Animal Welfare (Non-stun Slaughter)
James Paice Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Hollobone
Yes; one of the advantages of speaking first in a debate such as this is the many helpful interventions from informed Members that flag up items coming later in the speech. The hon. Lady has mentioned one of those. I support mandatory CCTV in all slaughterhouses. There have been some disgraceful episodes, which we have all seen, of animals being slaughtered incorrectly, in huge distress and much pain. No one, whatever side of the debate they are on, would support that. Having CCTV in slaughterhouses would seem to be a helpful weapon against such abuse.
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I wanted to pick up on my hon. Friend’s suggestion of a four-bar label. After he listed stunned and non-stunned, which I would support, he listed halal and kosher. I draw his attention to the distinct difference between those two. All kosher meat has to be killed by the shechita method, which is non-stunned, but not all halal meat is non-stunned. As he said, for 80% of halal meat the animal is electrically stunned first and then done in the normal way. Therefore, if he were to put halal on a label, he would be inviting people to discriminate on religious grounds as opposed to the welfare grounds of stunned or non-stunned. I want to make him and colleagues aware that we must be careful. We are talking about welfare, which has nothing to do with religion as he said in his opening comments.
Mr Hollobone
My right hon. Friend knows far more about this subject than I do, not least because he was a distinguished Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He makes a good point, but perhaps I did not explain myself as well as I might have done, which is a common failing of mine.
Personally, I have no problem with labelling food in a religious way. If my constituents went to the supermarket and saw packets of meat on the shelves marked with four boxes—stunned, non-stunned, halal and kosher—some meat might have ticks in the stunned and halal boxes, which is fine, and other products might have ticks in the halal and non-stunned boxes, which is also fine. It is helpful to give consumers that level of information and I do not see what the problem is with labelling food halal and kosher. After all, a Muslim constituent who wants to eat halal meat will be looking for that halal label. A Jewish constituent who wants to eat kosher food sees the shechita label—
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I suspect that if we asked hon. Members of this House, I would not be seen as someone who was particularly squeamish or had too much of a conscience, given my agricultural credentials, which have already been referred to. I have to say, however, that the killing of an animal without stunning is, in my view, repugnant. It should be stopped, in an ideal world, but I accept that there are constraints on taking that final step. I say that not because I have read about the process or been pressurised by various people, but because I took the trouble when I was a Minister to go and watch it happening. It was clear to me that what was often referred to as religious slaughter—unstunned slaughter—was a political issue of some importance, so my private office organised my visit to a halal slaughterhouse to witness it happening. I stress that I have not been to a shechita abattoir.
I went to the halal abattoir, and I watched a number of sheep and cattle being slaughtered. The owner of the abattoir, himself a Muslim, made it absolutely clear to me that he did not like unstunned killing, but that when it comes to the obligation that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) touched on a moment ago, the decision as to whether something is halal is taken by the imam who is present at the time. A prayer has to be said during the slaughter of all halal meat, but the decision on whether an animal is stunned or unstunned is taken by the imam. A number of Muslim organisations take it upon themselves to decide what is and what is not halal. When I was a Minister, I organised meetings with representatives of many Muslim organisations and groups, and I am afraid that there was absolutely no meeting of minds—I do not mean with me, but between the organisations across the table. I sat back and listened to some very strong language between Muslim abattoir operators who always pre-stun everything and whose imams are happy to say the prayer when an animal has its throat cut after being electrically stunned.
Going back to my own experience, I have watched a number of sheep having their throat cut without pre-stunning. As anyone who has visited an abattoir will know, the sheep were held in a conventional rising V-belt. They are hugged by the V-belt, which is made up of two belts, and when they reach the top it is their turn to be killed. Normally the animals are stunned before their throat is cut, but what I saw was without the stunning. Incidentally, that is how the abattoirs address the issue that one animal should not see another animal being slaughtered, because, in a V-belt, the next animal in line is behind the one being slaughtered. I saw a number of sheep being slaughtered, and the average time before those animals appeared to become senseless—in other words, before their head dropped, which most people assume is the point at which an animal collapses—was between 15 and 18 seconds.
I have also watched cattle being slaughtered, and I am afraid that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) underestimates the length of time before cattle become senseless. He referred to two minutes, but when I was a Minister I was told that it often takes a lot longer. In the slaughters I witnessed it was nearly always much longer than two minutes. I watched animals going into the slaughter box, where their head was lifted by a form of restraint to expose the neck, which was then cut. Their heart, of course, was still going. Blood gushed out—there is no alternative word, and I am not overemphasising this—and stretched several feet in front of the animal. The gushing went on for minute after minute. Animals are not held up in such restraints, so they remain standing on their legs. If we take the point that an animal becomes senseless when it collapses, or that it collapses at the point when it becomes senseless, we are talking about four to six minutes. I saw animals stand for six minutes before they collapsed. That is my experience.
The owner of the abattoir I visited was trying to be helpful. He clearly understood the reason for my presence and would have preferred not to have to slaughter unstunned animals, so he also did what has been referred to as a post-cut stun, in which a bolt is fired into the animal’s head at the moment its throat is cut. Of course, the animal collapsed immediately. Any animal in the conventional slaughter process collapses senseless at the moment the bolt is fired. Such post-cut stunning strikes me as a significant alternative option. I am concerned about the disagreement within the Muslim religion about what constitutes halal, but I believe that we should be able to find a way forward.
My hon. Friend did not refer to New Zealand, but I have also witnessed the halal slaughter of both sheep and cattle in New Zealand slaughterhouses. The animals were all electrically stunned, rather than stunned with a retained bolt, before their throat was cut. In all the cases I witnessed, the animals appeared to be completely senseless from the electrical shock when their throat was cut. I therefore conclude that the animals were not suffering, but my experience in this country is different.
As an aside, we have heard from a number of quarters about mis-stunning. I was going to say that mis-stunning is regrettable, but that is not strong enough. Mis-stunning is not good enough, but it is a distraction from the issue. Mis-stunning should be dealt with. Even if every animal is stunned, mis-stunning should be addressed through better training and the proper prosecution of abattoirs in which it takes place.
I do not want to venture too far into the religious arguments—I strongly feel that non-stun slaughter is an animal welfare issue—but the other issue is what constitutes what is legitimate under sharia law and Muslim beliefs. The argument put to me by those who support non-stun slaughter is that the animal must be able to recover if its throat is not cut. An animal clearly cannot recover from a bolt fired from a bolt gun, and therefore it is not permissible. The debate is much more balanced on electrical pre-cut stunning. The problem—I am sure this has already been put to my hon. Friend—is that members of the Muslim community who would be prepared to entertain electrical stunning as acceptable, other than those who already do, want evidence that animals are able to recover. In other words, if an animal’s throat is not cut after it has been electrocuted, they want evidence that, moments later, it will recover and be perfectly all right and undamaged. The problem—this is bureaucracy gone mad—is that supporters cannot provide that evidence because it then becomes animal experimentation, which requires a Home Office licence. The Home Office will not grant such a licence, so supporters cannot provide the evidence that might convince people of the argument.
Earlier, somebody said that pigs do not count because they are not eaten by either Muslims or Jews, and I also want to address the issue of training.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I am genuinely interested in the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, and I bow to his far superior knowledge of the subject. May I ask him about the head-only electrical stun? I have been told by animal welfare groups that, under UK law, sheep only have to have one artery, rather than both arteries, cut, which often means that, because the electrical stun only lasts between 20 and 40 seconds, there is a good chance that a sheep will recover consciousness before it bleeds to death. Will he enlighten me as to whether that is the case? I have been told that, even though they have been stunned, some 4 million sheep a year recover consciousness before their throats are cut.
Sir James Paice
I genuinely do not know. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that statistic. All I would say is that I have watched quite a number of sheep having their throat cut after electrical stunning not just in the UK but in New Zealand, and they usually become insensible—in other words, their head collapses—in about 15 seconds. I have never witnessed an animal come round at a point at which it might suffer. I cannot answer the hon. Lady’s question.
Understandably, there has been a lot of debate about labelling, not least because a lot of shechita meat is not acceptable for Jews to eat and therefore goes into the mainstream, as does a lot of halal, whether or not it has been pre-cut stunned. Nobody can argue against informing consumers, of course, and I would never dream of doing so. I have advocated all sorts of labelling, and I would support it in this instance, except that I question whether it would work. It is not that I think that consumers would not respond to it; however, it is wide open to abuse. It would be extremely difficult to enforce and monitor, and to trace pieces of meat as they moved through the supply chain to determine whether the labelling on whether the animal was stunned before slaughter was correct.
I am afraid that I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering about putting religious connotations into labelling, because I wholly object to anybody discriminating on those grounds. People have written to me saying, “I object to buying meat that has had some Muslim say a prayer over it.” I reject that attitude totally; in my view, it is racist, and I will have nothing to do with it. I am concerned purely with welfare.
I want to mention the distinction that was made concerning the Jewish process, which renders an animal effectively dead the moment its throat is cut. As I said, I have never actually witnessed that process, so I cannot speak from experience, but if that is the case, I cannot see how that community can argue against a post-cut stun. If their view is that the animal is dead the moment its throat is cut, what is wrong with a bolt or electrical shock seconds afterwards? According to that argument, it is effectively being applied to a dead animal.
The conclusion that I came to when I was the Minister responsible—frankly, I wish that I had had time to pursue the issue as I wanted to—was that the way forward to reduce suffering while recognising the need for proper respect for religious rites was to introduce compulsory post-cut stunning. That would have been far more effective at reducing suffering, as I witnessed. I also thought that the arguments used by those who opposed a pre-cut stun would fall aside, if their view is that the animal is dead immediately after stunning.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his well-informed and impressive speech. Does he see no role for additional labelling?
Sir James Paice
I am certainly not against labelling. As I said a few minutes ago, I have recommended and indeed driven forward initiatives to provide consumers with more information, and I am not averse to the idea of doing so in this context. I have grave doubts about how effective it would be, simply because I fear that it would be difficult to enforce.
My final comment relates to training. I discussed the issue of mis-stunning, and I am sure that all of us have often heard different groups say that Jewish slaughtermen are far more effectively trained than Muslim slaughtermen. I have heard all sorts of accusations about some halal slaughtermen using blunt knives to saw away at necks and so on. All that I can say—maybe this is obvious—is that the examples that I witnessed in both this country and New Zealand do not sustain that argument. As far as I could tell—I am not a complete layman; I have been to many abattoirs in my lifetime—the animals were cut as quickly as possible with very sharp weapons, and the training was perfect. Whatever system of slaughter is used—pre-cut stun, post-cut stun or anything else—we cannot accept anything less than highly skilled operators. I certainly believe that that is a matter for enforcement, whatever else might be decided.
I do not know whether I shall speak again in this place during the next five weeks, but if this is my last speech, I hope that it is recognised as a seriously intentioned argument for moving forward in the interests of animal welfare and nothing else. I strongly urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider the post-cut stun—it is a compromise—as a way of effectively reducing unwanted and unnecessary suffering.
Mr James Gray (in the Chair)
The right hon. Gentleman will forgive me for saying that if that was his last speech—we all hope that it was not—it was an extremely fine contribution at the end of a long and distinguished career.
Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard, and to follow the hon. Members for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) and for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), who succinctly set out the positions of the Jewish and Muslim faiths on the stunning and non-stunning of meat. It is always useful to debate a range of subjects, but this debate seems to involve a sense of déjà vu. We discussed the issue on 4 November, and I see present Members who contributed to that debate, along with others. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) chaired that debate. I am surprised that the issue has come around for discussion again so quickly. If former and current Ministers did not already know the range of views on this matter, we have made them very clear over the years.
I want to say a few words about why I certainly do not support the e-petition. I have several thousand Muslim and Jewish constituents, and I am representing their point of view. I am also against stunning because of my own view about animal welfare. I have been a vegetarian for the past 32 years. I can assure Members that I am not squeamish about killing animals: on occasion, animal welfare necessitates the death of animals. I have, in the recent past, put animals—particularly rabbits —out of their misery when I felt that their poor quality of life required action, so I feel that I speak on animal welfare with some authority. The hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) suggested in an intervention that perhaps more people should go vegan or vegetarian. Sometimes, when the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) suggests that we should have a day in Parliament each year when people do not eat meat, she is ridiculed. That is wrong.
In preparing for this speech, I looked at the amount of meat that is consumed in this country. We have already heard about the glut of meat in the market. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has consulted on the consumption habits of the British public for the past 20 years. In the last year for which the figures are known, people consumed around 190 grams of chicken each week. If we multiply that figure by 52, we get around 9.8 kg—almost 10 kg of chicken every year. If broilers are slaughtered at eight weeks and the average carcase weight is around 1.8 kg, that means that some people, at least, are eating at least six chickens a year. If we extrapolate those figures, we come to the view that every year in the UK approximately 2.6 million cattle, 10 million pigs, 14.5 million sheep and lambs, 80 million fish and 950 million birds are slaughtered for human consumption. I have to ask: why are we consuming so much meat?
I will contradict some of my colleagues in saying that shechita accounts for only 1% of the totals that I just read out, and it is incorrect to say that it enters the food chain: it does not. There are approximately 300,000 Jewish people in this country, and the meat produced for them goes to the community itself. The Beth Din already label kosher meat.
Sir James Paice
If all shechita slaughtered meat is eaten by Jews, is my hon. Friend saying that they are eating the hind quarters? That is forbidden. What happens to the hind quarters?
Common Agricultural Policy
James Paice Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
May I start by reminding the House of my interests, which are in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests?
It fell to me as the then Minister to start the negotiations for what is now seen as the reform of the common agricultural policy. I never know why we use the word “reform” because that is the last thing that we actually have. We have ended up with a complete mish-mash, which is really unacceptable in today’s world. The CAP is about to be implemented. The subject of tonight’s debate bears all the relevance and the power of initiation by the Commission and reflects the impossibility of 27 Ministers managing to agree on any suitable alternative. For the Commission to claim that it represents a stroke of common sense is clearly nonsense. We have ended up with a very complicated system that will not help farming move forward and that does not face up to the changed realities of the world in which we live—a world in which, in the next 30 or 40 years, the supply of food may well not meet demand. European agriculture will not reform as it should to meet those challenges.
I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister negotiated an overall reduction in the CAP spend—the first for many years. I am sorry that it necessitated what can only be described as “handsome bungs” to France and Italy to get their agreement to the cut, and that we therefore ended up with a reduction to pillar two funding, which is unfortunate.
The Government are absolutely right in the way that they have gone about implementing much of these reforms. I particularly welcome the measure to help young farmers. I suspect that deep in the belly of Government, particularly in the Treasury, there is some resentment that that decision has been made compulsory. It is something that I have always believed should be part of British policy, and it is something that has been commonplace elsewhere in Europe. I am delighted that it is now part of the system.
The Government are also right to continue the same entitlements and regions, and I strongly support the moving of support uphill—the increased funding for moorlands—for all the reasons that we have heard. Of course I entirely support the move towards simplicity and the way that the Government have tried to reduce some of the burdens. Getting rid of the soil protection review, for example, is one measure I strongly welcome. None the less, I have a few comments to make.
My first comment relates to the three-crop rule that has now been imposed. I understand why it arose. I believe that it originated from the problems in Germany where there has been constant mono-cropping of maize for anaerobic digestion, which has been damaging to the environment. But what we have will achieve nothing. We have not achieved a rotation. There is nothing to stop farmers growing the same crop in the same field year after year as long as they grow the right percentages overall on their farm. Whereas farmers who actually practise a rotation by block-cropping with another farmer—the whole farm goes into wheat in year one and the next door farm goes into oilseed rape or beans and then they swap the following year—will not be allowed to do so under the new rules. They will have to grow a bit of each on each farm, which will add considerably to their costs. As it is not creating genuine rotation, it is a pointless and bureaucratic exercise that will achieve nothing for the environment.
Secondly, there are the environmental focus areas. Again, a broad-brush arbitrary figure of 5% has been decided on at European level. There is ample evidence now from a number of research bodies, including work the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has done, that what really matters is not the area of land we manage for conservation but the way that we manage it, ensuring that it is properly managed and not neglected year after year. This plan makes no reference to that, and that is a major error in the system.
I welcome the decision to include hedgerows in the ecological focus areas. It is right that they should be included, but I am concerned about what that will mean not just for mapping, which has been mentioned, but for entitlements. The Minister might want to reflect on that. The areas of land that farmers farm—that is, the area that they claim against—might not include their hedgerows, but when those areas are taken in, as they need to be in order to be within the 5%, farmers might not have enough entitlements for the overall amount of land that they will then be considered to farm. I hope that the Minister will look into that.
Contrary to what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said, I pay tribute to how the Rural Payments Agency has made dramatic strides since the days when her party were in government. When we took office, every farmer in the land was incensed by the performance of the RPA and it is now, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) rightly said, delivering the vast majority of payments on day one of the window, at the beginning of December. That is a considerable achievement by the present management and I think they should be rewarded and recognised for what they have managed to achieve.
The challenges of implementing the new system are huge. It is far more complicated and, as the Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) said, will cost a considerable extra amount that the Government can ill afford. It is also an absolute waste of money given the bureaucracy that I have described. For the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland to suggest that the present system should be continued and that now is not the time to change systems belies belief. The present system is, metaphorically, held together by string and sticky tape. It is completely obsolete, even for the process it currently tries to operate, and it is a tribute to the RPA that it has managed to improve performance even using such an obsolete system. To suggest that it could somehow manage the new process is ludicrous.
I also wanted to mention appeals. I hope that under the new system the Government will ensure a satisfactory appeals process. I must confess, even though I had to judge those appeals for a time, that the current system is not satisfactory. Individual responsibilities, the responsibility of the RPA and the whole background of penalties and EU disallowances are not clear. Let me use one of the most ludicrous cases I saw as an example to demonstrate what has to change. Somebody had sent all the forms in to the RPA by registered post and yet the claim was rejected on the basis that it had never arrived. When the farmer submitted the registered post docket to the RPA to show that the letter had gone, he got a letter back saying that that proved that an envelope had been received but did not say what was in it. I felt that that was ludicrous, but there was no absolute proof that the RPA had received the forms and it was impossible to allow the claim. The new appeals system must cover such situations.
I strongly support the points that have been made about digital by default. I hope that the Minister will reconsider it and ensure that farmers are entitled to continue to use paper at least until they can access broadband. I am trying to be constructive, so if he concludes that that is not possible I suggest that he finds a way of ensuring that farmers who employ land agents—as many do, of course—solely because they cannot access broadband themselves should be recompensed in some way, perhaps by a small discrete sum within pillar two.
That leads me to pillar two and the rural development programme. I take issue with the Government over how the funding has been split, because they seem to have fallen for the line that if one spends more, one gets more. That does not always work. Even though we all know that the pot is not as large as we would like it to be, I regret the Government’s decision to increase the share of the pot going to the environment, not because I do not care about the environment—I strongly care—but because it has been abundantly clear over the past 10 years or so that simply spending money on the environment does not necessarily produce results. What really matter are outcomes and far more should be directed at those. We could have ensured that a greater share of the rural development pot was used for other purposes, in particular the economy and innovation in farming, to enable farmers to face the inevitable decline in the basic payment, as it is to be called, and no doubt its eventual disappearance. Farmers need to be able to invest and face up to that day. Just £140 million out of £3.5 billion to assist farmers is not a good deal.
On the new environmental land management scheme, my hon. Friend the Minister will know what I am about to say. I recognise that there is a £2.2 billion overhang from the current system of entry-level schemes and higher level stewardship, which must clearly be allowed for, but I am concerned about the way the new scheme will operate and the potential for cherry-picking. The implication is that funding will go only into schemes where it is likely to do most good. There are vast areas of the country, including much of my constituency in the north, in the fens and further up into northern Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, which nobody will pretend are the most beautiful areas, or that they contain a massive abundance of wildlife, but if such areas receive no funding and are completely outside the new scheme, the situation will get worse. We might end up with biodiversity deserts, because the funding has been concentrated on the hotspots. I hope the Government will look at that carefully.
Our land is precious. The report that came out two weeks ago from Cambridge university about agricultural land use over the next few decades makes salutary reading. It demonstrates that in the worst-case scenario we could be 7 million hectares of land short in the next 30 or 40 years. Clearly, that cannot be made up. It demonstrates that all policies must address the use of our land in the most effective way to combine looking after the environment with food production, its primary purpose. There is a great deal more to be done to achieve that. These reforms are not the right way forward, but I commend the Government on the way they have tried to implement an impossible task.
Common Agricultural Policy
James Paice Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Heath
Absolutely. That has been one of our key objectives during the negotiations, and we have worked closely with Ministers from the devolved Administrations in that process. On any objective assessment, the Secretary of State has been remarkably successful in getting those elements written into the scripts that have emerged from the Council. The difficulty now is that we need to reach agreement with the European Parliament, and we want to ensure that the elements survive that process.
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Surely the answer to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) is no, voluntary modulation was not at 19%. It was 9%; the other 10% was compulsory modulation that applied to every member state.
Sir James Paice
The hon. Gentleman accepts my point. That arrangement created a level playing field across the whole of the EU. The reason that the NFU is concerned is that it is probably only English farmers who could lose 15%, thus making this an issue of competition.
Mr Heath
The hon. Gentleman asks a basic question about voluntary modulation. We have already indicated that we will probably wish to see significant modulation from pillar one to pillar two in England. Obviously, other structural funds could be used for those purposes, if desired. On rural development, there is a need to utilise every possible source of funding to improve the rural economy. We are not simply talking about what is available through CAP funding to support agricultural and rural development.
Sir James Paice
I will be very brief, Mr Speaker. I would be grateful if the Minister put on the record the Government’s position on voluntary modulation but the other way around. Moving on from his argument about taking 15% from pillar one to pillar two, do the Government strongly oppose those in other countries who wish to have the flexibility to move money from pillar two to pillar one?
Mr Heath
We do not believe that is a sensible position. We are not likely to succeed in preventing it, but we will look very carefully at where it may be applied and whether it will distort the agricultural market overall.
I take to heart what you have said, Mr Speaker. I was trying to allow Members to ask legitimate questions, but let me now make progress.
Simplification must be at the heart of all our CAP reforms. That is one of the Government’s priorities. Whatever the outcome, we must have a CAP that is straightforward for farmers to follow and simple for our national Administrations to implement.
We have made progress at home, through the farming regulation taskforce, in looking at unnecessary red tape and reducing burdens on farmers. It is important that we do not undo that good work with complicated changes in the CAP. I firmly believe that we should be getting out of farmers’ hair and freeing them from the burden of unnecessary red tape. We have already made significant progress. Since 2011, we have identified £13 of savings to farmers for every £1 of compliance costs added.
I know, however, that there is more to be done and I am determined to take further steps towards a more risk-based approach to inspections that will allow farmers who consistently achieve high standards to earn recognition and receive less frequent visits. We must work together to achieve this. It is important that European rules do not knock us off our course. Having made such good progress at home, I do not want CAP reform to bring additional burdens.
On regionalisation, which I have already mentioned, amendments clarifying the regional implementation of the CAP are very important. A reformed CAP must deliver benefits for farmers, taxpayers and consumers throughout the UK, and to ensure that, we must have the clarity to implement the CAP in line with our devolution arrangements. Achieving this is a priority for the UK Government and the devolved Administrations, and we will push hard to get it next week.
I cannot conclude without mentioning the CAP budget. As hon. Members will know, the Prime Minister negotiated a 13% cut in the overall CAP budget at the European Council in February. The smaller EU budget negotiated by the Prime Minister is appropriate in the current economic climate, and the reduction to the CAP budget made an important contribution in that regard. This reduction in EU expenditure will be to the benefit of all UK taxpayers.
The allocation of the CAP budget between member states has not yet been finalised, but it would appear that the UK’s share of the CAP will remain roughly equal to its existing share. How the CAP budget will be divided between the UK regions and nations is still to be agreed. Discussions between my officials and their counterparts in the devolved Administrations are now under way and I understand that a number of models for the distribution of pillar one and pillar two funds are being developed.
I hope that the motion captures the UK’s vision for a future CAP. I look forward to the debate and hope that the House will support the Government’s continuing efforts to secure a greener, simpler CAP that delivers better value for the taxpayer and enables the development of an innovative, competitive and market-oriented farming industry and thriving rural communities.
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Time will curtail what I say in the debate—I will not say all I would have liked to say, which will please most of my hon. Friends—but the House will remember that I did most of the negotiations in their early days on behalf of the UK Government. I do not recognise any of the situations that the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) described in his somewhat flowery rhetoric.
All hon. Members know that, whatever the outcome of the trilogue discussions, this is a wasted opportunity. For the very first time since the introduction of the CAP, the negotiations take place against a background in which the days of surpluses and dealing with over-production are behind us. We now look to a future of what Sir John Beddington called the perfect storm of increasing demand and a decline in the rate of improvement in productivity. This was therefore an opportunity to restructure the agriculture industry across Europe and equip it to meet that challenge. Only last week, the OECD produced a report stating:
“Changing fundamentals have transformed agricultural markets. These changes appear to be here to stay and will shape the evolution of agricultural markets over the medium term.”
It went on:
“Instead, with energy prices high and rising and production growth declining across the board, strong demand for food, feed, fibre and industrial uses of agricultural products is leading to structurally higher prices”.
I could not have put it better myself, although I did put the case in a similar manner in the early negotiations. This was the opportunity and background against which we could start to wean farmers off direct support, an objective that I think is shared across the House. Unfortunately, those views fell on stony ground, particularly with the Commission, which was determined to refuse to accept the opportunity and challenge, preferring to embed direct payments by greening pillar one. As the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) said, it is a very pale shade of green. We ended up with a set of proposals that were much more complicated, and far from the simplification that the commissioner had proposed and said he was trying to introduce.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister negotiated the multi-annual financial framework settlement, which was, overall, an excellent settlement for the UK. The MFF saw a reduction in the overall EU budget and a reduction in the CAP budget, which, as the then Minister, I had proclaimed. Many Agriculture Ministers around the table wanted more to be spent, yet their own Finance Ministers were singing a different tune. That could not be said of the UK Government—we stuck to the same tune. The issue was bedevilled by the Treasury’s attitude to the rebate, not that there is anything wrong with the rebate fundamentally—I strongly support it. However, the Treasury would rather have its 70p out of the rebate than allow us to claim £1 from the CAP, and that has caused immense difficulties ever since. The MFF also saw the absurdity of France and Italy, in particular, getting what can only be described as substantial, handsome bungs of an extra €1 billion to €1.5 billion.
Enough has been said about the 15% issue, but we have to emphasise that this is a single market and our farmers have to compete across Europe. I cannot say that I speak for our farmers, but I think that most would accept whatever happened to the single farm payment as long as it happened to all farmers across Europe. They are unhappy with any proposition that affects England, but not their competitors.
Greening, as has been said, should have been done in pillar two. It is important that we understand that management of ecological focus areas is more important than mere area. The transition to a flat rate needs to be achieved within the seven-year programme. It is indefensible still to be paying farmers in other parts of the UK on the basis of what they did in 2001. The rural development funding, on which there was some discussion during the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), must include measures to help farmers to become more competitive and innovative, and not just on the environmental front.
This vital industry is part of our food supply chain and needs fair competition. I am afraid that the measure will not provide it.
Miss McIntosh
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I omitted to refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Sir James Paice
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. May I too apologise for forgetting to refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Is there anybody else while we are on the record? If not, I call Roger Williams.
Badger Cull
James Paice Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.
Agricultural Wages Board
James Paice Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mary Creagh
They are certainly driven by ideology, although the ideology of the Minister of State seems to have changed from when he was a Back Bencher, now that he enjoys the privilege of a Government car. I do not know what has changed for him.
Without the AWB, farm workers will be worse off. As my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) said, there will be no minimum wage for children under 16. Seasonal workers will lose their entitlement to their own bed, which is currently guaranteed by the board. The cap on the amount employers can charge workers for tied accommodation, currently £4.82 a day for a caravan, will be removed. Some 42,000 casual workers will see their pay cut to the minimum wage as soon as they finish their current job. The rest will see their wages eroded over time.
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
What evidence does the hon. Lady have for her statement that all those casual workers will see their pay cut immediately at the end of their contracts? Farmers are desperate to get casual workers, and that is why they are keen for us to continue the schemes to bring them in from eastern Europe. They will not be able to get the staff if, as she suggests, they cut their pay.
Mary Creagh
I will be talking in detail about the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. I just say to the right hon. Gentleman that 1,610 people in his constituency will be affected by the reduction in pay. I do not know whether he has read the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs impact assessment that was conducted when he was the Minister; I certainly have. It states that 42,000 casual workers are likely to see their pay default to the national minimum wage when their current employment comes to an end. The cost to the rural economy that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills impact assessment estimates—there are varying figures—are to do with the direct loss of wages, holiday pay and sick pay out of workers’ pockets.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
It is quite clear that the proposal to abolish the AWB is not driven by a worry that it holds pay back or conditions down.
Andrew George
If the Government are arguing that it is being abolished to enhance pay and conditions, we will hear that from the Front Bench in a moment. Does the hon. Lady agree that we do not want simply to go the lowest common denominator?
Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords]
James Paice Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Philip Davies
I will try to put it more simply for the hon. Lady’s benefit: I do not agree with the Bill, as I think I made abundantly clear—I did not want to mislead anybody. If we are to have a Bill, however, I want it to focus on the people I think she had in mind when she decided to support the Bill. If anybody wants to intervene and say that when they had the idea of supporting the Bill, the first company they had in mind was Esso, let them do so.
Philip Davies
I thought my right hon. Friend was in favour of farmers, but he is obviously in favour of Esso.
Sir James Paice
It pains me to have to point out to my hon. Friend that petrol is not a grocery and is not covered by the code, so he is making a completely spurious point.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Perhaps then we can move on to Procter & Gamble. Would it be covered by the Bill? Is that a spurious point too? When he supported the Bill and was telling his farmers how marvellous it was that the Government were supporting an adjudicator, did he say to them, “By the way, the biggest suppliers will have the greatest opportunity to benefit and could clog up the adjudicator with complaints before you get your own complaint heard, and one of those companies is Procter & Gamble”? Did he tell them that that was the sort of company he had in mind? No, I do not think he did.
Sir James Paice
I listened carefully to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I fully accept the logic of saying that there are some very large food producers in the world whose market dominance is such that they do not need the protection of the Bill. However, I think that a careful reading of it demonstrates that it will ensure that the instances cited by my hon. Friend will not actually come to pass. I remind him of my earlier point—which was endorsed, in different terms, by the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies)—that this was purely about the groceries code adjudicator. Many of the businesses listed by my hon. Friend may be only partly involved in groceries. For instance, a number of the products of Procter & Gamble, about which he spoke at length, are not grocery products. Moreover, the trading arms of big multinational conglomerates are likely, as individual suppliers, to be much smaller organisations.
Let me now deal with a point of principle raised by my hon. Friend. He sought to pour scorn on those of us who are also Conservative Members, but who support the Bill. He said that he was entirely in favour of a free market. I too am in favour of a free market, but I also believe in a fair market. If we took the definition of a free market to its extreme, which my hon. Friend came close to doing, we would end up with a single retailer and a single supplier, because that it is the eventual aim. The game of Monopoly is the arch-example of a total, unfettered free enterprise. I strongly believe, not that markets must be regulated, but that when there is a clear imbalance in a market, some element of fairness is necessary. I remind my hon. Friend that one of the great market philosophers, Adam Smith, said that a true market was one in which there were equal numbers of suppliers and purchasers.
Justin Tomlinson
That is the point of new clause 2. It would focus time, resources and attention on the suppliers whom we need to protect in order to ensure that there is no monopoly from their point of view.
Sir James Paice
I will come to that specific point, but let me first deal with the more philosophical point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, who made it clear that he did not consider those of us who share these Benches with him to be true Conservatives if we supported the Bill. I wish to rebut that view. The Bill is necessary because—as has just been suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson)—notwithstanding what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, there are plenty of examples of supermarkets exceeding what I believe to be fair terms of trade.
During my time as a Minister, I had a number of meetings with supermarket chief executives, either alone or in a group. Most of them—and, indeed, other senior directors and officials from supermarkets—would argue, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, that there is no need for the Bill, and that they are already doing everything fairly, above board and properly. I can only conclude that many chief executives do not know what is being done in their names by people operating much further down the chain. Reference has been made to buyers. Since the code was introduced in 2010, there have been numerous examples, some quite recent, of suppliers being verbally required by supermarkets to use a nominated haulier, even though the supplier may be able to find an equally good and competent haulier to do the job for less money. There are also examples of supermarkets seeing that a supplier has made a certain amount of profit in one year, but instead of saying to them, “We think you’re being excessive and therefore we should pay you slightly less for your product next year,” which we could all accept, they say they want a cheque now—today—for £1.5 million or more before they will even consider doing business with that supplier next year. That is not acceptable; it is not a moral way of doing business, which is why I strongly believe the supermarkets need to be investigated. The debate has understandably ranged over a number of different types of commodities, but the most glaring examples of these practices have been in the fresh produce sector.
My hon. Friend also said that having a supermarket adjudicator would be a waste of time if it turned out that he had nothing to do. My attitude is different. I would be delighted if the adjudicator had nothing to do, because it would demonstrate that everything was being done in accordance with the code and that all suppliers were being treated fairly—although I have to tell my hon. Friend that I do not believe there is any chance whatever of that being the case. Indeed, a number of cases are already being brought forward for the adjudicator to deal with, and I have described a couple of them. I think the threat of such action may well prove to be the answer to our problems, but it is wrong to suggest that there is no need for an adjudicator on the basis that the code is in place, as it is clearly not enforceable through the Office of Fair Trading.
My hon. Friend also seems to ignore the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). The Competition Commission’s reason for all this was to look after the consumer. The whole thrust of its argument was that shifting risk from the retailer to the supplier was putting the long-term interests of the consumer at risk, with the result that while items may be cheaper today, they may be far more expensive in future, or the supply chain may no longer exist. That is not in the long-term interests of the consumer.
Philip Davies
I will ignore the nonsensical—and, to be frank, idiotic—point that this measure will be of benefit to consumers. My right hon. Friend said he would be happy for the adjudicator to have nothing to do. Will he tell us how much the adjudicator is going to be paid?
Sir James Paice
I do not know, because it has not been made public. That is a complete irrelevance, however. It is not a reasonable argument, because the situation in this case is the same as it is for judges: if everybody obeyed the law, we would not need any judges, but we would still have them, just in case. There is ample evidence that there will be cases for the adjudicator to adjudicate on, however. The Bill contains a number of limiting provisions, too: the adjudicator can decide not to take up a reference; the adjudicator can fine somebody if the reference has no serious foundation; and the adjudicator’s job is only to arbitrate on alleged breaches of the code, which is quite a narrowly drawn document. I strongly believe the Bill is right as drafted.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
The right hon. Gentleman acquired extensive knowledge of the food sector in his time as a DEFRA Minister. As this new clause addresses the balance of power between suppliers and retailers, I wonder whether in his time as a Minister he came across any evidence that big suppliers were putting downward pressure on retailers in the way the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has advanced.
Sir James Paice
The honest answer is that, no, I did not come across such evidence, but it may well have been happening and I just did not know about it, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley rightly said, those very big suppliers can look after themselves. I am not arguing against what has been said. Indeed, I would have had some sympathy for new clause 2 and the £1 billion threshold if I thought my hon. Friend’s motives were justified, but as a result of the rest of his argument I completely lost any support for it that I might otherwise have had. I also think the Bill as currently drafted will militate against big organisations acting in such ways. The Bill is designed to deal with problems that we all agree arise, and which tend to fall on small and medium-sized enterprises.
Andrew George
I entirely endorse my right hon. Friend’s comments. Following the logic of the arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Shipley, the conclusion we would draw is that the Bill should look both ways, as it were. I have drawn that conclusion and would like the Bill to reflect that, by seeking to ensure there is fair dealing across the supermarket supply chain, so that if a supplier became too powerful, complaints could be made the other way.
Sir James Paice
It is entirely for the Government to decide whether to accept new clause 2. It does not cause me a huge problem, but I believe it to be completely unnecessary for the reasons I have described. Nothing I have said could be deemed to suggest I am against it, but I just do not see any need for it. I certainly believe, however, that there is a very real problem that needs to be addressed, and this Bill seeks to do precisely that. That is not the basis on which my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley proposes his amendments, however; as he has said, he does not agree with the Bill at all. I do agree with it, and I would like its provisions to become law as soon as possible.
Ian Murray
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice). As his contribution shows, we have a cross-party and cross-House consensus on this matter, and we should take it forward.
Amendment 28 provides that when the adjudicator publishes guidance, she must include guidance about which law applies to arbitration and where the arbitration should be conducted. That is particularly important where there are suppliers from remote parts of the United Kingdom. Article 11 of the Groceries (Supply Chain Practices) Market Investigation Order 2009—that rolls off the tongue—provides for a dispute resolution scheme. The scheme provides for the application of certain arbitration rules, with London as the default location for any arbitration. Clauses 12(5) and 12(6) of the Bill make provision for the amendment of the scheme and the application of the Arbitration (Scotland) Act 2010 to arbitrations carried out by the adjudicator. However, it will be important for suppliers and retailers alike to be given statutory guidance on the law applicable to arbitrations and the choice of location for arbitration. Our amendment would require the adjudicator to issue such guidance.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I would love to give way to the right hon. Gentleman as long as he does not seek to draw me in to contravening your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Sir James Paice
I do not know why on earth the hon. Gentleman thinks that I might want to draw him into confrontation with you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I want to challenge the hon. Gentleman on a more fundamental aspect of the amendments. In an earlier intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), the hon. Gentleman rightly made the point that the whole Bill is about enforcement of the grocery code of practice. I understand his wanting to raise the horsemeat scandal whenever he can, but does he really believe that these amendments—especially amendment 34, which would require the adjudicator to report on issues of food safety, food hygiene and food authenticity—fall within the code of practice? He is proposing to extend dramatically the power of the adjudicator and the role of this legislation way beyond anything that the Competition Commission ever envisaged.
Huw Irranca-Davies
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for not tempting me to infringe the guidance you have given, Mr Deputy Speaker.
We had a great deal of debate in Committee on the ability of the groceries code adjudicator to comment on several issues concerning the supply chain. In fact, on both sides of the House, several hon. Members said that if the adjudicator were aware of abuses elsewhere they would expect the adjudicator to inform the relevant authorities. I shall be interested in the Government’s response to the amendment, but I would have thought that there was almost an obligation on the adjudicator to report any observed abuse in the management of the supply chain. That is what the amendment seeks to achieve. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South that amendments 34 and 35 are important, and we are convinced that the adjudicator should have an eye to this function as well as his or her core role on the supply chain.
Sir James Paice
I add my congratulations to everyone involved from the early days, including my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). The Minister said that it was a great pleasure to find himself in the same Lobby as the hon. Gentleman: for me it was more of a shock. Nevertheless, it was welcome and I am delighted that the Bill will now make progress.
Many people have portrayed the Bill as supermarket knocking or bashing. I hope that it is not seen as that. Supermarkets play a fantastic role. They have brought before the consumer a great range of products that might never otherwise have been available, in a competitive environment. However, there are people within the supermarket structures, as I touched on in an earlier intervention, who are perhaps acting with excessive zeal and, I am quite certain, going outside the terms of the code. I am not at all surprised if people much higher up the management structures are not aware of what is being done lower down by those who want to make their names as competitive buyers. I hope the Bill will be sufficient to ensure that such malpractices are stamped out, because I am sure they are not what most people want to see. As I said earlier, I feel particularly strongly about the fresh produce world, where these problems are most evident.
Finally, there is a long-held cynical view that any legislation that has all-party support is by definition bad. I hope that this proves to be the exception to that rule. There is some justification for that belief about many other pieces of legislation, but I believe the House is right to have approved this one with such a massive majority over and over again, and I look forward to it fulfilling all the hopes that people have of it.
European Pig Industry
James Paice Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this hugely important issue for our pig industry. May I caution him about the use of the word “compliance”, however? We are talking here about compliance with the EU directive, but that directive does not meet the standards on our statute book in this country. The EU directive allows farmers in other member states to continue to keep sows in stalls for, I think, the first 21 days, while they are being served —or mated—for the future. Therefore, every other farm in Europe is entitled to have some sow stalls on their farm for that reason, but they are completely banned in our country, so even European farmers who are in compliance with the regulation are not necessarily keeping their pigs to the high standards we uphold in this country.
Mr Bacon
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has probably forgotten more about this subject than I will ever know, for pointing that out. In a way, that makes my point even more strongly: even though the word “compliance” must be treated with care, such farmers are not able to reach even that lower standard, which shows how much further there is to go.
Of course, in this country we do have farrowing crates for sows that are giving birth, which I support. That is the safest and best method. I have been in pig houses and watched the process, and it is the right thing to do. The British Pig Executive is sponsoring research into other methods, but at the moment that is the best technology we have, and I support it.
The problem, however, is that, of the top 10 pigmeat-producing nations in the EU in terms of production tonnage, only Romania and the UK are fully compliant, and they are ninth and tenth respectively. The top eight countries, by volume of meat produced, are non-compliant. They include Germany, with 6 million tonnes; Spain, with 3.5 million tonnes; France, with just under 2 million tonnes; and Poland, with 1.8 million tonnes. The vast majority of the big producers are not compliant. In other words, the biggest pork producers are those who have made the least effort to comply with the law and who have benefited accordingly from lower costs. This is more than a question of fairness or a matter of principle. Poor harvests last year have resulted in very high feed costs. That is fine for wheat farmers, but for pig farmers, who rely on buying feed, it is not fine at all, and means that many farmers are under great financial pressure.
If illegal farms either complied with the law, as they should, or stopped producing pork altogether, that would tighten the supply chain and lift pork prices, creating a much brighter future for those who have made substantial investments in making sure the pork they produce is legal. It now falls to the European Commission to work with member states to enforce the protection of pigs directive. However, the Commission’s attempts to enforce it are already going awry. An inadvertent and unofficial derogation has already been granted to Ireland and France, after the European Commission gave them an extension to the deadline for applying for funding for pig farmers who have yet to convert their pig houses. Ireland has until September 2013 to access the funds. In the case of France, a quarter of French pig farmers remain non-compliant.
Together, Ireland and France account for 2.25 million tonnes, or just over 10%, of EU pork production. Interestingly, that is more than the total combined production of the 10 member states that are fully compliant, which between them manage only 2.23 million tonnes, or 9.97%, of EU pork production. Ideally, the money should be withheld until the French and Irish farmers expecting these funds can prove that any illegal sow houses have been empty since new year’s eve, although I recognise that in practice that would be very difficult to achieve.
However, there are three things the Government can do now that would make a real difference to British pig farmers and help to stop illegal pigmeat entering the UK. First, effective enforcement of the directive must begin at home. The Government must ensure absolute clarity in their own buying standards for pork and other pigmeat products. This affects purchasing for schools, the NHS, the armed forces, local government canteens and every other public sector body. By now, every tier of government, from Whitehall to the town hall, should be making sure they are not buying meat that has been produced illegally, and that they know they are not. The Government need to make sure that people in the public sector are aware of this obligation.
However, it is not enough for Government buyers simply to rely on suppliers’ assurances of compliance. The Government must show leadership by making certain that all their suppliers operate a traceable supply chain that procures pork and pigmeat from legally compliant sources. The Minister will recall that at the pig industry summit which I hosted in November, he undertook to write to Government Departments reminding them of their obligations. I look forward to receiving an update from him on this matter and hearing more about what the Government are doing in this area.
Secondly, retailers and food service companies, having been shown leadership by the Government in the way I suggest, should be strongly encouraged to adopt full traceability, so that any pigmeat products they sell are guaranteed to come from legal sources. Such companies should then be expected to have fully transparent systems in place to guarantee that to their customers. The need for full and open traceability has been aptly demonstrated by the recent detection of horse DNA in beefburgers. That discovery not only inspired the largest accumulation of equine puns known to mankind, but illustrated the importance of a fully transparent supply chain.
Tesco chief executive, Philip Clarke, wrote the following in his “Talking Shop” blog:
“We expect our suppliers to deliver to a standard, and to meet basic food traceability rules. But our customers shop with Tesco, not our suppliers, so you won’t find us hiding behind suppliers. It’s our job to ensure they are meeting our high standards.”
I commend Tesco for its speed in reassuring customers and withdrawing suspect products from sale, but the key lesson to take from the scandal is that food traceability rules need to be strengthened significantly. Retailers, processors and food manufacturers know that improved traceability is difficult, but they also know that it is possible. They need to be pressed for commitments to guarantee traceability that extend to branded products such as Wall’s, as much as to supermarkets’ own brands. Claiming either to have assurances from a supplier or to have no control over branded products can no longer be regarded as sufficient.
I am indebted to the National Pig Association for sharing with me an encouraging letter from Mr Martyn Jones, corporate services director for the supermarket Morrisons, to NPA chairman Richard Longthorp. The letter stated that Morrisons’
“commitment to the integrity and transparency of our offer remains paramount. For the pork and pork products we are importing from the EU, we have been clear to suppliers of both branded and tertiary products that this must meet the requirements of the new pig welfare directive”.
I very much welcome Morrisons’ commitment to the transparency of the supply chain. Every company within a supply chain should have sourcing policies that can prove beyond doubt that the pork they are using or selling was legally produced. I am sure that the Minister will join me in encouraging other retailers to follow Morrisons’ example. I would welcome his comments on how that might be achieved.
Finally, what must be avoided at all costs is a further protracted period before 100% compliance across the EU is finally achieved. The European Commission has a responsibility in that regard; it can and should be demanding to see deliverable action plans from non-compliant countries. In the meantime, we should stop illegal pork and pork products from entering the country. Non-compliant nations must be pressed for specific guarantees on when they intend to reach full compliance, rather than some vague promise to be delivered by some indeterminate date. To encourage them, we should refuse to allow illegally produced meat to enter the United Kingdom.
Member states have had more than a decade to move towards full compliance with the directive, so there are no excuses. We used to have to say that British farmers faced unfair competition from imported meat that was produced overseas using methods that would be illegal in the UK. Now, British pig farmers face unfair competition from imported meat produced overseas using methods that are illegal overseas, too—we cannot accept that. We must bear in mind what happened in the poultry industry. It had a far greater number of regulations, agreements and testing regimes than the pig industry to help enforce the directive on the welfare of laying hens. Nevertheless, a year on from the original January 2012 deadline, an estimated 5% of Europe’s egg production still comes from chickens in conventional battery cages.
The British pig industry receives no subsidies—pig farmers live and die by the market—yet farmers across Europe who are in full compliance with their obligations are being undercut by illegally produced pork and pigmeat. Above all, what pig farmers across the UK want, and indeed what compliant pig farmers across the continent want, is a level playing field. Those nations edging towards full compliance have the largest number of pigs in the EU and they have also had more than a decade to get their house in order.
Of course, I would ideally wish to see British pork as the first and only choice for consumers, retailers, the Government and the whole public sector. But right now what matters most is preventing British pig farmers from being continually undercut by illegal pig products that should not be on the shelves at all and should not be in this country at all. The UK’s pig farmers have had to put up with an unfair market for 13 years, and that is far too long. The law is now finally on their side, and I expect the Government to ensure that the law is enforced.
Badger Cull
James Paice Excerpts(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.
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.]
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bovine TB and Badger Control
James Paice Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
I call Mr Jim Paice. [Interruption.] Sir James Paice—I apologise profusely to the right hon. Gentleman.
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Apology accepted, Mr Speaker, with good grace.
This is clearly very disappointing news for everybody, including the farmers, who had planned for and expected our getting to grips with this disease as quickly as possible. May I endorse my right hon. Friend’s comments about these being pilots? We have always recognised that in some areas they differed from the original RBCT measures, and that was the reason for having the two pilots—to see whether those differentiations still produced the same results. The increase in numbers to which he refers is surprising—or the fact that it is a problem is surprising—given that most people who live in these areas should have been well aware, as most country people are, of the massive increase in badgers.
Finally, does my right hon. Friend agree that science shows that if the population of any species significantly increases in density, disease spreads more quickly as it is more likely to sustain itself? This increase in the badger population therefore increases the need to carry out the control.
Mr Paterson
I thank my right hon. Friend and commend him for the tremendous work that he did in his job as Minister of State. Wherever I have been in recent weeks, many, many people across the industry have paid him great tribute for the sterling work that he did. I commend him for taking this policy on; it was not easy.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The two pilots were the logical extension of the trials conducted under the previous Government, which stopped dead once they had finished. The next logical step is to go on to a larger geographical area and use a more efficient method of culling. He is absolutely right to say that the real lesson from these very significantly higher numbers is that the disease will be prevalent among the badger population and spreads more quickly in a dense population. This is a problem that we have to grip. It is no good criticising from the outside without coming up with a policy.
Dairy Industry
James Paice Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
During the summer, the UK dairy industry suffered a major crisis caused by price cuts and I would like to update the house on events since then. Original price cuts were withdrawn, whilst processors, producers and retailers held discussions.
On Friday 31 August, industry leaders agreed a code of practice on contractual relationships in the dairy sector. This is a significant step forward. The code of practice is a robust and proactive basis for a more effective system of raw milk contracts that will provide greater certainty and clarity for all parties. It addresses issues of price, volume, timing of deliveries and duration, and it includes effective processes to analyse progress and review the impact of the code.
The Government will continue to work with industry to build on this progress. We will shortly consult on key elements of the European Commission’s proposals for the European dairy sector (the EU “Milk Package”). We will seek views on whether it should be compulsory for dairy producers and processors to have a written contract. But at this stage the Government consider that the new code of practice should be given proper time to take effect and deliver change for the benefit of the industry as a whole.
The Government also recognise the value of farmers working together in producer organisations to improve their profitability through efficiency and competitiveness gains as well as increasing their negotiating power. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recently announced that £5 million-worth of new funding will be made available for farmers to collaborate and to support business-led innovation. We will consult on the arrangements needed to implement dairy producer organisations and work with industry to encourage participation and secure the benefits of effective collaboration.
The UK is one of the largest milk producers in the world. Dairy is the UK’s single largest sector of agriculture and its future prospects are positive. There is growing recognition that real changes are needed at all levels of the supply chain to drive greater confidence, innovation and investment and take advantage of the huge opportunities that exist—in domestic markets and abroad. Over the last few weeks, dairy farmers and buyers have faced up to some of the most challenging issues currently facing the UK dairy industry and taken steps to address the problems that are hindering its development.
There are potentially bright prospects for the UK dairy industry. Apart from Ireland, the UK has the best climate for growing grass in Europe and we should be producing more value-added products such as cheese, butter and yoghurt for the domestic dairy market. The UK currently has to import 50% of these products, which indicates that the sector is not yet reaching its full potential.
There are also major export opportunities with emerging markets such as China, whose growing middle classes are crying out for dairy products. Early in 2012 the Government published a food and farming exports action plan to encourage more food and drink companies to venture into overseas markets. This includes supporting and encouraging businesses at home and promoting British food abroad and opening up markets.
Securing a healthy future for the UK dairy industry is a real priority for the Government. We are confident about its longer-term prospects and the agreement of the industry code of practice is a genuine step forward which we support.