Badger Cull

James Paice Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I will make progress, then I will take some interventions.

There is huge concern among scientists over the lack of rigour in the design, implementation, monitoring and efficacy of the culls. The proportion of badgers that are infected with bovine TB is not, as the Secretary of State claims, significant. In the RBCT, it was one in nine or about 12%.

I come now to another significant difference between the pilot culls and Labour’s RBCT.

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

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way and apologise for missing her opening remarks. She is right that perturbation is a key issue, but she is not right to say that the Independent Scientific Group trials were based on hard boundaries. The fact is that the areas had to be exactly 100 sq km, otherwise they would not have been comparable. The boundaries therefore had to be accepted largely as they were. The difference with the current culls is that they do not have a maximum size, so the zone can be chosen to meet whatever good hard boundaries can be found and steps can be taken to minimise perturbation. The net benefit should therefore be much higher than was achieved in the ISG trials.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. More than 20 right hon. and hon. Members want to contribute to the debate, so some self-discipline about the length of interventions from all Members, including knights of the realm, would be greatly appreciated. I call Mary Creagh.