Spending on the oral vaccine will fall from around £2.5 million to £312,000 in 2015. Should that not be dealt with “drekly”, as the Cornish might say?

[George Eustice]

It seems that the word “drekly” is catching on in the House. I will deal with oral vaccination later. Right now, only the injectable BCG is available to tackle bovine TB and it does not fully guarantee protection. Some animals will be fully protected, some will benefit from a reduction in the disease, but some will get no protection. That is a shortcoming of a vaccination policy, but it would be a useful addition to the toolkit and we will use it to tackle the disease when we can perfect it.

[Angela Smith]

I welcome the Minister to his new role. He has mentioned the words “toolkit” and “all the tools in the box” more than once. Will he rule out one tool that most hon. Members believe is unacceptable—the gassing of badgers in any future cull?

[George Eustice]

We have made it clear that we would never use gassing as a means of controlling the badger population if we thought it was inhumane, but it is in the consultation for research. That does not mean that we will use it, but we will consider further research in this area.

The research is not on animals. It involves laboratory situations and simulated setts to work out how to get gas to go through a sett. The concern is not the gas itself, but the ability to deploy it throughout a sett. I assure the hon. Lady that that is the sort of research that was alluded to in the strategy. There is nothing new about it; it was in our published strategy in July.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[George Eustice]

I want to make some progress or I will not get to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale.

Laboratory studies have demonstrated that vaccinating badgers with BCG can reduce the risk of infection and transmission of the disease. A four-year safety field study of wild badgers showed a statistically significant indirect protective effect in unvaccinated cubs born into vaccinated social groups, but vaccinating a large enough proportion of badgers to reduce transmission of disease and bring about a reduction of TB in cattle would take time to achieve and be costly to deliver, at between £2,000 and £4,000 per sq km per year.

In practice, it is inevitable that not all badgers in an area will be trapped and vaccinated. There is no evidence that vaccination protects already-infected badgers, and there is a risk that badgers from neighbouring unvaccinated areas may act as a constant source of infection. Nevertheless, computer modelling indicates that sustained badger vaccination campaigns could be beneficial in lowering TB incidence in cattle, but quantifying that contribution is likely to need a large-scale field trial, and it would take some years to collect the results.

[David Morris]

I would like to put it on the record that should what I am proposing come together, I would like my constituency to be its first trial area.

[George Eustice]

That has been noted, and we will take it on board—[Interruption.] I do not want all hon. Members asking for their constituencies to be a trial area. Vaccination is a potential additional tool to reduce geographical spread of the disease, particularly on the edge of areas. My hon. Friend’s constituency is in not an edge area, but a low-risk area.

Vaccination could complement badger culling by providing a buffer to limit the impact of perturbation. It may also form part of an exit strategy from culling—for example, by vaccinating remaining badgers with the aim of establishing herd immunity in previously culled areas.

[Albert Owen]

I welcome the Minister to his place on the Front Bench. Will he assure the Chamber that his Department is working with the Welsh Government so that we can have some data on their trials, share information and eradicate the problem in the whole United Kingdom? His responsibility covers only England, but such co-operation would help both England and Wales.

[George Eustice]

We are keen to learn lessons from around the country and around the world, so we are looking at the work going on in Wales. I have to say that it is not that encouraging at the moment; a vaccination-only strategy is not seen to be working particularly well, but we will study the results closely. I am also interested in following what is going on in Northern Ireland, where they are trapping and then vaccinating badgers that they believe are not infected and culling those that are. We are also keen to learn lessons from countries such as Australia, which has pursued policies similar to ours.

[Ian Paisley]

I welcome the Minister to his new role. With regards to the vaccine for cattle and cows, which he touched on at the beginning—the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale also asked about this issue—will the Minister take the opportunity to make it abundantly clear that if a vaccine is given to a cow, it makes the cow test positive? That makes it indistinguishable from an affected beast when it is tested, which leads to one conclusion: the cow is slaughtered. We have to get away from pursuing the idea that there is some sort of magic bullet, or magic pill, that can be used to vaccinate a cow and not lead to its being slaughtered.

[George Eustice]

I do not want to get drawn too far into cattle vaccination, but the hon. Gentleman is right that we need to perfect the so-called DIVA test that differentiates between the two. It is clear that it will take some time. The European Commission has put a time frame of 10 years on getting to that stage. I would like that to be quicker, but we have to be realistic—there is a lot to be done.

I come back to supporting badger vaccination. DEFRA operates a badger vaccination fund; in the current year, that has prioritised support for vaccination in the “edge area”. The fund offers start-up grants of 50% to fund the first year of vaccinations. Having said that, it is true to say that applications this year have been a bit disappointing. We are now looking to understand precisely why that is, so that we can get it right next year. Coming back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale, we are keen to work with all those groups, including voluntary groups, who would like to participate, and to work out how we can get them engaged in that.

I also intend to discuss a plan that the hon. Member for St Ives has on the issue—I have promised to meet him and Rosie Woodroffe. The Department has made a modest commitment to support some vaccination in that regard and he has some ideas; we are keen to pursue that option and look at it.

[Andrew George]

I put on the record my gratitude to DEFRA for the initial funding of the pilot, which is proceeding this week. The intention is to cover the whole 200 square miles of the Land’s End peninsula, and we are increasingly gathering the co-operation of farmers in the area.

[George Eustice]

I know that, and I look forward to discussing the matter further when I meet the hon. Gentleman. The training scheme has become more popular since, as part of the DEFRA-funded badger vaccination fund, we have offered grants of 50% to voluntary and community sector volunteers to train as lay vaccinators. That is another area that we would like to look at.

Finally, I want to say a few words about our work on developing an oral badger vaccine. A badger vaccine could be administered orally through baits. It would be more practical and potentially cheaper, which is why DEFRA continues to fund that. It is not true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) said, that we have cut expenditure on that. We are, as I say, still spending about £4 million a year in total on developing cattle and badger vaccines.

There are things that we would need to resolve when it comes to the development of an oral vaccine. We would need to work on the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine formulation and make sure that we can deploy the bait to attract the maximum number of badgers. One of the problems is that badgers will not take the bait that is used, so it is important to have the right bait.

Another problem can be that one badger might eat all the bait and another badger might not get any, so there are challenges. We also have to deal with the potential impact and safety for other wildlife. There is still further work to do, but we are committed to taking it forward, and we are clear that that ongoing work will play a role in our strategy.