Neonicotinoids on Crops

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2015 Westminster Hall

[Ben Howlett]

I want to make a little headway, but I will give way to hon. Members in a moment.

The decline in the British bee population is not solely caused by the use of neonics. A variety of factors combine to result in a severe decrease in the number of bees in the UK. Climate change is having an effect on the population, as is the loss of habitats, intensification on land use, the spread of pests and diseases, and the use of pesticides in farming. Those causes can be interlinked and all need to be addressed. However, today’s debate focuses on the use of neonics.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. As his right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) mentioned earlier, the honey crop has fallen by about 30%. What does he think we can do generally about the situation? The problem does not apply only to Britain, but to other countries as well, and it has been going on for several years.

[Ben Howlett]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. This is an international problem and it needs to be looked into at a European Union level as well. I understand the Government are doing so.

Avian Influenza

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that poultry is safe to eat. The Food Standards Agency has confirmed that avian flu does not pose a food safety risk for UK consumers. We are very clear about that message. My hon. Friend is also right to say that Yorkshire is a key county for food production. I recently visited Yorkshire to see many of the different aspects of food production there. We will make sure that people get the message about biosecurity so that we can ensure that proper protection is in place. Swift action is the most important aspect.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

What contingency plans does the Secretary of State have with regard to any threats to jobs in the supply chain?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The most immediate thing that we are focusing on—bear in mind that we were initially notified about the issue on Friday—is trying to nip the disease in the bud to make sure that it has the minimum possible impact. That is why it is important to take very urgent action.

Food Fraud

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 8th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

Indeed. I wish to record how pleased I am that Professor Elliott has agreed in principle to come to discuss his final report findings with us.

It is a matter of regret that no prosecutions leading to conviction have been brought—one might say that the horse has already bolted.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I fully support some of the proposals the hon. Lady has mentioned, and I think there should be criminal prosecutions in this area and more inspections. Have there been any more incidents of horsemeat finding its way into the food chain?

[Miss McIntosh]

Not to my knowledge, but the Minister will be better placed to answer that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire said, there have been instances—I believe this was in part of Yorkshire, but, thankfully, not in North Yorkshire—where kebabs and other takeaway foods were found not to have been what they were reported to be; we are talking not about processed food there but about other retail outlets. So we must be ever vigilant and the level of testing must remain high. The point raised earlier is key: consumers must now be at the heart of this process, as Professor Elliott has said and the Government and DEFRA have accepted. However, the second note of regret is that we still do not know at which point the adulteration or contamination, whichever we want to call it—my hon. Friend gave some eloquent definitions—entered into the food chain. This was a multimillion-pound business and, as Professor Elliott concluded, these events crossed 26 out of 28 EU member states, which is why it is so important that we must find out where the adulteration took place. Perhaps we will never know that, but if we do not, how can we say to consumers, in all honesty, that we can prevent it from happening again?

Importantly, Professor Elliott’s interim report identified two weak links—two particularly vulnerable areas—in respect of the horsemeat scandal. The first was slabs of cold meat held in cold storage. The second was raw products, and ingredients of processed foods or processed foods, travelling the long distances that we now know they did. I will be honest and say that I have not had chance to go through Professor Elliott’s report line by line, but it is extremely important that the Minister reassures us this evening on the Europol aspect, where there has been wilful criminal acts. It is also important that he reassures us that the rest of Europe has tightened up its act. This is not just about Europol and Interpol. I go to markets regularly in my constituency—I tend not to go to abattoirs—and if someone were to string up a cow carcase and a horse carcase, I would be hard-pressed, ignorant as I am, to tell the difference between them. Professor Elliott did us a great favour by spelling out in his interim report, and repeating in his final report, the two most vulnerable aspects in this country. I do not think that he was being in any way alarmist, so we must not lose sight of the fact that he did say that we are still vulnerable to such adulteration in future. The purpose of the Which? report is probably to say that the criminals will move on, and they have moved on from the meat, slab or carcase form—the processed form—to other retail outlets selling kebabs and other takeaways.

The Committee’s report and Professor Elliott’s conclusions show the concerns about the reduced capacity for testing, which has been alluded to by the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse. The Committee report stressed the need—we took powerful evidence in the Select Committee—for more public analysts to do the testing. The hon. Gentleman made the point well that it must not be the innocent party—the farmers—who should pay for that. Obviously, the closer to home it is produced and the shorter the supply chain, the more confidence we can have in our food and in our meat. I am a meat eater who represents a large livestock producing —meat producing—area. I want to make sure that we have absolute confidence in the production in this country, and I believe it is second to none.

Professor Elliott’s final recommendations are on the national laboratory service and the drawing together of the nine—I believe it is—public laboratory services. He specifically says that public laboratory services need to be protected, that they are in “a fragile position” and that the review should be seen as

“an opportunity to develop a sustainable national asset.”

A lot can be done through DEFRA, the Food and Environment Research Agency, which is in my constituency, and LGC, a major science service company, to develop these centres of excellence—that would be pleasing indeed. He goes on to say that the Government should:

“Work in partnership with Public Health England and local authorities with their own laboratories to consider…options for an integrated shared scientific service around food standards”.

The Minister must grasp that point and reassure us—whether it is the labs, the food analysts or the police—that they will be given a specific target and resources to do that. It is important that the Government address the potentially reduced capacity for testing arising from the stranglehold on local authority budgets. Will the Minister use his good offices to speak to the relevant Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government to see whether this money for public testing and public analysts could be ring-fenced? That would put a lot of people’s minds at rest. So we need the national laboratory service and we need to ensure that the level of food testing by local authorities remains high. These unannounced audits and tests by the food industry will be a very positive development. Perhaps we need to be reassured again that shorter supply chains are in place and will not be jeopardised in the future.

Briefly, the food crime unit will go to the heart of preventing food adulteration incidents in the future. We need to see real leadership. The fact that the new unit will be placed within the FSA is pleasing. There was some criticism of the FSA in the Pat Troop report and in our own report. It was felt that perhaps the agency needed to co-operate more with local authorities and with other FSAs across the European Union. I hope that the Minister will tell us that that will be a top priority.

The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) rightly touched on the matter of crisis management. The Government must clarify the roles and responsibilities of the various agencies before another incident occurs—it could be an incident of food safety rather than food adulteration—and ensure that all incidents are regarded as a risk to public health until there is evidence to the contrary. That was in the Troop report in June 2013. Will the Minister assure us tonight that NHS England will make that matter a top priority?

The Secretary of State set out in her written statement that she would like to see the food crime unit set up by the end of the year, which is pleasing. Will the Minister assure the House that the resources will follow the responsibilities and set out who will pay? I was very taken by the two models set out in Professor Elliott’s report. The Danish model was found to be slightly less adequate than the Dutch one, but if we look at the costings on page 138 of the report, we find that they are very high for the Dutch model. The population of Denmark is 5.5 million, and the population of Holland is between 10 million and 11 million Obviously, the costs will increase incrementally; one figure that is mentioned is between £2.8 million and £36 million. Can the Minister explain how those costings have been reached and promise that the money will match the responsibilities? How does he think the money will be raised and who will pay?

Importantly, will the police have the ability to make arrests? Apparently, police in Denmark do not have that power, but they do in Holland. Under the Elliott model, the police will have the powers to swoop and investigate. Presumably, they will then be able to make an arrest. As concerns on that matter have been expressed this evening, it is extremely important that the Minister clarifies whether arrests can be made. Furthermore, will the Minister set up a detailed timetable for implementing the recommendation, confirm that the food crime unit will be in place by December, provide an update on labelling and traceability and tell us whether the police will have the right powers in this regard?

Finally, in November 2012, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland alerted the FSA in England to a potential food adulteration problem, as meat was being sourced from the same suppliers. No testing took place in England until we had the horsemeat adulteration confirmed in January 2013. What reassurance can the Minister give the House tonight that we will not find ourselves in that situation again in a year, two years’ or three years’ time?

Badger Cull

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Let us be honest: from time to time, we in this Chamber should realise that no one side has a monopoly on the answers to the problems, whether those problems are in our rural communities or our cities, although we must recognise that certain views sometimes need to be more respected on certain occasions.

I was referring to the leaked report and to the issue of humaneness. It has been suggested that no more than 5% of the badgers should take more than five minutes to die, but the IEP found that the actual figure was between 6.4% and 18%. Over time, the Opposition have made a series of reasonable, rational and, importantly, cross-party requests of the Government, none of which has been met to date.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that the Government entered into this with a preconceived idea about their approach and with a closed mind, particularly the Secretary of State? As anybody who has watched any of the television interviews knows, he would not consider anything else, but his methods have led to abject failure.

[Mr Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which takes me back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). It is about making it look as if something is being done, but, all too often, it results in even more damage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robinson]

I thoroughly agree and thank my hon. Friend for that apposite intervention.

The hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who represents a farming constituency, and who indeed is a farmer himself, was right when he said that vaccination would not have been an absolute solution for mad cow disease and that it is not yet a science-based solution to this problem. I will mention in passing something I read in the March edition of a scientific journal—I do not suppose many colleagues will have heard of it. It talked about novel particulate vaccines utilising polyester nanoparticles, or bio-beads, which I assume would be ingested orally, that work rather counter-intuitively with the animals and could be a way forward. I do not know about that, but it is clear to me that much less research is now being done. Could not all the money that is being spent—wasted, frankly—on the culls be put into vaccine research? Ultimately, that is the only solution. A vaccine will not be a silver bullet, but it could be effective alongside all the measures the Government are considering, as part of a shared policy.

I will end my remarks by joining Members on both sides of the Chamber in saying how great it is that this debate has been arranged by the Backbench Business Committee. It is absolutely perfect. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds is perhaps lucky that the report is not yet out. If it had been, he might have had much less to say. He must accept that there is never a perfect time for these things. I congratulate the Committee, because I think that this has been one of the best debates.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Does my hon. Friend not think that there is sufficient evidence from Scotland showing how the vaccine worked there?

[Mr Robinson]

To be honest, I do not know. I have read as much as I can. But I do know from the evidence so far that a vaccine would be much more humane and, if we put the resources into getting it, much more likely to succeed, taken with other measures, than the culls. The culls are counter-productive, because they are spreading the disease. They are miles off their targets. I cannot imagine why farmers would want to waste more money on them. I hope that the Government and the Opposition will now get together to find a way forward, because it is urgently needed. It is a challenge, but there is no better time to get a cross-party policy on the matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

For the avoidance of doubt, I declare an interest. I am responsible for some cattle in Wales and although this debate refers to England it is appropriate that I declare that interest.

In a few months I will no longer have an interest to declare because we have decided not to keep cattle any more, partly as a result of the problems we face with TB in cattle. More grassland will be therefore ploughed up and the countryside will be less attractive. With the loss of biodiversity, the countryside will be able to support fewer species. That is a shame, and is just one effect of this country not being able to get a grip and reduce, then eliminate, this disease.

I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on allowing this debate and the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing it. It is vital that, in our shared determination to beat this terrible disease, we constantly scrutinise the work of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the development of policy. I am sure the House shares my determination to bring down the incidence of TB in our national beef and dairy herds. It is a great burden on our cattle farmers, and an avoidable expense to the Government and the taxpayer. It is also a possible risk to human health, but I do no think I will have time to go into that this afternoon.

The tragedy is that bovine TB was virtually eliminated in the United Kingdom during the 1950s and 1960s, although there were persistent outbreaks in the south-west. That success was due to the tuberculin skin test. When the disease began to increase and spread from the south-west, it was reasonably believed that it could again be controlled by means of the skin test, perhaps used more frequently. Unfortunately, that was not the case. There is now a wildlife reservoir that did not exist in the 1950s and 1960s. The scenario is different, and therefore different policies are needed to prevent the ever-increasing spread of the disease.

Although the epidemiology of TB, whether in cattle or in human beings, is not readily understandable—for instance, infected cattle kept in sheds throughout the winter have not passed on the infection to other cattle with which they have been in close contact—it is sometimes useful to draw parallels between different species. Bronllys hospital, in my constituency, is now a community hospital that is much valued by the people whom it serves, but originally it was the TB sanatorium for the people of south Wales. It was built in my constituency because we have a sunny and healthy climate. The treatment in the hospital of TB before antibiotics consisted of radical surgery, fresh air, sunshine and good food. The success of the eradication, or near-eradication, of TB in humans has been due to the use of antibiotics, the use of a vaccine, the pasteurisation of milk—which often carried the organism—improvements in housing and diet, and, nowadays, health checks for people entering the country,

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

What the hon. Gentleman is saying is very interesting. Is he going to say anything about the effects of the vaccine when it was used in Wales? I referred to Scotland earlier, but I meant to say Wales.

[Roger Williams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that correction. I shall come to the issue he has raised in a moment.

We would not have eradicated TB in human beings if we had relied on the vaccine alone, and indeed we will not eradicate it in cattle if we rely on the vaccine alone. A range of tools must be used if we are to be successful. There is the tuberculin skin test, there is biosecurity, there is the restriction of cattle movements, and now there is vaccination. There is also badger culling in specific, focused areas where the incidence of the disease is high. I do not underestimate the contribution that a badger vaccine could make to the control of TB in cattle, but it cannot be relied on to achieve it on its own.

The problem is that we have no scientific evidence that the Bacille de Calmette et Guérin, or BCG—which was developed in the 1920s, and has not been developed further—can prevent TB in cattle. We know that it is 70% effective in providing immunity in badgers, although of course it is not effective if the badgers are already infected, but no scientific evidence has been produced to demonstrate that it reduces infection in cattle in the field.

The pilot culls are planned to continue for four years. I believe that they should continue, and that lessons should be learnt from the report that we expect to be published in the next few weeks. We should bear it in mind that the randomised badger cull trials failed to meet the cull targets—which is the point I was trying to make to the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), for whom I have high regard—but the cull trials did result in a reduced incidence of TB in cattle herds, so there is some good news.

Managing Flood Risk

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

My right hon. Friend makes my case for me.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

First, is the hon. Lady or her Committee satisfied with the responses of the various agencies in dealing with flooding? Secondly, is she happy with the level of staff employed by the Environment Agency?

[Miss McIntosh]

I think there is a coherent view across the House this afternoon that when IDBs, district councils and the flood levy from the regional flood committee contribute to the Environment Agency, it is not always clear what work is done. That is something we are here to debate this afternoon.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. I can tell her that investigations continue at a number of sites across the UK. The City of London police are the co-ordinating police force for all of those investigations and five arrests have been made. The Food Standards Agency continues to liaise with the City of London police and, through them, is sharing information on UK investigations with Europol.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

8. What assessment he has made of how easy it is to access and use food banks.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

No such assessment has been made. I welcome the work of charities providing access to nutritious meals to those who may otherwise struggle. Food aid providers are local organisations responding to specific community needs. It is not the Government’s role to tell these organisations how best to run the service they provide.

[Mr Cunningham]

The Minister will be aware that care professionals issue food bank vouchers to those they identify as being in crisis, but I am concerned that many people are not accessing food banks, either because they cannot contact care professionals because of mobility or disability issues or because they are not aware that they are eligible. Will he take steps to ensure that people are made aware of food bank services and are encouraged to use them if they are in food poverty?

[George Eustice]

Different food banks take different approaches. Some give one-off support for an immediate crisis, and many have people coming through only once or twice in six months, while others enable people to self-refer if they have not been referred by social services or other agencies. There is a range of different approaches, therefore, and the Government would be reluctant to start interfering with these charities and telling them how to run their services. They are on the ground and developing policies to deal with these problems.

Badger Cull

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

Order. Quiet in the Chamber. A lot of people want to speak in this debate, so I ask for quiet and for short interventions.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does not the evidence show that, even with the cull, the targets cannot be achieved? More importantly, would it not be better to use the Scottish system?

[Chris Williamson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will address his point if I have time.

Common Agricultural Policy

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 15396/11, a draft Regulation establishing rules for direct payments to farmers under support schemes within the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy, No. 15425/11, a draft Regulation on support for rural development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), No. 15397/11, relating to a draft Regulation on establishing a common organisation of the markets in agricultural products (Single CMO Regulation), and No. 15426/11, a draft Regulation on the financing, management and monitoring of the Common Agricultural Policy; and supports the Government’s continuing efforts to amend these proposals in order to secure better value for money for the taxpayer and establish a greener, simpler CAP that enables the development of an innovative, competitive and market-orientated farming industry and thriving rural communities.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate these important issues in the House today. It is particularly timely because next week the Secretary of State will be going to Luxembourg in the expectation of securing a deal on the common agricultural policy at the Agriculture Council. With CAP reform subject to co-decision for the first time, the negotiations between the Council, the European Parliament and the European Commission have been intensive during the last few months, and indeed are likely to be during the next few days as well. It is thanks to the sterling efforts of the current Irish EU presidency that a potential deal is now within reach.

As many hon. Members will be well aware, the Government’s priority on CAP reform has been to negotiate a good deal for UK farmers, taxpayers and consumers, and that means working to deliver a greener, simpler CAP that continues to orientate itself to the market, increases the international competitiveness of EU agriculture, and increases our capacity to deliver environmental outcomes.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that successive Governments have tried to reform the common agricultural policy and there has been very little progress, although in the past previous Conservative Governments have tried to make out to the public that they have actually made some progress when they have not?

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman is right that it is a long, hard business to reform the CAP. The sadness is that occasionally within negotiations some member states want to turn the clock back, and even to forgo the reforms that have already been accomplished, so I will not pretend anything other than that this is a long, hard process and the advantages and the movement forward that we gain are not always as far and as quick as we would wish them to be.

We want to see an efficient and responsive agricultural sector not just across the EU, but globally, and the CAP should be central to helping us achieve that. It is therefore essential that the CAP continues to reform and to reduce reliance on damaging direct subsidies that do not offer good value for money or deliver the public goods we want. The UK has worked extremely hard to engage with like-minded member states throughout the ongoing negotiations to ensure that the CAP continues on the path of reform, but we know that other member states and elements in the European Parliament are determined to turn the clock back and reverse some of the hard-won reforms of MacSharry and Fischler. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

I will touch on a few of the priority areas that will be the focus of our negotiating efforts over the next week. First, market intervention remains a prime concern. As we all know, the CAP has made great progress over the years in reducing reliance on expensive and trade-distorting measures that interfere with the market and helped to create the butter mountains and wine lakes of the past. I was therefore very disappointed when in March the European Parliament voted through amendments that would move EU agriculture away from market orientation. Those proposals would increase budget pressures for old-style market support. That is not an acceptable use of taxpayers’ money. It hits consumers twice; they pay for their food once through their taxes and again at the tills.

The EU sugar regime, for example, constricts supply in the market and adds costs for British food and drink producers and ultimately for the consumer. The combined effect of EU beet quotas and high tariffs on cane imports means that the current EU regime has driven up the wholesale price of sugar by 35% and added 1% to the food bills of hard-pressed families. Members states had previously agreed to end the restrictive sugar beet production quotas by 2015, but there has been incredible pressure to unpick that agreement. In our compromise in March, we agreed a partial extension of sugar beet quotas to 2017. I am disappointed that Members of the European Parliament voted to extend the quotas further to 2020. That is unacceptable. The situation is compounded by the lack of a level playing field for sugar cane imports, something we are working to change. We need to remain fully committed to moving the CAP in the right direction towards greater market orientation. Nothing must be left to chance. Butter mountains and wine lakes must remain a thing of the past.

I know that many hon. Members have an interest in the proposed greening of the CAP. The Government believe that the CAP should reward farmers for the public goods they deliver, such as environmental benefits and protecting and enhancing wildlife. Pillar two of the CAP is the best place to fund that, which is why at the European Council in February the Prime Minister secured the additional flexibility to be able to transfer up to 15% of our direct payments budget to fund our rural development and environmental programmes.

Food Prices and Food Poverty

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I agree. Charities such as the Salvation Army and HelpAge are seeing an explosion in demand as incomes fall, working hours are cut and prices rise.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I know that my hon. Friend, like me, comes from Coventry. Would she be surprised to learn that 35,000 children from Coventry and Warwickshire will now be on the poverty line, and does she think that that is an indictment of this Government’s failed policies? More importantly, many families are now struggling with electricity prices, heating bills and so on, which is feeding through—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Interventions must be brief, as we are in a short debate with time limits on speeches.

Dangerous Dogs

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I thank Mr Speaker for granting this debate, which I think has been welcomed by all parties in the House and by areas throughout the country. For that reason, I hope we can keep the debate on the strictly all-party basis it deserves. That will certainly be the tenor of my remarks throughout.

More than 6,000 postmen a year are bitten or attacked in one form or another by dogs. There are approximately 10 attacks per constituency per year, so it is a matter in which we all have a direct and important interest. Indeed, the devolved Parliament in Scotland has legislated on the issue, and Northern Ireland is in the process of doing so.

The reason why I have called for this debate relates to a nasty incident in Coventry involving a young girl, Alicia Foskett, whose mother, Sarah, has, without a great deal of encouragement, led a campaign. Under existing law, the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 excludes private property from any criminal provision, so Sarah Foskett felt that, at best, she got passive help from the police and local council. That might be understandable in the context of the present law, which I wish to address. I hope to leave as much time as I can for the Minister and other MPs to respond, but I cannot leave too much time because it is only a half hour debate. The support for Sarah Foskett seemed inadequate, so she led a strong and courageous single-woman campaign to raise the profile of the issue in Coventry and has done extremely well. I am pleased to say that the police are now giving her a lot of support in the civil action she intends to take.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

It is only after the event that the police are actually doing something. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a pity they did not do something beforehand?

[Mr Robinson]

I agree. They should have given much more positive support beforehand, but they could not take any action under the existing legislation. I will come back to that in a moment, but it is one of the principal things that needs to be addressed. As things stand, the case is for a civil action rather than criminal proceedings.

As I have said, this is not a party political issue. Indeed, the Prime Minister in a letter to the Communication Workers Union just before the election, when he was Leader of the Opposition, made it clear that he and the Conservative party were very much in favour of the action that I wish to recommend. He wrote:

“We support extending dangerous dogs law to cover all places including private property”.

That is a clear statement from the then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister. I hope that the Government can find some impetus in the light of that support.

The more general statistics are interesting, but I will not detain hon. Members with them for too long. I have already mentioned that 6,000 postal workers are injured every year. Some 2,500 adults and 2,700 children are treated for injuries every year. In the past four years, six children and two adults have been killed. The attacks seem to come in spates. The past few years have seen a further spate of attacks in London that have been so bad that the Met has set up its own special dog unit in response.