Bovine Tuberculosis

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, the area in which I disagree with the noble Lord is clearly that of pursuing the cull, which I have said we are planning to do. The area in which I agree with him is that of vaccination, which is another tool in the box that we must find, and I assure noble Lords that we are continuing to work on that.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords, the Minister may be aware that my former constituency was one of the areas that were being considered for this cull. For very many years, including 13 years of a Labour Government, I prayed that positive progress would be made by the Government in tackling this problem. I join the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, in saying that I bitterly regret the very party-political way in which the noble Lord, Lord Knight, intervened in this matter. His Government did nothing effective and left it as a problem to be tackled now. Some have had to live with the personal challenges of the issue—as my noble friend knows, there are suicides, despair and family breakups, so it is not just the financial consequences but the destruction of people’s whole lives that have followed from this. It is also not just dairy herds, which I think the noble Lord referred to, but anybody with cattle. Certainly in the West Country they have faced appalling problems. This should be pursued on an all-party, bipartisan basis, as my noble friend said, not by trying to score points and accusing people of dishonesty in filleting the statistics or anything else. We are trying to get a cohesive approach to this challenge because if we do not, in many parts of the country, it will destroy the whole cattle industry as we see it.

[Lord De Mauley]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend about the effect on farmers and their families. Perhaps I may do something unusual and come to the defence of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, who began by acknowledging how very horrible this disease is. If I may, I would like to pour a little soothing balm on the political argument.