Badger Cull

James Paice Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady easily reads out what the report says, and she is right that it says “substantial reductions”. But is she not interested in more than substantial reduction, which is elimination of this awful disease? If so, does she agree that even Professor Bourne, who headed the study, has said that it quite clearly cannot be eradicated without eradicating it in badgers?

[Caroline Lucas]

Were we to eradicate every single badger, we would certainly eradicate bovine TB, but we would also eradicate a very important species.

The ISG concluded that

“badger culling can make no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in Britain.”

That is the conclusion of what the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs itself says is the most scientifically robust trial that has ever taken place in the UK. We want policy to be based on the science, which is why we should be looking at what the ISG says.

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[Andrew Miller]

There is a chicken and egg argument and a serious challenge facing us. My concern is that the House is not taking the issue of zoonotic conditions seriously enough. We must take a much more mature view on the inevitable consequences of the greater mobility of people and of animals in the food chain while they are alive; otherwise, we shall be dealing with not only bovine TB but other conditions. I hope that when Ministers press the Treasury on the comprehensive spending view they will pass on the message that, without sensible investment, we will have this debate time and again and that, even if all badgers were culled, farmers would still be disadvantaged by this dreadful disease.

It is easy to criticise one side or the other of the argument, but even DEFRA’s nine-point summary states:

“If culling is undertaken, it should be in addition to, not instead of, existing bTB control measures in cattle, which should be maintained and strengthened.”

I have yet to hear a single word from a Minister on the strengthening of the regime.

[Sir James Paice]

Notwithstanding Mr Speaker’s earlier injunction, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that if he had been paying attention on Tuesday or had read any farming magazines in the past two or three weeks he would know that on 1 January another big tranche of measures will be introduced to which farmers object because they are so tough.

[Andrew Miller]

The hon. Gentleman speaks of a big tranche, but I have not seen research and the necessary investment, without which we shall be making a dreadful mistake.

I shall use the time remaining to me to refer to the situation in my constituency. The Cheshire wildlife trust, which the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) mentioned when the statement was made on Tuesday, is funding its own vaccination campaign and calling for investment, which is a good move. I have a note from my constituent, Mr Huw Rowlands, a farmer, in which he says:

“Nobody can have missed the controversy raging about culling badgers. Quite how the proposed operations can be described as a cull is beyond me; my dictionary defines a cull as being ‘to take out inferior or surplus animals from a flock.’ We have badgers on the farm which to date have not caused problems”.

He opposes culling but supports the Cheshire wildlife trust’s campaign. By the way, his farm is part of the higher level stewardship scheme, which is supported by DEFRA, and I recommend using Rowlands’s farm to buy red poll meat, if I may advertise on its behalf.

The opinions of local people, including farmers, suggest that there are other ways to address this problem. It is a very challenging one and nobody can stand here and honestly say that they have the 100% correct solution, as the thoughtful speech preceding mine well illustrated. Unless we see serious investment in scientific research into zoonotic conditions, we will not see the eradication of the problem. Without such actions, we will simply delay a debate that will have to take place in years to come.

This debate is, I suppose, about what happens during the interregnum. I urge the Government to think seriously about making that kind of investment during the interregnum; if we do not make it, we would be quite right to criticise the Government for failing in their duty to care not just for the animals on our land but for human beings, too.

[Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I start by reminding the House of my declared interests in this matter. I would like to comment briefly on this week’s announcement and statement, but I want to spend most of my time trying to explain how the policy that we are debating was devised. I think I am the only person in the Chamber who was involved right through that development work. I am delighted that it has been taken on by the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who is in his place on the Front Bench.

I think, in the circumstances, the Government were right this week to make the decision to postpone the cull. I regret that those circumstances arose. The main reason is that it is far too late in the year to start a cull. Badgers are going into semi-hibernation, slowing down and are not as active, so fulfilling a cull of any size would have been made much more difficult. In my view, it should have happened in the summer, notwithstanding the Olympics, and it should certainly have started by 1 October. I am concerned that the groups of farmers and their contractors were not ready to go when the first licence was issued in September.

I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) refer to the European context. She is absolutely right: the European auditors came here over a year ago to investigate how we go about this matter. She is right, too, to make the point that we get considerable sums of money from Europe. What she was unaware of, understandably, is the fact that this time last year, the European Commission threatened to withdraw our funding because it was not satisfied that we were taking sufficient actions, including dealing with badgers. I had to go to Brussels to make a personal plea to the then commissioner to sustain Europe’s support of our programme.

It is interesting that several Members have referred to the situation in Wales. More recently, the Commission has said that the Welsh decision to stop the proposed cull damages the likely fulfilment of its eradication plan. There should be no doubt about the European position. I was as angry as the hon. Member for Bristol East about some of the reports of what was happening on the ground. That is why we toughened up right across the board, as she was kind enough to say, and it is partly why we agreed to this latest tranche of further restrictions, including a significant extension of annual testing into new parts of the country where the problem did not exist. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister has endorsed the position that I took.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I happen to represent one of the areas worst affected by TB. I want to commend my right hon. Friend as one of the most outstanding Agriculture Ministers, who knows a great deal about this subject. Does he acknowledge that there is not only human misery in every case where a farmer loses cattle, but a huge economic cost to all these biosecurity measures, such as pre-movement testing, reactor testing and all the additional measures now announced? Those come at a huge economic cost for farmers.

[Sir James Paice]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Several Members, including the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) who introduced the debate, referred to cattle-to-cattle transmission, which is of course a major factor—nobody denies it—that has to be properly addressed. The tranche of new measures to which I referred a minute ago is the third tranche; it started under my watch, but I had already introduced two tranches of much tougher measures. To be honest, the previous Government had done the pre-movement testing as well. The suggestion that cattle-to-cattle movement is not being addressed is nonsense. The other measures are hugely important, but we come down to the fact that no country in the world has got rid of bovine TB—I mean get rid of, not just reduce—without addressing the reservoir of relevant wildlife. In this country, as in Ireland and France, this means badgers.

[Angela Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman’s point has been made repeatedly over the last few days, but does he not agree that we are not comparing like with like here, in that the methodology used in other countries to deal with the problem has been quite different?

[Sir James Paice]

I accept that, not least because the reservoir involves different species of animals. Clearly, we do not deal with badgers in the same way as we deal with wild buffalo in the Northern Territory of Australia. That is blatantly clear, but if we are to address the issue of the reservoir of badgers, there are only two ways of proceeding. Either we vaccinate them—I shall come back to that—or we have to cull them.

I hope that the whole House accepts that no Minister from any political party wants to court the unpopularity or, indeed, face the security challenge caused by this issue. Let us be frank: I, the Minister, other Ministers and officials are all under special security arrangements because of the threats from a small minority of opponents. None of us wants any of that. If there were a better way, we would adopt it. To pretend that we are somehow not interested in vaccines is, I have to say, absurd. The fact is that we have a licensed injectable badger vaccine; no one has mentioned that the Government are making some money available to pay for it where people want to use it. If wildlife trusts want to continue to roll it out, that is fine, but the costs of rolling it out on a national scale are so incredible that I think it is wrong to suggest it is a panacea.

The hon. Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) referred to an oral vaccine for badgers. We believed this would be likely for many years, but I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that, for two reasons, it is now further away than ever. First, the intellectual property will be difficult to get hold of; it is owned by a New Zealand institution. More importantly, the promising first tests have never been repeated. All the tests carried out showed much worse problems. That is because the vaccine is being destroyed in badgers’ acidic stomachs.

On cattle vaccine, I can tell the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion that, yes, it has been developed and we know, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said the other day, that it is not very effective, although it has an element of effectiveness—about 60%. Yes, too, the DIVA test—differentiation of infected from vaccinated animals—is well on the way to being perfected. The hon. Lady is right about all that, but neither of them is licensed or officially proved and they still have to go through all the processes, which takes time, however much effort is put into it. What the hon. Lady seriously underplayed, however, is the European context when it comes to the cattle vaccine. I can assure her that, almost from day one of taking office, or within a matter of weeks, I pressed the Commission on this issue. I remember talking to the then Commissioner John Dalli, from D G SANCO, who said, “When you have your licensed vaccine and your licensed DIVA test, then we will start thinking about it, but don’t forget that it is only you, Ireland and possibly France that want this. All the other member states will be against it. Lifting the ban will take many years, so the question is what can be done in the meantime.”

[Caroline Lucas]

The case that the right hon. Gentleman describes is not the same as the discussions that I know have taken place at the European Commission, with very different messages coming back. Of course Britain is the only one that wants this vaccine at the moment, because we are the only ones who have had to face cattle TB this badly, but the suggestion that it is years away is simply not the case. I have in front of me a text from DEFRA’s own website, which talks about things happening by the end of the year. [Interruption.]

[Sir James Paice]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order, Sir James. I will make the decisions, although it is good of you to offer advice. I am sure that the hon. Lady recognises that she has had a good run already; we ought to make sure that everybody else has a chance to express their views.

[Sir James Paice]

In the limited amount of time that is now available, let me deal with the issue of science. Everyone, including the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, recognises that Lord Krebs and countless others accept that the randomised badger culling trials showed a 16% reduction. There is a great deal of debate about whether that is sufficient justification, but let us start there.

As has already been said, the study group concluded that culling badgers could “play no meaningful part”, but we thought it necessary to delve deeper into the research and to establish what was behind its conclusions. First, that 16% is a net figure. In the culling zone the gain was more like 30%, but it was offset by the problem of an increase in incidence in the perturbation area outside the zone. Some effort was made to reduce perturbation in the original trials, but it was nothing like the effort that is being imposed on the groups as a condition of their licence applications. If perturbation can be minimised, the net effect will be radically increased, although we do not know by how much because that has not yet been done. Let me stress again, however, that the 16% is a net figure which includes a problem outside the zone, and that that problem can be addressed.

As for the “meaningfulness” conclusion, it relates to the costs incurred by the RBCT. We all know that the trials were hugely expensive, but those are the only figures that we have to work on. We wanted to find a way of carrying out a cull more cheaply. We opted for controlled shooting as the predominant method, although cages would have to be used as well. I remind the House that controlled shooting of foxes, rabbits and, more recently, some species of deer takes place almost daily—or nightly—out in the countryside. To suggest that it is brand new is nonsense.

We addressed those two conclusions, and tried to find ways of achieving the same result through slightly different methods. Let me finally remind the House that these are pilots—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The right hon. Gentleman’s time is up.

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[Nic Dakin]

As we have heard, the weight of scientific evidence goes in a certain direction, but some scientific voices fall outside that. The assumption about proximity and the fact that badger populations in some parts of the country are infected, is based on the balance of fact, rather than on scientific evidence. The history of badger culling to control TB in the UK has, in reality, been one of abject failure. Culling has gone on since 1971 although gassing was abandoned in 1980 as it was considered inhumane. The culling policy was not considered effective and was replaced by the so-called interim strategy in 1986. That followed the Zuckerman and Dunnet reviews which, while supporting badger culling at the time, acknowledged that there were insufficient data on the whole approach to badgers.

The interim strategy, which was based on identifying diseased badgers where there had been a cattle outbreak and then killing the whole sett, was seen largely as a placebo for farmers, rather than to tackle the real issue. It was a complete failure and disease outbreaks continued to rise and spread to other areas of the country throughout the period. I fear that the current Government strategy appears to be repeating that error, albeit confined to smaller areas.

As we have heard, in 1997 the incoming Labour Government stopped randomised culling and oversaw the establishment of a detailed scientific trial introduced by Professor John Krebs and overseen by the independent scientific group, chaired by Professor John Bourne. The trial demonstrated the complexities of the link between badgers and disease in cattle, and, importantly, showed that culling could actually make the disease worse by increasing spread and incidence of TB on the perimeter of trial areas. We have heard from hon. Members on both sides of the debate a recognition that those scientific facts are true.

My hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) spelled out clearly that the Labour Government would have gone ahead with culls had the scientific evidence supported it. Since it did not, however, the process did not go ahead. These matters involve closely balanced determinations.

In the summary of his report, Professor John Bourne states that

“although badgers contribute significantly to the cattle disease in some parts of the country, no practicable method of badger culling can reduce the incidence of cattle TB to any meaningful extent, and several culling approaches may make matters worse… rigidly applied control measures targeted at cattle can reverse the rising incidence of disease, and halt its geographical spread.”

Two weeks ago, that was echoed in a letter published in The Observer from 30 leading scientists, including Lord Krebs and Professor John Bourne:

“As scientists with expertise in managing wildlife and wildlife diseases, we believe the complexities of TB transmission mean that licensed culling risks increasing cattle TB rather than reducing it.”

As we have heard, that is the last thing we all want. They continued:

“We are concerned that badger culling risks becoming a costly distraction from nationwide TB control.”

[Sir James Paice]

Is this not the crucial point? Yes, those scientists have quoted their expertise, but the fact is that nobody actually knows. There is no science to demonstrate whether controlled shooting will effectively reduce the population by 70%, or whether it is humane. There are differing views, but there is no science because—I readily grant this—it has never been done. I believe, however, that it is right to carry out a pilot test to find out whether it will work. Is that not a sensible way forward? Those scientists, however esteemed they are, know no more than the hon. Gentleman or I about whether the cull will actually work. Why can we not find out? It might work.

[Nic Dakin]

The right hon. Gentleman did some good work as Minister of State, and I welcomed his contribution when he drew attention to measures that will be introduced in January on husbandry and biodiversity. Those measures were driven forward under his watch, which must be applauded.

The right hon. Gentleman puts his finger on the nub of the matter, but there is a danger that these trials will create more TB in those areas, which is what evidence from previous trials appears to suggest. There is therefore a risk in proceeding with them, as well as in not doing so. The opportunity created by this pause allows a vigorous examination of those risks, so that we can come to the appropriate answer. I think both the right hon. Gentleman and I would agree that that is the right way to proceed.

We have heard about the things to which the Government should be applying their effort and mind. I have mentioned the biodiversity and husbandry measures that have been introduced, and we should apply further pressure in those areas, working with the farming community and others. We must try to proceed with the DIVA test, and ensure that work on a cattle vaccination, as well as a badger vaccination, progresses as fast as possible. DEFRA should be working urgently with the European Union to permit commercial use of the vaccine. We need the Government to apply their energy. The pause provides them with the opportunity to put their shoulder to the wheel and work harder in that direction, and therefore get an outcome that does not risk further increases in TB but tackles the problem in a way that everybody can support. Not only is the science against going ahead with the cull; public opinion is also against it. We need to ensure that we take this opportunity to drive things forward in the best possible way.

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[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to have an opportunity to speak in this important debate, and to follow the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), whom I admire immensely, but disagree with entirely on this issue.

It is an incredibly emotive issue, and one that has caused me to rethink my position. I had originally been in favour of the cull. I had—and still have—enormous sympathy for the farmers who are affected by bovine TB. There is not just the monetary cost to the farm, but the immense strain on farmers. That should not be underestimated. So when the culling of badgers was announced as a means of eradicating bovine TB, it seemed to be a sensible solution. However, it became clear that the science did not stack up. As someone who is rather proud of their track record on animal welfare issues, I began to feel uncomfortable with my original position. Having looked into the issue in more detail—which I am glad I did—I am convinced that the badger cull is absolutely the wrong way to tackle bovine TB.

The issue is very sensitive. It affects farmers’ lives and livelihoods, and often their mental health, but it is an issue that has been tainted by misinformation. For example, it is often stated that the eradication of TB in badgers would lead to the eradication of the disease in cattle, but that is simply not the case. Cattle-to-cattle transmission would continue, as demonstrated in low incidence areas such as Kent, where there is evidence that cattle-to-cattle transmission accounts for 80% or more of cases.

While there is an indisputable link between badgers and bovine TB, many other animals also carry TB: deer, wild boar, foxes, alpacas and even cats and dogs. We need to be clear, therefore: instead of saying “No other country in the world has eradicated TB in cattle without tackling it in wildlife”, the Government should state, “No other country in the world has eradicated TB in cattle.” Therefore, we need to be realistic about what precisely a badger cull would achieve.

Other cattle-farming countries have learned lessons from attempted culls. In Australia, Asian buffalo—an introduced alien species thought to be spreading TB—were culled by shooting from helicopters. However, TB in cattle was reduced only by draconian testing and the culling of cattle, with whole herds slaughtered—that effectively kept TB under control for many decades. In New Zealand, brush-tailed possums, another introduced species, were poisoned for decades—that went alongside draconian cattle-testing regimes. However, it has since been realised that poisoning is unsustainable, and scientists have recommended the vaccination of possums instead. In the USA, white-tailed deer in Michigan were found to be sharing feeding stations with cattle, thus allowing TB transmission. The simple solution was to separate the deer from the feeding stations.

The proposed badger cull will not eradicate bovine TB from our cattle. Our leading scientists note that it will reduce the incidence by, at best, 16%, so a long-term, large-scale cull of badgers would leave 84% of the problem remaining. I heard what my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) said about that figure being 16% net, with a more likely figure of 30%, but that still means that 70% of the problem remains. In addition, the Government are not proposing a long-term, large-scale cull; they are proposing two pilots in areas where they do not know how many badgers there are. The original estimates were that it would be necessary to cull only between 500 and 800 badgers in each of the two areas, thus achieving the 70% culling target. However, in the space of a weekend that number was increased to more than 5,000 in the two areas—that represents a massive increase in the badger population in just a few days, and if badgers are breeding like rabbits, we are facing an entirely different problem.

As Lord Krebs eloquently told the upper House:

“What this underlines is that if the policy is to cull at least 70% of the badgers, we have to know what the starting number is. This variation from just over 1,000 to more than 5,000 in the space of a few days underlines how difficult it is for us to have confidence that the Government will be able to instruct the farmers to cull 70% if they do not know the starting numbers.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 October 2012; Vol. 740, c. 148.]

That is why our scientists and animal welfare activists, and many, many of my constituents, believe the proposals to cull badgers when an accurate figure cannot be circulated—leaving aside the welfare issue of indiscriminately shooting badgers, 75% of which will be TB-free—are simply mindless.

Other nations have not simply resorted to culling, but have looked at alternative options. Wales, where most of the UK incidences occur, has decided to vaccinate, not cull. The Minister will have heard, and will continue to hear, calls for a stronger focus on vaccination, and he needs to go back to the Department and reinstate the five—out of six—vaccination trials cancelled when we took office.

[Sir James Paice]

As it was me who cancelled those “trials”, I feel that I need to respond. May I make it absolutely clear to my hon. Friend and to the House that they were not “trials”, as she has just described them, but vaccine deployment projects? They were nothing to do with testing vaccines; they simply sought to work out how to trap, inject and so on. They were about the mechanics. I decided, rightly or wrongly, that we did not need six of these things, costing £7 million or £8 million, and that everything could be learned from one. That is why we did what we did.

[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention, but I still think that we need to put more investment into our trials programme, in order to learn more.

Reactive culling does not work. It will spread the disease—evidence suggests that it may even increase the incidence of the disease. So it is clear that the Government need to listen to the scientists and rethink their strategy.

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[Mary Creagh]

The Secretary of State got his Sisyphus mixed up with his Tantalus. I think he will find that he has undertaken the labours of Hercules in DEFRA—I will not go any further on that, but the Augean stables spring to mind. I agree with what my hon. Friend said, because I am concerned that the scientists are being ripped to pieces on this, and the situation is difficult. She rightly says that there is a scientific method: the scientists are paid to come up with solutions, and then we try to roll them out and test them in field conditions. That is what needs to be done.

I have asked a lot of parliamentary questions. The Secretary of State asked 600, but perhaps some of his data are less than fresh. My data are pretty fresh. Last year, I asked the Government how many cattle herds breakdowns would be prevented over nine years if the cull went ahead. The answer came back that using a 150 km area, 47 cattle breakdowns would be prevented over nine years. So if we double the cull area and if it was to go ahead in a 300 sq km area, 94 herd breakdowns would be prevented. That, again, is not a fantastic result for the huge investment involved in this cull.

There has been huge concern from the scientists about the lack of Government rigour in the design, implementation, monitoring and efficacy of these culls. We know that there would be no post-mortem testing of whether the badgers had bovine TB, but there would be post-mortem testing to see whether they had been shot cleanly. So those who are interested in science, and who want to know how much of a vector in this disease the badgers are, will again have to go back to Labour’s cull, which showed that only 12% of the animals actually carried the disease.

[Sir James Paice]

I want to challenge the hon. Lady again on these figures. I did not dispute, in my speech, the 16% figure, and I do not believe anyone else has done. That is the figure agreed by all the scientists. I want her to confirm that that 16% is the net overall figure, and that if we could reduce or even eliminate perturbation, the net figure is bound to be much higher than that. That is part of the objective in the design of these pilots.

[Mary Creagh]

The scientists gave a range of between 12% and 16% if the cull was carried out under exactly the same conditions as Labour’s RBCT. The cull that the right hon. Gentleman proposed differed significantly, as it would have taken place over six weeks rather than two and would have involved free shooting rather than cage-trapping and shooting. As any GCSE science student knows, as soon as we depart from the methodology, we immediately increase the range of the differentials in the results. That is why the scientists were concerned.

The lack of rigour in the methodology was shown in Tuesday’s announcement. A cull that depends on killing at least 70% of the animals was about to begin with no reliable estimate of how many needed to be shot. On 19 July 2011, I asked a question in Parliament on that exact point, because it had occurred to me, a mere humble member of Her Majesty’s Opposition. I received the answer

“there is no precise knowledge of the size of the badger population”.—[Official Report, 19 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 815.]

That prompts the question of why Ministers did not ask that. Why did they not start the count then so that farmers could plan properly? Instead, they allowed the farmers to submit their own estimates of the numbers, thought, “Mm, that looks a bit low,” and left it until September to go out into the field and conduct the analysis that should have been done a year ago. I want Ministers to tell us whether those numbers were calibrated to test their accuracy. It seems clear to me that they were not.