Badger Cull

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), but I would like to return to a point that the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) made at the start of our discussion: that the debate can easily become polarised between “team badger” and “team farmer”, when what we need is “team science” and “team TB” and to address the issue much more calmly and rationally, because outside the Chamber there has been much light as well as a certain amount of heat.

I should like to emphasise from a constituency point of view and from my farming background the need fully to understand what is driving the issue and the disease’s emotional and financial impact over decades on very committed people in west Cornwall. Many Members have this afternoon conveyed the emotions that are felt from the impact of this devastating disease.

I strongly supported the RBCT in my constituency, which involved a proactive cull on the Penrith moors, and faced down the very strong campaign against the line I was taking just over a decade ago in support of the trials because I believe in sound science being the basis by which we take forward policy to bear down on TB. In a climate where the science might encourage legislators to prevaricate, to recognise dilemmas and perhaps to see only the need for further research and not to take action, the Government should ensure that they do not make the situation worse. We say that policy making must be evidence based, but as the Government former chief scientist, Lord Robert May, said in The Observer just a couple of weeks ago, the Government risk transmuting evidence-based policy into policy-based evidence.

There are a number of knowns in the science, one of which I put to the Secretary of State at DEFRA questions today—that some of the figures from the RBCT have been exaggerated or cherry picked to justify the policy. For example, there is the argument that TB in culling areas was reduced by 30%. The research itself showed a reduction of somewhere between 12% and 16% in the net impact. Overall, this resulted in reducing only the increase in TB infection.

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

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that two of the other knowns are the recent breakthrough in the DIVA test, which could lead to it being put forward for licensing, and a 60% efficacious BCG vaccine for cattle, which could also lead to licensing, although it would require the Government to negotiate with the European Union for field trials within the UK?

[Andrew George]

There are certainly significant gathered knowns now that were not available 10 or 15 years ago. To go forward, we need to build a policy on a sound foundation—not simply on selective evidence.

In his summing up, I hope that the Minister will deal with the evidence in support of the Government’s policy. Will he recognise that the 12% to 16% reduction in incidence of infection for herds within culled areas in the randomised badger culling trial is not an absolute reduction, but a net reduction, which means only that the incidence is increasing at a lower level than it would have been without the cull. It would be helpful and reassuring if the Government were to acknowledge that.

Let us use the opportunity provided by the pause to go back and speak to the many scientists who are still saying that the Government have got this one wrong. Instead of having a war of words through the media, let us make sure that those scientists—the majority behind the ISG—are brought in. I believe that they should be involved.

Finally, I hope that the Government will accept that we should go to Europe, as was implied by the hon. Member for North East Somerset and, indeed, by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) in his intervention. These matters are not, after all, pre-ordained by God; these are decisions taken by human beings in Europe. We need to take a strong case to Europe in order to sort out the regulations and advance the testing of the vaccine and the DIVA test. That should allow us to come to a solution that is generally workable and does not make the situation worse.