Badger Cull

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

Other Members want to get speak, so, if I may, I will push on a bit further.

Vaccination is another tool that we will continue to invest in—we are spending £15.5 million on research and development in this Parliament—one that I know many hon. Members would like to see deployed. Some £43 million has been invested since 1994 in this vital work, to which the shadow Secretary of State alluded. We, too, would like to deploy it more widely, but I am afraid that we are just not there yet in terms of either development or practicality, as has been clearly described in this morning’s Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report.

Oral cattle and badger vaccines will, I hope, prove viable, but they will not be ready to deploy for years, and we cannot wait while the disease puts more livestock farms out of business and threatens the sustainability of the industry. In January, the Minister of State and I met the EU Health and Consumer Policy Commissioner, Tonio Borg, to discuss our progress towards a cattle vaccine. He acknowledged that we have done more than any other country to take this work forward, but confirmed that the implementation of a legal and validated cattle vaccine is still at least 10 years away.

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

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Paterson]

I will generously give way to the shadow Minister.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the Secretary of State clarify the comments he made a moment ago? If a viable badger vaccination, be it oral or injectable, were developed within the next few years, would he then have no intention to proceed with any cull? Would it be his preference to move forward with the vaccination of badgers instead?

--- Later in debate ---

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

This has been a good debate, and I commend all Members who have spoken today for their contributions, not least those who focused on the science, the evidence and the facts. On an issue as important as this, we must have evidence-based policy. The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) just made some remarks about our discussion of issues of animal husbandry, cattle movements and so forth. I say to him that he should look at DEFRA’s own pronouncements on that, which make the same points.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) raised the issue of chapter 4.5 of the original Independent Scientific Group report and the modelling of spatial patterns of transmission. He said this work is still to be done several years on. We need to get on with doing that. The Secretary of State describes himself on his own website as an expert on bovine TB. We should therefore agree to follow the science, and we need to do that modelling.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) talked about the opposition from farmers, the public and others in the west country and the pioneering work of her wildlife trust. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) talked about the approach in Wales and the ISG remark in respect of the original trials that the cull cannot meaningfully contribute to the eradication of TB. She rightly praised the Labour Welsh Government’s approach in TB-intensive vaccination areas, with 472 landowners taking part.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) talked eloquently about the impact of testing and cattle slaughter on her farmers, and the meetings she has had with farmers, but she strongly advocated a different way forward than a cull. She also talked of the practical difficulties of shooting badgers at night.

[Sarah Champion]

The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) twice called me ignorant for using the term “shotguns” in respect of shooting badgers. I draw his attention to the DEFRA document of May this year, “Controlled shooting of badgers in the field under licence to prevent the spread of bovine TB in cattle”. It says on page 2 that the firearms that are authorised are rifles and shotguns.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. That is a point of clarification, not an intervention. The hon. Lady has made those remarks in the wrong place.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

It is important to stick with the facts and what is said in the documents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) said the Government had come to their decision through a predetermined sense that a cull is the answer, and he made it clear that the scientific consensus is firmly against a cull as part of a BTB eradication programme. He made the point that a cull could be bad for farmers if it were to make the spread of BTB worse.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) put a coherent alternative strategy with great knowledge and insight, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who noted areas of commonality between the two Front-Bench teams, although we are divided on the issue of the cull.

The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) has expertise from her position as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. She made a rational, cool-headed contribution, for which I thank her. I thank her, too, for the report, which we will study over the next few days.

The hon. Members for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) and for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) spoke passionately on behalf of farmers, as did the hon. Members for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) and for Sherwood, as, too, did the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) in speaking for the Ulster Farmers Union—and, as an aside, we note that the various farming unions around the UK are possibly the only unions not routinely denigrated by this Government.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) described the Government as intransigent on this matter, and advocated an alternative approach. The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) spoke with great knowledge and in great detail of a different approach that he hopes to pursue in his area and said the balance of best-informed scientific opinion indicates the Government are taking a high risk by having this cull. He made the point that we cannot draw a direct analogy with possums and deer—and not even with Ireland, either. He talked about the wider effect on the rural economy and his work with Professor Rosie Woodroffe on badger vaccinations.

The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) spoke bravely and with an independent mind, showing again that this is not a party issue. There are differences of opinion within parties. This should be a science-led issue, and she set out why a cull is wrong-headed and why it could make things worse.

What we have from this Government is not evidence-based policy, but policy-based evidence. As leading scientists have observed, the Government have decided on the policy then sought to cherry-pick the evidence to back it up. Bad science is worse than no science at all, so I will try to confine my words to the science and the evidence, strip out the politics and the polemics, and see where the science leads us. Our argument, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) has said, is that this cull is bad for the farmers, bad for badgers and bad for the taxpayer. A cull could actually worsen TB in badger and cattle populations. Field trials showed that although a structured cull could reduce the increase—I repeat, reduce the increase; take the top off the rise—in bovine TB by 16% after nine years, in the short term it could spread the disease further afield as badgers move from the shooting. Hard boundaries or not, there is a risk that the disease will spread through culling, a risk heightened by this untried and untested approach of licensed shooting.

A cull could cost more than an alternative, such as badger vaccination, not least because of the policing costs—the costs the Government were reluctant to reveal, yet which were completely foreseeable. Dr Rosie Woodroffe’s analysis takes the Government’s own cost estimates of badger vaccination at £2,250 per square kilometre per year, compared with the proposed culling costs at £l,000 per square kilometre per year, but adds the policing costs for the cull, which are £l,429 per square kilometre per year. So vaccination becomes the cheaper option. That analysis does not include the additional costs incurred by culling as a result of performing expensive surveys and carrying out monitoring, both before and after. The Government have tried to promote this cull as a cheap solution, but we are finding out again that cheap solutions often turn out to be very expensive indeed. It is the old adage of, “You buy cheap, you pay twice.”

Badger vaccination could be an effective alternative to the cull. We acknowledge the need to do more work on vaccination, but we already know from tests that vaccination reduces the transmission of M. bovis to other badgers and, combined with typical badger mortality of three to five years, there is good reason to expect the impacts on reducing transmission to cattle to be comparable to those from culling. Moreover, because vaccination does not lead to perturbation and is shown to reduce the proportion of infected badgers, rather than increasing it, as culling does and is proven to do, vaccination should have greater long-term prospects for TB eradication. In addition, because vaccination does not prompt protest and does not incur policing costs, it is cheaper to implement than culling. So was it not a great and capital error for the Government to cancel five of the six vaccination trials, instead of using them to test alternative ways forward? We should be fast-tracking the development of oral vaccines now. It is a bad decision, Ministers, and it is bad science.

We need to improve bovine TB testing, improve farm biosecurity, and strengthen cattle movement restrictions. The Government are considering strengthening cattle movements and biosecurity further, a recognition, I hope, that there is much, much more to be done—I hope that the hon. Member for Sherwood will note that the Government are saying that themselves. Professor John Bourne, the vet who led the 10-year, £50 million trial of badger culling under controlled conditions and who has first-hand knowledge of the existing regime, has stated:

“The cattle controls in operation at the moment are totally ineffective”,

with the inaccuracy of bovine TB tests meaning that herds testing negative are actually harbouring the disease—Ministers will know that. He states:

“It’s an absolute nonsense that farmers can move cattle willy-nilly after only two tests. Why won’t politicians implement proper cattle movement controls?”

In short, truly robust risk-based cattle movement control in the UK is not in place, and it is an imperative.

Professor Bourne’s data analysis on the deep and lasting infection in our cattle herds is comprehensive, utterly compelling and utterly stark. So what does the wider informed scientific community say about the cull? Eminent zoologist at Oxford university, president-elect of the British Science Association and, it is fair to say, expert on this subject, Lord Krebs, has criticised the Government for a misleading use of science in support of the cull. He has described the cull by shooting as a “crazy” idea. Thirty of Britain’s finest animal disease scientists wrote in opposition to the cull, describing it as “mindless”. Former Government chief scientific adviser Lord Robert May has said:

“It is very clear that the government’s policy does not make sense.”

Well, at least last October the Government were able to turn to their own chief scientist for support, and I urge hon. Members to listen carefully to what Professor Sir John Beddington said:

“I continue to engage with Defra on the evidence base concerning the development of bovine TB policy. I am content that the evidence base, including uncertainties and evidence gaps, has been communicated effectively to ministers.”

Yes, Minister, “Gaps and uncertainties. Continue to engage. Communicated to ministers”—it is hardly a ringing endorsement.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield has said already, DEFRA Ministers are pressing ahead with a cull based on the unproven shooting of badgers despite leading scientists warning against that “untested and risky approach”. A cull would be bad for badgers, bad for farmers and bad for taxpayers.

We have called this vote to appeal to all parliamentarians who believe in science-led policy, not policy-led science, and who truly want to turn this disease around and eradicate bovine TB. We need improvements to the testing regime, more transparency about herds that have had TB breakdown, a more stringent evidence-led, risk-based policy to manage cattle movements better, urgency from Ministers to develop cost-effective badger vaccination to tackle the disease in wildlife and determined efforts to develop a vaccine to tackle TB in cattle.

It is not too late to halt the cull, and to work with farmers, wildlife groups and others to put in place a strategy that will truly seek to eradicate bovine TB. I urge Members to join us tonight in the Lobby.