Badgers and Bovine TB

James Paice Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Glindon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but the Government’s proposals on culling are not being monitored and have no scientific fact behind them. The vaccine trials are ongoing and should be pursued. Unfortunately, the Government closed down five of the six trials, thus limiting what can be done, but they themselves are going to put £20 million into vaccine development.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

Clearly, there will be different views on a number of issues in this debate, and I welcome that. I should like, however, to clarify the situation on vaccines, so that the debate can progress on a positive, factual basis. As has been said, a licensed injectable vaccine is being used by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. However, that is not a trial. The trust is undertaking a programme of vaccinating badgers on its own land and, as I say, is not carrying out a trial.

On the six projects to which the hon. Lady referred, yes, I cancelled five of them, but they were not trials either. They were called vaccine deployment projects and were purely designed to work out the mechanics of catching and vaccinating badgers and to train the operators. Those projects were not trials to establish whether the vaccine works; we know it works to a large extent, which is why it is licensed.

Forgive me for taking so long, Mr Crausby, but I think these points are helpful. An oral vaccine has not been developed. There have been a number of attempts to do so in New Zealand, as well as in this country, but we are still many years away from it. Just for the record, a cattle vaccine is more imminent but, as no doubt we will discuss, we have major problems with the EU in getting agreement to use it.

[Mrs Glindon]

I thank the Minister for his valuable intervention and for clarifying the issue. I hope his comments will be useful to the rest of the debate.

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[Mrs Glindon]

The chief veterinary adviser based what he said on scientific evidence and his professional judgment was not swayed in the way that the hon. Gentleman has suggested.

[Mr Paice]

On the science, has the hon. Lady read the document on the DEFRA website that states:

“Bovine TB - Key conclusions from the meeting of scientific experts, held at DEFRA on 4th April 2011”?

I will not read out all the names listed on that document, but there are about 10 of them, including all the scientists who were involved in the trials and in many other aspects of the matter. The science is agreed. There should be no dispute about the science; indeed, hon. Members have already discussed the science. The document that I am referring to clearly sets out the figures and refers to 16%, which has been quoted. That is the science; the issue is what conclusion is derived from it. Has she read that document?

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[Mrs Glindon]

Other important measures must also be upheld if we wish to curtail the incidence of bovine TB.

[Mr Paice]

Just for the record, so that the debate is based on facts, no testing is done at livestock markets. Let us be clear, because if we are going to debate the matter, let us base the debate on fact, not fiction.

[Mrs Glindon]

I thank the Minister for his intervention, but I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) is representing her constituents as truthfully as she can in this debate.

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[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

I shall try to answer most of the questions of the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) and, indeed, other hon. Members. I offer apologies to any hon. Member whom I do not answer fully. However, the answers to several of the hon. Gentleman’s questions are in the documents that we have published. He has asked me questions the answers to which he can discover, if he has not already read them.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon). I have several times appeared before the Select Committee of which she is a member, and I recognise her commitment to the issues. She began with a superb explanation of the situation, and said that levels of TB are unacceptable, and that badgers are widespread and densely populated, which is perfectly correct. Arguably, that population density is the kernel of the problem. She referred, as other hon. Members have done, to the random badger control trials and the independent scientific group. I should emphasise, of course, that it was the previous Conservative Government who appointed Lord Krebs to look into the issue. The setting up of the trials by the Labour Government was the result of his recommendation—it happened in a cross-electoral period.

Despite the jibes of the hon. Member for Ogmore about Jim Hacker—and I remind the hon. Gentleman that he went on to be Prime Minister—I do not believe that doing nothing should be an option. The hon. Member for North Tyneside rightly referred to the comment of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that if we do not do anything, the problem will cost us £1 billion in 10 years. That is the reality, but worse than the costs is the continued spread of the disease into parts of the country where currently it does not exist. That is the fundamental issue, which has not been addressed by anyone. The hon. Lady also referred to other countries, such as New Zealand and the United States; she did not mention Australia, where the same point is true: they are all working on vaccines. However, they have all culled the wildlife that was a reservoir of the disease.

Much has been made of the issue of the science and the ISG. I am sure that time will stop me going through all the detail, but let us be clear: the figure of 16% that has been mentioned has been signed up to in the document on the Government’s website. That is signed by Lord Krebs, Professor Christl Donnelly, Lord May and a number of other eminent scientists. They all agree about it. The document contains a clear statement about what happened in the cull zone. That is after nine and a half years, so, to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) about there being no new science, there is new science, because we have measurements from beyond the end of the period in question, and beyond the point when the previous Secretary of State made his decision. The new science shows that the incidence of TB in the culling zones fell by up to 34%. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) mentioned, the incidence in the perturbation ring went up, but then went down and reverted to the norm. That is the new evidence we have.

It is perfectly true, as the document states and as has been repeated today, that we are not proposing simply to replicate the ISG approach, because we propose shooting, and we propose that farmers, while not literally doing the work themselves, should be responsible for having it done. The two are variations, and some scientists suggest that what is envisaged might not be as effective, but that is why we are conducting two pilots. We have announced—although we have not made the final decision yet—our proposal to conduct two pilots, to establish effectiveness: whether it is possible to cull 70% of badgers in a six-week period; and whether it is humane. I cannot remember which hon. Member challenged me on who would check what is going on; but there will be independent monitors on site, watching badgers being shot. There will be post mortems, so we shall examine the effectiveness and humanity of what happens, and of course safety. Those are the variations from the ISG, and that is why we should seriously consider conducting two trials.

The argument keeps coming back to the science, and the science is the results from the ISG. Everything else since then is conjecture, whether from Lord Krebs, me or any hon. Member. To answer the question about empirical evidence, there is no empirical evidence—but we are trying to find it. That is why we propose two trials. Lord Krebs has no more basis for his conjectures than I do.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

rose—

[Mr Paice]

No, I am sorry; I cannot give way.

I must emphasise to those hon. Members who challenged on the shooting issue that shooting wildlife, whether they agree with it or not—and let us not get into the emotions of it—is a common practice. Foxes and deer are commonly shot, and the surrounding animal communities are not shot in the process.

[Angela Smith]

rose—

[Mr Paice]

No; I am not giving way.

Secondly, we propose that badgers be attracted to a baited area where it would safe to shoot, and trained marksmen—not trained by farmers, as one hon. Member said, but trained and authenticated by external bodies—would do the shooting. There is a lot of emotion involved. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), who has left the Chamber, spoke a diatribe of nonsense about this issue.

On perturbation, the ISG rightly based its conclusions on its studies, from which two fundamental points arose. First, we have addressed the costs issue by proposing that farmers do the work; it is up to them. The decision whether it is worth it for farmers is not for the Government to make; it is for the individual farmers. Secondly, we have clearly stipulated that we will expect those groups of farmers to tell us what they will do to minimise perturbation.

There are several issues. First, we believe that the applications will be for a much bigger area than 150 sq km and that it is more likely to be 300 sq km. That means that the perturbation zone will be proportionately smaller, which helps considerably. Secondly, we will encourage and expect farmers to bring forward hard boundaries that badgers cannot cross. They will be able to use buffer ring vaccination, if they choose to do so. As an aside, I should say that we wholly support vaccination, using the current methodology, if people want to do it.

The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) made a sound speech, although I did not agree with all its conclusions, but the issue of borders is clearly dealt with. Tuberculosis is not an issue for Scotland, which does not have it. There is virtually none in the north of England; so we can forget that. The issue for Wales has been clearly set out. The document that we have already published states that if there is a zone that goes within 2 km of the border with Wales, the Welsh Environment and Countryside Department will have to be consulted. I suspect—although this should not be taken as gospel—that it is highly unlikely that a trial would happen so close to the Welsh border.

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) about biosecurity, more stringent testing and overdue testing. We propose to reduce or abandon compensation where farmers are overdue. She asked me about numbers, and I agree with her that the figures she extrapolated are well out of sync. We anticipate that about 1,000 to 1,500 badgers would be killed, as a total over the four years, for every 150 sq km area.

I suspect, Mr Chope, that I have just about run out of time to address the key issues, although I hope that I have covered them. The subject is important and I have tried to deal with it without emotion. It is easy for both sides of the debate to get emotive. If there are any points I have not covered, I ask hon. Members to write to me and I shall do my best to answer.