Badger Culling

Debate between Jessica Morden and Paul Flynn

Monday 27th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn]

That demonstrates the Government’s amateurish approach. They wish to get the animals out of the way, but they have not made a serious attempt to find out how bovine TB is spread.

We now have another worry: the Kimblewick hunt. That must be taken into account, but there does not seem to be a great deal of enthusiasm from the Government to take it up. The Kimblewick hunt is an amalgamation of three hunts. It hunts in Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire. Campaigners discovered that the hunt’s hounds are infected with bovine TB. There have long been complaints, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) pointed out, about poor farm hygiene and hunts feeding disease-ridden “fallen cattle” carcasses to foxhounds. The fact that 25 of that hunt’s foxhounds had to be put down because they were infected with bovine TB and a further 120 are undergoing testing is a cause for serious worry, and I have asked the Government what they will do about it.

The infection of foxhounds was not seen as a threat in the past, but few animals are free to cover and infect more territory than hounds undertaking trail hunting or chasing foxes, so this is a really serious new risk. The news has been kept quiet since December. The hunt itself suspended hunting but is apparently carrying on using visiting packs. The problem could be widespread. There are reports that some farmers have belatedly tried to protect their cattle by banning hunts from their land. Farmers local to the hunt’s kennels are refusing to let it hunt on their land. As my hon. Friend the Member for York Central said, it is suggested that the hounds were fed raw, TB-infected meat, even though that contravenes meat hygiene rules and bovine TB controls. Do the Government believe that that is happening or there is a risk of it happening? We are all familiar with the close association that there has long been between hunts and the farming industry, and the way that hunts were used to dispose of fallen cattle. The danger seems to be substantial.

I believe that there is sufficient evidence for a new investigation into the prevalence of bovine TB among foxhounds and a case for suspending hunting until that has been proved to be a risk or otherwise. Let us put that to the test. I have recently put down many questions and had unsatisfactory answers to all of them. We now have a chance to answer the concern of the great majority of the public who do not believe that culling is an effective way of controlling bovine TB and believe it is inhumane and cruel. That is the view that the petitioners have expressed.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his excellent speech. As he concludes his remarks, does he agree that one thing the Minister could take from the debate is to look again at the Welsh Government’s experience, which has been less expensive, more humane and ultimately more effective?

[Paul Flynn]

Indeed. Unfortunately, because the Welsh Government are the only Labour Government in the United Kingdom at the moment, the UK Government have been tempted to use them as a bit of a punch bag, almost always irrationally and always unfairly. The Welsh Government have had a great many achievements, and one that I would like to see copied in this House is presumed consent for organ donations.

I urge the Minister to take a fresh look at the figures. The Government’s ambition now is for a programme that will go on for 25 years. That is an extraordinary way to protect themselves. If we say, “It’s not working,” they will say, “We’re only five years into the programme,” or, “We’re only 10 years into it.” They are talking about seeing a real improvement in 25 years. We have already seen that improvement in Wales, and Ireland, after 32 years of trying to wipe out the entire badger population, is now going for the vaccine—it has vaccine stocks. If it has stocks of the vaccine, why can we not have them here?

I applaud the sentiments of all those people who have taken up this cause with great skill and a mountain of scientific evidence. Now is the time for the walls of Government prejudice to come down. We should adopt a scientific and humane approach.

Severn Bridges

Debate between Jessica Morden and Paul Flynn

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jessica Morden]

rose—

[Paul Flynn]

rose—

Welsh Affairs

Debate between Jessica Morden and Paul Flynn

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in this debate. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies).

Well done to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) for securing this important time in the Chamber to talk about all things Welsh. He rightly talked about the crisis that the steel industry faces. The issues that he raised in respect of Aberavon also have a huge impact on Llanwern steelworks in my constituency, so I wholeheartedly support the points that he made. This morning, he, I and other Labour Members who are in the Chamber lobbied the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise on those very points, and we will keep saying those things. I support my hon. Friend’s call for more help to protect our industry for the sake of constituents who work in Aberavon and, crucially, in Llanwern. We must never forget the Llanwern workers, given the announcements on job losses. We are feeling the effects of the job losses, too.

We went into this matter in some depth in the debate on steel on Monday. I know that the Secretary of State and the Minister are extremely mindful of these issues, but on behalf of the steelworkers I represent, I ask the Wales Office Ministers to keep speaking up in Government on behalf of the steel industry. I shall not repeat the five asks because we went through them in depth on Monday, but I ask the Minister to please be mindful of them.

I realise that there is a mixed picture in my constituency in respect of steel, because there is positive news at the Orb steelworks, which is also owned by Tata. It produces some of the best-quality transformer steel in the world and delivered a profit in quarter three last year. Liberty steel, which my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) mentioned in the debate on Monday, has restarted production at the old Alphasteel works and hopes to increase production in the months and years to come. We must acknowledge that news, too.

I know that many hon. Members want to get in, so I want to use this opportunity primarily to bang on about the Severn bridge tolls. I make no apology for doing so again. It is by no means a new issue for the House, but after many years of debate, questions and meetings, it is coming to a head. The bridges will soon come back into public ownership, so we are in the crucial period when discussions are taking place about the level of tolling. We must not miss the opportunity to get the tolls reduced.

As local issues go, the tolls are one of the most frequently raised with me, alongside the overcrowding on the commuter services to Bristol and beyond. Some 12,500 people travel from Newport and Monmouthshire into England every day. There is a transport trap for people in south-east Wales: they can either take the expensive overcrowded train, if they can get on it, or pay the eye-watering tolls on the bridge every day.

If the Minister wants to grant my St David’s day debate wish and, I suspect, the wish of many of my constituents who are commuters or who run local businesses, he will commit to lobby the Department for Transport to slash the tolls to a near-maintenance level when the bridges become publicly owned. The tolls have a huge impact on commuters, and also on access to jobs for many of my constituents, because when people factor in having to pay the tolls, they cannot afford to take many of the jobs that are on offer in Bristol and the surrounding area. There is a huge impact on local businesses—not just hauliers, about whom I will continue to talk in debates on the subject, but other businesses across south Wales that absorb the cost in their bottom line or that in some cases have to relocate to England.

My neighbour the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) recently discovered in his role as Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee that the debts on the bridges were due to be paid back earlier than expected—as early as autumn 2017—because of tax changes and increased traffic volume. In an answer to a recent written question, I was told that the concession is due to end in 2018. It is therefore really important that we know the answers to the following questions. Will the debts be cleared by 2017, and is it the Minister’s understanding that the concessionaire has had increased revenue? If so, why will the concession end in 2018, not 2017, and what will the concessionaire recoup in the meantime? What discussions are going on, and between whom, about the date on which the concession will end and the future level of the toll? Will Ministers please heed the calls for the tolls to be slashed?

We know that VAT will have to be taken off the tolls when the bridges revert to public ownership—thanks to kindly EU rules, I might add. What would happen to the Severn bridge tolls if we voted to come out of the EU? That is a new angle. It is important that the Government recognise that the change would have happened anyway, so it is not a great gift. We need some clarity about the money that the concessionaire is recouping from the bridges, the current debt and the money that the Government are getting in from the VAT and other taxes.

My plea today is that the Government involve hon. Members with constituency interests in the bridges in their discussions. I appreciate that the Minister will not have all the answers today, but will he at least commit to getting Transport Ministers to write to me with answers to those questions? Would he be able to broker a meeting between me and other hon. Members and the Department for Transport, so that we can find out what is happening?

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon talked about bold leadership in the Welsh Government, and their partnerships and achievements were one of the themes of his speech. In Newport, there is real optimism about the newly opened Friars Walk development.

[Paul Flynn]

Hear, hear.

[Jessica Morden]

I thank my hon. Friend. All credit is due to Bob Bright and Newport City Council for their brave political leadership in driving the project through at a time when hardly anywhere else in the country was building such projects. It is not a silver bullet and will not answer all of Newport’s problems, but 120,000 more people came to our city centre in November. Along with Coleg Gwent’s hope to relocate to the city centre with the University of South Wales, and other developments and partnerships involving businesses and the Welsh Government, it is bringing real optimism to our city. We need the UK Government to play their part, too, to save, protect and build our manufacturing industries. They have a role to play in allowing our city to thrive and grow, and protecting our steel industry is one way to do it.