Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

We have to get the balance right between land that is used for energy, which we need—let us not get away from that—and land that is best used for food production. Those decisions are often best taken at local level. Nevertheless, I am conscious of the need to make full use of good agricultural land for food production.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Minister’s complacency and definitional hair-splitting on the issue of food insecurity, at a time when half a million people were fed in this country by food banks will go down very badly outside this place. This week, his ministerial colleague in the other place said it was difficult to make the causal connections between the benefits squeeze and the soaring use of food banks, yet the Trussell Trust says that 45% of the people who need the help of its 300 food banks have come because of benefit delays or benefit changes. Which of those statements is true?

[Mr Heath]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady fails to understand the terms that she obviously fed to her Back Benchers to ask me about. Food security is a well understood concept. We are talking about feeding the world. We are not talking about food prices in the UK, but food prices in the UK are a very serious issue and not, I think, a matter on which to try to score political points. I am grateful to the various charities which help those who find themselves in difficulties. It is important that we support that in every way we can. I notice that the hon. Lady, with some fanfare, issued a policy review last night, “Feeding the Nation”, which supports virtually all our policies. I give her just one word of advice. If you are going to mention one of our great British cheeses, get the name right: it is single Gloucester, not single Gloucestershire.

Common Fisheries Policy

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

Before I begin, I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in congratulating the shadow environment Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), and his wife Lucy. He celebrated his first father’s day yesterday with the arrival of a beautiful baby daughter.

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement, and congratulate him on his real achievement in reforming the common fisheries policy, 2014 to 2020. The deal was the culmination of three years of difficult negotiation and I congratulate him on surviving what he calls the “darker moments” of that process. We on the Opposition Benches have consistently called for ambitious reform of the CFP. These reforms are a good start. They end the disgraceful practice of discards, they decentralise and regionalise the CFP and allow member states to support small-scale fisheries, such as those in Devon and Cornwall, Kent, Norfolk and Suffolk; and they take a scientific approach to setting sustainable fishing levels away from the discredited system of total allowable catch with a transfer to maximum sustainable yield by 2020.

We welcome the time scale for banning discards starting with pelagic fish on 1 January 2015, but the package still allows for exemptions to the discard ban of up to 5% in certain circumstances. How does the Minister see the discard ban working in practice? We also welcome a firm time scale to implement maximum sustainable yields by 2020 at the latest, and by 2015 “where possible”. Will he assure the House that the UK will adopt the earliest possible implementation date, and when will that be?

We welcome the requirement for the Commission to report annually to the Council of Ministers and European Parliament on progress towards delivery of maximum sustainable yield. Given past criticisms of the CFP, transparency is important.

The reforms acknowledge the need for further work on marine protected areas, particularly in biologically important areas. The final document states:

“In order to facilitate the designation process, Member States should identify suitable areas, including areas that form part of a coherent network, and, where appropriate, they should cooperate with one another, preparing and sending joint recommendations to the Commission.”

Has the Minister had any contact with any other EU member state on a joint marine conservation zone? If he has not, does he anticipate co-operation with any other member state on such a zone to ensure maximum ecological benefit for both countries from the designation? Will he tell the House what contact he or his officials have had with the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries on the establishment of the UK’s marine conservation zones?

The reforms contain provisions to support small-scale and artisanal fisheries—a measure that he and my Labour colleagues in the European Parliament lobbied hard for. Small-scale fishing vessels make up 77% of boats in UK waters, but they have access to only 4% of the quota. What changes will the reforms bring to those small-scale fleets and their communities? Will they help to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, and contribute to direct and indirect job creation in our coastal areas?

In a Westminster Hall debate in December 2012, the Minister assured Members that he would publish the details of who owns the UK’s fishing quota. When will the list be published? What steps does he envisage the EU taking to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing to ensure a level playing field between the EU and third countries?

This is a good day for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, campaigning groups and the 860,000 people who signed up to Channel 4’s Fish Fight campaign. I again congratulate the Minister and his team, and devolved Ministers, on the long hours they put in. I congratulate the fishing industry on its co-operation. After three years of negotiation, we look forward to these good reforms being implemented at last.

Badger Cull

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes the badger cull should not go ahead.

We begin with a question: is culling badgers the most effective way to stop the spread of bovine tuberculosis? Labour Members believe that it is not. The consensus among scientists who are not on the Government payroll is also that it is not. They call it a “costly distraction” and a “crazy scheme”, and they urge the Government to change course. Labour Members will be led by those scientists; we were in government and are now in opposition. This is a cull based on hope, not on science. We have warned the Government for two years that the cull will be bad for farmers, bad for taxpayers and bad for wildlife. In government, we were open to the idea. Having asked the question, “Will culling work?” we conducted a 10-year-long, £50 million randomised badger culling trial, which concluded that it will not work. If it will not work, the alternatives, however difficult, must be explored.

I want to begin by explaining why this cull is bad for farmers affected by bovine TB—the biggest animal disease challenge that this country faces. It is bad for farmers because the cull would cost them more than it saves them; bad for farmers because the science does not stack up; and bad for farmers as tourists holiday somewhere else having decided that the sound of gunfire and protest is not conducive to vacation relaxation. I know the toll that this terrible disease takes on farmers and their families personally, emotionally and financially. Controlling it is imperative to protecting farmers’ livelihoods. The European Union requires us to have a national strategy for eradication.

Badgers carry TB. They transmit it to cattle, but the infection also passes among cattle, from cattle to badgers, and among badgers. We know this because during the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic, when no testing was carried out on cattle, TB in badgers increased by 70%. The Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB and four scientists from the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency say that that was due to a substantial transmission of TB from cattle to badgers. The roots of infection and transmission of the disease are still poorly understood.

This cull is bad for farmers because of the large costs and the small benefits.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has said twice that the cull is bad for farmers. If that is the case, why have they gone to such considerable trouble, expense and risk of adverse publicity in carrying out these culls?

[Mary Creagh]

I understand the desperation that farmers are in. However, the Government have presented culling as the silver bullet—the thing that will stop this disease—and it is not. I will explain why it presents further risks later in my speech. This is not just about the cull; it is about what happens when the cull stops.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is hoping to catch the eye of the Chair later in the debate to make his speech or whether he feels that he has just delivered it.

[Mary Creagh]

In government we spent £20 million on delivering a vaccine. That contrasts rather unhappily with this Government’s investment. In 2009-10, under Labour, investment in a cattle vaccine was £3.7 million and investment in a badger vaccine was £3.2 million. By 2014-15, that will fall to £2 million for a cattle vaccine and £1.6 million for a badger vaccine. I am not going to take any lessons from the hon. Gentleman about the investment needed in vaccines given that we spent that money. We have delivered the badger vaccine; his Government have cancelled five of our six badger vaccine trials. If they had not been cancelled, we would now be a lot further down the road of understanding how that badger vaccine works in the field.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mary Creagh]

I want to make some progress.

The cull method—free shooting—is untested. The number of badgers removed may be lower than that in Labour’s RBCT. Nobody has shot a badger legally in the UK since 1973, so it is an untested method. If it happens, it risks making TB worse.

We do not know how much this cull is actually costing the farmers involved, so we rely on the Government’s cost-benefit analysis. Culling makes TB worse by spreading the disease in the first two years. The benefits across the whole culling area appear only after year 3, but in the ring area—the edge of where the cull is carried out—there are never any benefits. Do the farmers whose land lies alongside the cull zones realise that? I think not.

Labour’s culls showed that culling badgers is estimated to reduce the incidence of TB in cattle by 16% after nine years—84% of the problem is still there. Sixteen per cent. is the best-case scenario based on the TB rate being twice as high in the cull area as it is in the land outside. However, if background TB rates are constant across the whole area, that benefit reduces to just 12%. Moreover, this is not an absolute reduction; it is a 16% reduction from the trend increase. Therefore, after nine years there will still be more TB around than at the beginning. There is 16% less than there would have been without a cull.

I want to look at how that 16% reduction is achieved. The cull depends on killing at least 70% of badgers in the cull area, yet last year the Secretary of State was about to start the culls without knowing how many badgers needed to be shot. His officials started counting the badgers only in September, just weeks before the cull was due to start. They relied on farmers to count the setts, and that did not work.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I remind her that, as a result of the destruction that the disease is causing in Shropshire, I set up the all-party group on dairy farmers during the previous Parliament. It became one of the largest all-party groups, with a membership of more than 250 MPs, 70 of whom were Labour Members. We all worked constructively on a report that stated the need for a cull. It will be very interesting to see how many of those Labour MPs change their minds this afternoon, but there was a consensus among them at that time that a cull was the only viable option.

[Mary Creagh]

I have not read that report, but today’s report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on a badger vaccination to control TB does not mention culling. [Interruption.] It is extraordinary that a report on bovine TB does not mention—

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

It is about vaccines.

[Mary Creagh]

I know it is about vaccines, but it is extraordinary that it does not mention the Government’s main control strategy.

I want to return to the badger numbers. Last year, the farm industry estimated that there were 1,800 badgers in west Gloucestershire and 2,700 in west Somerset. The Government’s figures then rose: they estimated that there were between 3,000 and 4,000 badgers in west Gloucestershire and between 3,000 and 5,000 in west Somerset, and that is why the culls stopped.

This year we have a different set of figures: it is estimated that there are between 2,500 and 4,000 badgers in west Gloucestershire and roughly between 2,000 and 3,000 in west Somerset. If we are dealing with ranges of figures, that causes a problem. We are licensing people to kill 70% of the badgers, but if the numbers are at the lower end of the range, the licensed marksmen could kill 100% of the badger population and still not meet their licensing criteria. That is a really difficult position to put farmers in.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that free shooting is being adopted because it is simply the cheapest way to kill? If the Government are committed to a culling strategy, there are more effective alternatives. Free shooting is cheap—we are getting killing on the cheap.

[Mary Creagh]

That is right. The free shooting method is being adopted because cage trapping and shooting is much more expensive—it is 10 times more expensive. Of course, there is a risk to the taxpayer if anything goes wrong in the cull areas. A bond has been laid, but we do not know how much it is. We are completely in the dark about the risk to the taxpayer should the Government have to step in to conclude the culls.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend comment on the impact of the partial genocide of badgers in England while vaccination is being carried out in Wales? Will English badgers be running across the border to seek refuge in Wales?

[Mary Creagh]

I commend the approach of the Welsh Assembly Government and I am glad that the preliminary results look very positive.

I want to return to the 16% or 12% reduction. The cull depends on killing 70% of badgers in the cull area. When I asked about badger numbers in July 2011, I received the answer that

“there is no precise knowledge of the size of the badger population”.—[Official Report, 17 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 815.]

That was a year before the culls were stopped last year. Why did Ministers not ask that question? Will they say in their speeches how confident they are of the current numbers, given the risks of localised extinction in the cull areas?

Ministers state that reductions in TB will result from following the RBCT method, yet that method was totally different because it used caged trapping and shooting, not free shooting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) mentioned. The Secretary of State used the 28% reduction figure in October last year when he announced that the culls would be delayed. That is another example of him cherry-picking the data and it ignores the perturbation effect.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mary Creagh]

I am going to explain perturbation, so I will get that over with if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

Perturbation is where badgers are displaced by the shooting and leave their setts, spreading TB to neighbouring areas. Labour’s trial culls revealed that culling increases TB in badgers by a factor of 1.9 because of perturbation—that is 90%. Ministers affirm that the cull will have hard boundaries to avoid perturbation, but they ignore the fact that the RBCT also had hard boundaries where possible.

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady has skated over the reason why farmers, contrary to her assertion, are strongly in support of the policy: the number of reactors has increased by a factor of eight in 10 years. That is driving some farmers in my constituency close to suicide. Does she not understand those central, crucial human issues?

[Mary Creagh]

I understand the human issues very well, but the farming community is divided on this matter. I have received a letter from cattle farmers in Gloucestershire who say that they are

“opposed to the badger cull”.

[Mr Heath]

That one.

[Mary Creagh]

I do not know whether there is just one. I am assuming that there are more than one.

The farmers have given me permission to read out the letter. It states that the consultation by DEFRA’s Animal Health and Welfare Board and

“the published reports from these events show no consensus for a badger cull. They also show that farmers are concerned about the indiscriminate shooting of large numbers of badgers”.

There is also a letter from the British Veterinary Association in The Independent today that criticises the support for the cull. I think that it is fair to say that the veterinary community is also divided on the issue. That is problematic, because it is never good to have a policy that divides the country so bitterly.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[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 Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend knows that I am a great campaigner for the countryside, but following the points made by Conservative Members, let me say that there are many people in this country, as well as farmers, who love our countryside and care about our farm stock, but who care about the animals that have lived in the countryside for thousands of years. We do not have the evidence for this cull, and that is what those people resent. As Chair of a Select Committee, one’s watchword is, “If possible, build policies on the evidence.” This policy is not based on any evidence.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

Let me come back to the perturbation side of things. My understanding from the scientists who conducted the cull is that hard boundaries were used where it was possible. We all know that badgers can swim through rivers and cross roads, and we know that the biggest impact on the badger population is being run over on roads. Again, the efficacy of the hard boundaries has yet to be proven.

Labour’s culls took place over eight to 12 days; the proposed culls will take place over six weeks. That matters, because when Labour’s culls took place over more than 12 days, the level of TB in badgers increased by a factor of 1.7, showing that slow culls, which this Government are licensing, increase TB in badgers. If the methodology changes, so too do the predicted results. These culls risk making TB worse. Slow culling makes TB worse in badgers, and perturbation makes TB worse in cattle on neighbouring farms.

The Government say that the cull will work, but they have downplayed the risks of making things worse, and I think they have downplayed the risks to neighbouring farmers, too. If the culls are marred by protests, culling is likely to be driven under ground and become more localised, which will make bovine TB in cattle worse, as the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) mentioned. If it is driven underground and happens on a localised basis, the one thing we know is that it will drive the badgers away and increase the problem for the neighbouring farm. That is why illegal killing of badgers is so incredibly selfish of farmers, because it is effectively spreading the infection around the neighbourhood. Farmers are frustrated; I understand that. They believe that this cull is the solution, but they also want a science-led solution. This is not that solution. That is why the badger cull will be bad for farmers.

Let me deal now with why the badger cull will be bad for the taxpayer. What has been the cost to the taxpayer so far? It has been over £300,000 for licensing activities carried out by Natural England, while sett monitoring has cost £750,000. An independent expert panel to monitor the cull has cost £17,000, and surveying the reserve site in Dorset will add to the total. Since April 2012, six DEFRA staff have been working on the cull. This cull has already cost the taxpayer well over £1 million—before it has even started.

What will be the costs to the taxpayer if the cull proceeds? The estimated cost of humaneness monitoring is £700,000, and badger post-mortems another £250,000. The policing costs for each cull area are put at £500,000 a year. There is a strong steer from the police that they will need to send armed officers to police any night-time demonstrations, taking up scarce police resources.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree with me that the true cost to the taxpayer has nothing to do with these small costs that she mentions, but relates to the fact that 189,500 cows have been killed unnecessarily which costs the taxpayer up to £1 billion a year in compensation to farmers?

[Mary Creagh]

The Secretary of State said at the weekend that he wants to roll out a further 10 areas a year for the next two years. He, for one, has already made up his mind on the efficacy and humaneness of these so-called pilots. Assuming he gets his way, that is £5 million a year for the police alone. I think that the police costs are material—

[Jesse Norman]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mary Creagh]

No. Police costs are material, because at a time when the police face 20% cuts, asking armed response vehicles to go out into the countryside will take further resources away from the cities, where there tends to be more gun crime, for example, than there is in the countryside. Monitoring all this is very problematic for police forces. When I spoke to someone from the Devon and Cornwall police, I was told that they had only a tiny number of response vehicles to monitor the area from the end of Cornwall all the way up to Exeter, yet they are already facing a huge challenge.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

I am going to make some progress.

If farmers pull out of the cull and the bond does not cover the cost of completing it for four years, the taxpayer will pay once more. The Government talk about the costs of TB, as did the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), but in a parliamentary answer to me in September 2011 the then farming Minister, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), who is in his place, said that the cull would lead to five fewer herd breakdowns a year in each cull area. In 2010, there were more than 2,000 confirmed herd breakdowns in England. If the cull were rolled out with 10 cull areas a year, it would prevent just 50 herd breakdowns a year. The taxpayer costs of culling will not be recouped by a reduction in the costs of bovine TB, so this cull will go on being bad for taxpayers until Ministers cancel it.

[Jesse Norman]

On the issue of police security, will the hon. Lady unhesitatingly condemn any illegal harassment of farmers who take part in any cull?

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely; there is no place for illegal activity. It is interesting that the Government are ignoring the advice of the scientists—not animal rights extremists—who went out, faced down those animal rights extremists and stood in isolated fields across the country to deliver this cull. The scientists did that in the name and the cause of science—and they have said that this cull will not work. They are not in any way soft about this issue, and it is worth re-emphasising that point.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

I understand that the Government are rightly insisting on vaccination on land adjoining the culling areas, but the hon. Lady has not mentioned the costs of that. To do that job properly, this will have to be rolled out over at least four years.

[Mary Creagh]

That is right. Vaccination has to take place every year because of the life cycle of the badger. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that point. I know that a fund was made available for vaccination, but it is not clear how much of it has been spent. I think it was supposed to be match funded by farmers. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us on that.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

I want to make some more progress before giving way again.

Let me move on to deal with the effect on badgers. The so-called pilots were supposed simply to test the humaneness, safety and effectiveness of the free shooting of badgers. No information has been made public about how wounded animals that retreat underground to die can be included in the humaneness assessment. We do not know what proportion of badger carcases will be collected for post-mortems to see whether they were killed quickly. Observers will measure the animals’ vocalisations and the time between shooting and death to measure that humaneness. As we know, however, the Secretary of State has already made up his mind that culling is the way forward, so that is a purely academic exercise.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

If, as the hon. Lady suggests, culling is an inhumane approach to badgers, why does she believe that the British Veterinary Association and the British Cattle Veterinary Association are four-square behind the Government’s policy?

[Mary Creagh]

I have mentioned the letter in today’s edition of The Independent, and I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has seen it. I am not sure that those bodies are four-square behind the policy. The Government themselves do not know whether culling is humane. That is why the pilots are allegedly about humaneness. The hon. Gentleman’s Government do not know whether culling is humane.

If the Government’s numbers are wrong or marksmen kill more badgers than they are licensed for, badgers could be wiped out locally. If too few are killed—under 70%—TB will increase. I have talked about the range of badger population numbers; localised extinction could happen. The police’s national wildlife crime unit raised concerns back in 2010, as I know from freedom of information requests, that the publication of maps detailing badger setts could be used for “badger persecution”—their phrase, not mine—and that pesticides for poisoning badgers could be misused. There has already been one report of alleged pesticide misuse in Gloucestershire, which I understand the police are investigating. Will Ministers confirm whether the cull will proceed in Gloucestershire if wildlife crime is found to have been committed?

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I have the highest regard for the hon. Lady and we have worked well together in Yorkshire on a number of issues, but I am concerned about the Opposition’s negative argument. If the badger cull does not go ahead, we would like to know the alternatives. Our Select Committee report, published today, speaks for itself.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I am coming on to that point in my speech. Her report certainly talks about the need for a proper strategy and a coherent policy, and I am not sure that that is what we have got from this Government.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has correctly identified an issue about which hundreds of my constituents have written to me, namely animal cruelty. Given the lack of evidence and the absence of consensus on the matter, and in the light of the huge public concern, the cull surely cannot go ahead. It is extraordinary that Government Members have not reflected the concern felt by their own constituents.

[Mary Creagh]

I know that there is a great deal of public concern. Any policy must be socially, environmentally and politically deliverable, and the Minister’s decision to pursue the cull will test the limits of those requirements.

In Gloucestershire, the police and crime commissioner is against the cull and the county council has said that culling will not take place on its land. Serious practical difficulties are posed by free shooting near footpaths and camp sites with bullets that can travel up to two miles. If the cull goes ahead, it will not end well. It will be bad for farmers, bad for taxpayers and bad for wildlife.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

Twenty Members wish to speak, so I want to make some progress.

If it is not the most effective way of stopping TB, why is the cull going ahead? There is a very simple answer: it is a simple solution to a complex problem. The alternatives—stricter controls on cattle, faster and more TB testing, and more restrictions on cattle movements—promise yet more hardship and expense for hard-pressed farmers, and for the Government. The Government believe that vaccinating badgers—the approach taken by my colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government—is too expensive, but owing to the high cost of policing the expected protests against the shoots, the expense of the cull now exceeds that of vaccination.

The UK’s top badger expert. Professor Rosie Woodroffe, has analysed the numbers. The Government estimate that badger vaccination would cost £2,250 and that the cull will cost £1,000 per square kilometre per year, so at first sight the cull is cheaper than vaccinating. However, when the Government’s estimate of the cost of policing the cull—£1,429 per square kilometre per year—is added, vaccination becomes the cheaper option. What a pity for farmers that DEFRA Ministers cancelled five of Labour’s six badger vaccination trials. Early results from the remaining site near Stroud show a 79% reduction in TB transmission to unvaccinated badger cubs, which means that they are almost certainly less infectious to cattle and to other badgers. Two or three years of vaccination would give badgers full immunity as the old badgers died off.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has given us a tremendous number of statistics, for which I am grateful. Will she now tell us how many farmers she has consulted, and will she give us a few statistics relating to the number of cattle that have already been destroyed?

[Mary Creagh]

I am in touch with farmers all the time, and I have had a meeting with the National Farmers Union. I have met farmers in Derbyshire and, indeed, all over the country.

The wildlife trusts, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust are all vaccinating badgers on their land. The Zoological Society of London and the wildlife trusts are pushing for volunteer involvement in badger vaccination, which would greatly reduce the costs. According to a report published today by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, for which I pay tribute to the Committee and its Chair, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh):

“The vaccine has been available for 3 years but the government should now produce a clear strategy for using it.”

That is a pretty damning indictment of what the Government have been doing for the past three years. As a result of Labour’s investment, we now have a cattle TB vaccine and a DIVA test to differentiate infected and vaccinated cows.

The Select Committee report is critical of the Government’s approach to cattle vaccination. It says that the debate on cattle vaccination is unclear, and that

“the government must accept a great deal of the blame for this”.

It says:

“The quality and accuracy of the information that Defra has put into the public domain has been insufficient and inadequate.”

The Government have delayed field trials of the cattle vaccine after misinterpreting EU rules, and they must now undertake those trials as soon as possible.

I must make it clear, however, that neither a vaccine for badgers nor a vaccine for cattle will work on its own. We need a coherent policy framework to tackle all aspects of this complex disease. The Independent Scientific Group has suggested several key principles that could form the basis of such a framework. Page 175 of its report states that

“the movement of TB infected cattle...poses the greatest threat to the disease security of uninfected farms and particularly so in the case of farms in low disease risk areas”.

According to the report, cattle movements

“are also likely to make a significant contribution to the local spread of infection in high risk areas.”

Page after page of the report lists different control strategies for low-risk and high-risk areas, some of which were implemented by the last Government and some of which are now being adopted by the present Government.

We welcome, for instance, the risk-based trading strategy on which the Government have embarked. There must be transparency in the marketplace to prevent farmers from unknowingly importing infected cows into their herds. However, the Government have not investigated, for example, the 40% of farms in high-risk areas in the south-west that have consistently avoided bovine TB. What are those farmers doing to protect their farms? How are they trading, what is their biosecurity, and what are their husbandry practices? Can they be replicated? What can we learn? Until we get to the bottom of that, we will not find a solution.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

As I think the hon. Lady is beginning to make clearer, it is not a case of either vaccinating or culling. The Government have introduced a package of measures, including security measures. At the heart of the vaccination question, however, is the challenge of how to persuade 26 other European Union member states to import the meat from vaccinated cattle when there are questions to be answered about the efficacy of the BCG vaccine and the efficacy of the skin test.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

We now have the DIVA test, which enables us to differentiate vaccinated and infected cattle, and we know from the Select Committee’s report that its efficacy rate is 65%. Our priority must be to stop the spread of infected cattle into low-risk areas, and the spreading of the disease. The Government are about to embark on a risky and untested cull which, as I have said, will be bad for farmers, bad for taxpayers and bad for wildlife.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has made the important point that even in infected areas there are farms that manage to remain disease-free. We need to learn lessons from that, but some Government Members have clearly made up their minds already. They are not interested in the facts; they just want a cull.

[Mary Creagh]

I agree with my hon. Friend. There is nothing more dangerous than an idea if it is the only idea you have.

This so-called science-led cull has been disowned by the scientists who faced down animal rights protesters to bring us the randomised badger culling trial and a world-class scientific result. The cull will cost more than doing nothing. If it works at all, its effect will be marginal. It carries a real risk of making TB worse in both cattle and badgers. The original Independent Scientific Group said:

“Concentrating solely on the badger dimension in what is clearly a multidimensional and dynamic system of disease spread would be to fail to learn the lessons of previous experience .”

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mary Creagh]

No, I will not. I am about to end my speech.

Any solution will require us to work closely with farmers. It will need to be technically, environmentally, socially and economically acceptable, and it will require the consent of taxpayers. Complex problems require complex solutions, and this cull is not the solution.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman is right to spot the importance of food production. It is the largest manufacturing sector in the country, and we would like to see exports expanded into Europe and the BRIC countries, as I have just said.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

The Opposition were pleased to see the Prime Minister in the USA this week negotiating a trade deal on behalf of the EU to open up that new export market to the British food industry. I was disappointed to note the Secretary of State’s failure to support his Government’s Queen’s Speech in its entirety last night. Does he agree with his Prime Minister and President Obama that the UK is better off in the EU? Yes or no?

[Mr Speaker]

Presumably, that is with reference to the opening up of new markets to British producers?

[Mary Creagh]

indicated assent.

[Mr Paterson]

I entirely agree with the Prime Minister that we would like to increase our exports to the EU and around the world, and that is why he was doing sterling stuff in Russia. I entirely endorse his policy, which is that we should renegotiate and then put the proposed settlement to the British people. The question for the hon. Lady is whether her wishy-washy Wally of a shadow leader will give the British people a choice.

[Mary Creagh]

I am not sure where we stand on those words. I always play the ball, not the man, Mr Speaker. It is interesting to note that the Secretary of State is a little rattled.

At a CBI dinner last night, Roger Carr, its president, said that Britain needed to be in the EU in order to build our export base. Membership of the EU gives us access to a domestic market of 500 million people. Our export trade deals are negotiated through the EU. Nearly three quarters of our food exports go to our European neighbours. Once more, will the Secretary of State explain how Britain’s leaving the UK would help jobs, exports and growth in the British food industry?

Agricultural Wages Board

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes that the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB) was set up in 1948 to provide a fair wage and skills structure for agricultural workers; recognises that it is used as a benchmark for other employment in the food industry and that it was the only wages council not to be scrapped in the 1980s; further notes that around a quarter of agricultural workers live in tied accommodation and that casual seasonal workers may move around the country; regrets that the Welsh Government’s wish to retain the AWB has been ignored by the Government; condemns the Government for its abolition of the AWB, which took place after just four weeks consultation and will take £260 million out of the rural economy over the next 10 years, lead to a race to the bottom on wages in rural areas, reduce living standards and impoverish rural workers, exacerbating social deprivation and harming social inclusion; further regrets that hon. Members could not debate that issue as part of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill; and calls on the Government to drop its plans to abolish the AWB.

Last week, the House abolished the Agricultural Wages Board without debate and without a vote. The AWB sets the pay and conditions for 152,000 farm workers in England and Wales. That shoddy little manoeuvre was the result of Government desperation to force through the board’s abolition in the teeth of opposition from my colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government, workers’ representatives and many farmers. Perhaps it was also the result of a fear of another coalition split or Back-Bench revolt. Today, the Opposition are allowing Back Benchers the chance to debate and vote on that abolition—a vote the Government denied them last week.

Like today’s debate, other debates on the subject have been sparsely attended by Government Back Benchers. Perhaps they flinch from defending an ideological decision that will impoverish hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of their hard-working constituents who work the land. We know that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs traps squirrels on his estate. His Liberal Democrat colleagues should beware the political traps that he enjoys setting for his coalition partners. In opposition, the Minister of State supported a motion that warned that abolishing the AWB would

“impoverish the rural working class”.

Today, he and his colleagues once again act as midwives to Tory dogma that will make thousands of people in their constituencies worse off—1,020 people in the Minister’s constituency and 1,120 people in the Secretary of State’s constituency.

The abolition of the AWB is wrong on three counts. First, it will take money out of workers’ pockets and out of rural high streets at a time when the economy needs it most. The abolition does nothing to reduce the deficit; it could even increase the deficit by adding to the welfare bill, because workers pushed into poverty pay will claim more in-work benefits and lose the incentive to gain new skills. Secondly, the abolition is bad for our food industry. A race to the bottom on pay will not help to attract the new recruits the industry needs. Thirdly, the abolition is bad regulatory reform because, paradoxically, it will increase the burden of employment regulation on small farmers, meaning that many more of them could end up in employment tribunals. Ministers’ incompetence will result in lower pay, higher welfare spending and more regulation, and it will deepen the recession in the rural high streets they represent.

First, let us look at how the measure will take money off low-paid workers. The AWB protects pay and conditions for 152,000 farm workers in England and Wales.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that among those working on the land are people like me and many others in Northamptonshire whose first experience of work, under the age of 16, was picking fruit on the farms in rural Northamptonshire? This will have a particular impact on them because they are not covered by the minimum wage.

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. With the abolition of the AWB, there will be no minimum wage for children under the age of 16 who are picking fruit or driving tractors at weekends and in the summer holidays. When one thinks about the amount of money a tractor is worth, and how such work could become a route into farming for some young people, it will certainly cap their access to that employment.

As well as the 152,000 who are directly covered by the board, a similar number have their wages set against the AWB benchmark, including equestrian workers in the racing and leisure industries, estate workers and gamekeepers. Nearly every constituency in the country has some people who will be affected, including more than 50 people in Wakefield. The board sets fair wages, holiday pay, sick pay and overtime. It has six grades, and the lowest grade is just 2p an hour more than the national minimum wage.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is another pernicious, shoddy little policy by the Government, who are ideologically driven to cut the wages of ordinary working people?

[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.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady identify what is special about agriculture? Is it that farmers want to exploit their workers, or should there be protection for people in retail, catering and other such industries?

[Mary Creagh]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman, with 380 workers who will be affected in his constituency, is asking me what is special about agriculture; I believe that he is a farmer, so he might stand up and tell me. Agriculture is different because people are often living in rural isolation; they may have their home provided by their employer, which puts them in a uniquely vulnerable position; and, as the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) said, they are brought in from countries where English is not their first language—perhaps they do not speak English at all—and are not in a position to negotiate. Those are three reasons for starters, but I am happy to come back to that.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend’s speech is hitting exactly the right notes. Has the former Minister, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), not just given the game away? This measure is about getting eastern Europeans into the country to pay them poverty wages far below those that anybody else would possibly want.

[Mary Creagh]

I will look at that in detail later, but we do not want either a race to the bottom on wages or a great increase in the amount that employers charge workers for their tied accommodation—their hot bed in a caravan—which will mean that they end up effectively working for below national minimum wage and undercut British workers out of the market.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. One point covered by the AWB that scares me is workers’ sick pay and terms and conditions. At the moment, sick pay ranges from £150 to £250. Once the AWB has gone, employers will have to pay sick pay at only statutory minimum terms of just more than £85. That is a direct hit on workers, a quarter of whom are over 55 years old.

[Mary Creagh]

That is right, and we all know that as we get older we are more prone to illness. A further reason why farming is different is that people are expected to work antisocial hours and long hours out in what can be very difficult conditions. We saw that with the flooding last year and when farmers and their employees had to dig lambs out of the snow in the very cold winter we have just had.

[Mr Spencer]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

I will give way later, but I would like to make some progress.

The Government’s own figures suggest that up to £280 million could be lost over 10 years in wages and in holiday and sick pay—a quarter of a billion pounds taken out of areas represented mainly by the parties on the Government Benches, where the cost of living is estimated to be approximately £3,000 more than for those living in urban areas. Up to £35 million a year could be lost in wages alone—again, those figures are taken from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills impact assessment.

I want to know what happens when money is taken from rural families on the breadline. Who will pick up the tab? People with children will have recourse to income-related benefits, such as tax credits, council tax benefit and housing benefit. Reducing rural workers to the poverty line will take money out of workers’ pockets and transfer it directly to their employers. We, the taxpayer, will pick up the in-work welfare bill. That will add to the deficit. As a strategy for rural growth and deficit reduction, this thoughtless abolition will be catastrophic.

My second point is that the abolition will be bad for the food industry; it goes against business needs. Britain’s biggest manufacturing industry, the food production sector, needs more skilled workers. Instead, the Government are encouraging employers to race to the bottom on pay. That will see skilled workers turn their backs on the industry—and become MPs instead!

There are 2.5 million unemployed people in the United Kingdom, 1 million of whom are young people. There are 25 million unemployed people in the European Union, yet the horticulture industry still says that it needs to bring in workers under the seasonal agricultural workers scheme because it cannot find reliable British workers. It simply defies economic logic to suggest that a race to the bottom on pay is the way to attract the skilled new entrants that the industry needs.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady unaware or simply ignoring the fact that the AWB was debated at length during the consideration of the Public Bodies Bill in both Houses of Parliament? Secondly, is she aware of the impact assessment’s conclusion that current wage levels are generally above the minimum, and that, with wage-setting practices and modern working practices in agriculture, wages are unlikely to be eroded, as farmers will need to attract their workers? That was its conclusion.

[Mary Creagh]

I am delighted that the right hon. Lady refers to the AWB and the Public Bodies Bill, the so-called bonfire of the quangos. The Bill certainly brought her a degree of notoriety, as it contained her proposals to sell off the forests and scrap protection for farm workers. She mentions the impact assessment. I am just quoting the Government’s figures: their estimate is as high as £280 million over 10 years, or with a best estimate of £260 million.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

Many times during the passage of the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004, I and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) met the National Farmers Union, employers and all the major people employed in the farming industry, all of whom recognised the valuable contribution of the AWB. Perhaps today we can find out who is the driving force behind its abolition. Employers do not want to get rid of it.

[Mary Creagh]

That is very interesting. I was just reading some of the responses to the consultation. One farmer said:

“I am a farmer with 3 employees. The annual AWB wage award has been an invaluable tool to help determine wage awards...We are overburdened with enthusiastic government departments issuing guidance rules & legislation...The annual guidance for the level of wage awards is one of the few useful tools”.

[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?

[Mary Creagh]

I have been making that point repeatedly. The hon. Gentleman has 1,110 people in his constituency who will be affected. I am afraid that we heard some noises off from the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire; he said, “It is,” so it seems that coalition divisions are once more being exposed, as I thought they would be. I look forward to having a chat with the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) in our Lobby during tonight’s vote.

I want to return to the role of the major supermarkets, which have silently supported the abolition of the AWB. Even the farm manager of the Duchy of Cornwall, which supplies Waitrose, responded to the consultation in support of abolition. The Duchy Originals website talks about food that “is good” and “does good” and says that it raises money for charity, but rural workers should not have to rely on charity to feed their families at the end of the week. Today’s figures on food banks, many of which are springing up in rural areas, give the lie to the fact that there is any overpayment in rural areas.

The supermarkets trumpet their commitment to fair trade, but why is that only for workers in developing countries? Why not here? They trumpet their corporate social responsibility programmes in communities, yet are silent when it comes to reducing pay in their own supply chains. I quote again from the responses to the consultation. A vegetable producer in the north-west said:

“We are unfortunately in an industry where we are seeing increasing pressure from retailers to lower prices of supply of produce,”

and added that

“some of our produce price returns are no higher in 2012 than they were over 10 years ago.”

This has real implications for the sustainability of the food supply chain and the UK’s self-sufficiency, which has already fallen to about 55%, making us much more vulnerable to global shocks. The supermarkets have got to start thinking long term. We supported the Government’s creation of the groceries code adjudicator, although we would have preferred an ombudsman. We want fairness in the supply chain, but that does not stop with the horticultural businesses. It has to feed down to the level of the individual workers as well.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the case she is making. The Conservative party was once seen as the party of the countryside, but does not the Government’s shoddy behaviour demonstrate just who in the countryside it really stands up for?

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. It is not even clear whom they support in the countryside, though. I have quoted some farmers opposed to abolition. It is a bit of a mystery who actually wants it. The right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire has left the Chamber, so we will never know.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady’s case, which makes it clear that she disagrees very strongly with the abolition of the AWB. The Opposition likewise made their opposition clear when other wages boards were abolished in the 1990s, none of which was brought back during the 13 years of Labour government. Will she give us an absolute commitment that, if the Labour party forms the next Government, the AWB will be returned forthwith? Will she give us that guarantee?

[Mary Creagh]

If the hon. Gentleman is so keen to retain the AWB—I know that many in his constituency, including the Farmers’ Union of Wales, are against abolition—I hope that that will be reflected in his voting on our side this evening.

I want to deal with the regulatory burdens that could fall on farmers. We have considered the history behind the AWB’s abolition. The board has survived until now thanks to my colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government, who listened to their constituents and were totally against getting rid of it. Constitutionally, abolition required consent, and they refused to give it.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The motion notes that it is

“the Welsh Government’s wish to retain the AWB”.

Scotland and Northern Ireland can keep their AWBs, of course. Is the hon. Lady making the case, therefore, for a reserved powers model for the Welsh Government?

[Mary Creagh]

I think the hon. Gentleman has made that case very well himself. We expect an announcement from our colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government, but they have made a commitment to retain the functions of the AWB in Wales. We will see what that delivers over time.

All was quiet until the appointment of the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), who decided to abolish the AWB by tacking it on to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill—a regulatory reform that could therefore bypass the Welsh Government. His Department conducted a pitifully short, four-week consultation. Let us remember that there was a full 12-week consultation on banning ash trees from Europe four months after Ministers were first told that ash dieback disease was here. We can see where this Secretary of State’s priorities lie—apart from the squirrels. He is swift to take money from workers’ pockets and hand it back to their bosses, but slow to defend the natural environment.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that the Secretary of State represents a border constituency? If, as expected, the Labour-controlled Welsh Assembly maintains the AWB at its own expense, members of the farming community in his constituency would have to travel only one or two miles, potentially, to get a better deal. He will have a skills shortage in his own constituency.

[Mary Creagh]

Absolutely. The Secretary of State has not only 1,120 agricultural workers, but a food bank, in his constituency, so that is an excellent point very well made.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, for being late into the Chamber and further apologise if my point has already been mentioned. I want to highlight to my hon. Friend that not long after the previous Labour Government introduced the national minimum wage, the Conservative party called for the abolition of the AWB, saying that the national minimum wage would cover it, which clearly it would not.

[Mary Creagh]

Clearly, the national minimum wage does not cover it all, which is why it was not abolished under various previous Tory Governments. Various Conservative Prime Ministers understood that if someone’s house was provided by their employer, they were in a uniquely vulnerable position when it came to negotiating their wages.

Many small farmers want to keep the AWB so that they do not have to become employment specialists. They want to get on with running their business. Instead, this change will add to their regulatory burden. The Farmers’ Union of Wales, where 12,000 workers are covered by the AWB, opposes abolition. It has said:

“Many farms in Wales run with relatively few staff, or indeed with family labour. The Agricultural Wages Board is considered an important means of avoiding potential conflict and lengthy negotiations with individual members of staff.”

Without the AWB, each farm business owner will have to negotiate terms and conditions annually with its work force. They will make mistakes, as employers sometimes do, and might end up in employment tribunals as a result.

I want to quote again from one of the consultation responses. A farmer in Kings Lynn said:

“I disagree strongly with the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board...the last thing I want to do with my limited management time is to negotiate wages with my 6 full-time and up to 30 part-time workers some of whom have worked for me for 30 to 40 years and have a strong personal relationship with me. I do not want to damage this by having to negotiate wages with them.”

The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) asked why farming was different. I think that that answers his question.

We have talked about gangmasters and licensing and, before I conclude, I want to touch briefly on the issue of workers’ accommodation. The Government’s impact assessment indicates that 25,500 farm workers have a house or cottage provided by their employer, and that another 4,700 live in other accommodation, such as caravans. The agricultural wages order defines “other” accommodation and guarantees all farm workers that it is fit for human habitation, safe and secure, and that every worker should have a bed for their sole use and be provided with suitable and sufficient free drinking water and sanitation.

Abolishing the AWB will remove those guarantees on housing for farm workers. The accommodation will no longer have to be fit for human habitation, safe or secure. Workers will not be guaranteed a bed for their sole use, and there will be no requirement to provide drinking water or sanitation. I should like to cite the case of one of the firms that wrote in support of the AWB’s abolition, Suffolk Mushrooms. Last year, the firm was fined £10,000 for failing to have a safety certificate for the boiler in the men’s accommodation, and for various hazardous working practices that put workers’ lives at risk, including leaving high-level safety gates open. After the case was won, the Health and Safety Executive inspector, John Claxton, said:

“Suffolk Mushrooms invested more than £1.5 million refurbishing its factory and mushroom growing equipment, yet failed to spend even a few hundred pounds to keep its employees safe”.

[Mrs Spelman]

Obviously the laws already exist to enable the Health and Safety Executive to fine employers, in every sector of the economy, when they break the law. Does the hon. Lady not accept that she is perpetrating the myth that farmers set out to exploit their workers? The vast majority of farmers listening to the debate today would be affronted by that suggestion.

[Mary Creagh]

That was a good effort from the right hon. Lady. The HSE will clearly continue to exist, but I am citing a case that happened last year, not at some other point in time. I ask her whether she thinks that conditions will get worse or better when the AWB is abolished.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

The Agricultural Wages Board existed when that case came to light, so it clearly did not create the defence that the hon. Lady suggested it might.

[Mary Creagh]

The question for the hon. Gentleman is whether conditions will get worse or better when the provisions are removed. Will they be better or worse for a worker who does not have a bed guaranteed for their sole use? Opposition Members already know of conditions in which people are hot-bedding. Is that what we want to see in our farming industry? I certainly do not, and I am sure that the majority of farmers do not, but there will now be no legal requirement for an individual to have their own bed. I think that that is wrong; does the hon. Gentleman?

The AWB was set up by the Attlee Government in 1948. Even Mrs Thatcher did not abolish it. She understood that if someone’s home comes with their job, they are in a uniquely weak negotiating position with their employer. However, last week’s Bill ended nearly 100 years of protection for farm workers. In the Labour party, we believe that the people who pick the fruit should also be able to buy it in the shops, and not have to rely on food banks to feed themselves and their children. As many farmers themselves have said, in their responses to the consultation, this decision will not secure a stable and prosperous future for the food and farming industry or for those who work in it. The Prime Minister once said that we were all in it together, but time after time, ordinary working people are first in his firing line. If Members want a rural living wage, they should vote with the Labour party this afternoon. If they are happy with poverty pay for their constituents, they should vote with the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who picks up on the earlier question that the shadow Secretary of State singularly failed to answer. On my hon. Friend’s behalf, I pose this question to her: if a Labour Government were to be elected after the next election, would the AWB exist? Will they bring in legislation to re-establish an agricultural wages board?

[Mary Creagh]

The right hon. Gentleman asks me a direct question. We are two years away from the next election, and I am sure he will be looking forward with great eagerness to our manifesto. We will look at all measures that stop the public sector, the taxpayer, subsidising poverty wages, wherever they occur in our economy.

[Mr Paterson]

I think my hon. Friend will take that as a no.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart]

It might surprise the hon. Lady to learn that I am not a member of the Government and so I am not really in a position to answer that. Of course, I sat through 13 years of Labour disdain for rural Britain, and that question was asked on many occasions. However, I do not want to be reprimanded by the Chair twice in two days for getting off the topic by talking about union sponsorship, so if she will forgive me—

[Mary Creagh]

The hon. Gentleman said that the motion is somehow sponsored by unions. It is nothing of the sort. This debate is about a point of principle—[Interruption.] I am sorry that Government Members are laughing. This debate is about whether people who work in remote, isolated areas, in unseasonable conditions and in one of our most dangerous industries deserve to be paid 2p an hour above the national minimum wage and to have some sort of protection against eviction from their homes.

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Lady will forgive me if I note that pretty much all the electronic traffic we have seen on this debate has been generated by her party’s biggest sponsor. Call me a cynic, but I am not going to accept her comments.

I believe that workers in my area are protected by the minimum wage, employment legislation and a raft of accommodation legislation applying to tied cottages and the like. I do not recognise the image projected by the Labour party of farm workers in tied cottages, and have 28 years’ experience in the industry. I agreed with the Secretary of State when he referred to the noble Lord Falconer’s comment that regional and sectoral pay was a thing of the past. I find it odd that we seem to be disagreeing with that now.

The final abolition of the AWB raises two questions, both of which have been raised before, but since neither has been answered I will ask them again. If the abolition of the AWB exposes young workers, foreign workers or people who are vulnerable, either through poverty or in some other way, in the way the shadow Secretary of State has set out—I know all about the unique aspects of agricultural work—why is it that no other sector in the UK from which a wages board has been removed is suffering from those consequences? Perhaps she could explain—we asked this question earlier but did not get an explanation—why those dangers are apparently unique to agriculture. I will ask her a third time, more in hope than in expectation: would Labour reinstate the AWB if it was lucky enough to form a Government in 2015? It is no good her saying that they have a couple years to come clean about their proposals. I think that this is absolutely the right forum and the right time to make clear the policy as it applies to the AWB of a party that might—I hope not—form a future Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I agree that clearer labelling could help, but we are up against a criminal conspiracy and I think the criminals would have got through. I had a constructive meeting with the French, German, Austrian and Finnish Ministers in Brussels last week, and we are asking the European Commission to accelerate its report on the labelling and marking of the country of origin.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

On 22 February Sodexo announced that it had found horsemeat in a beef product and withdrew meat from schools in Gloucestershire, Southampton and Leicestershire and the armed forces. Sodexo has refused publicly to name the product, the level of horse adulteration or the meat company which supplied it, thereby preventing other organisations from knowing whether their supplies are at risk. The Government know the name of that meat supplier. Will the Secretary of State now name that company so that the rest of the public sector can check its supplies?

[Mr Paterson]

I discussed this issue yesterday with the chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, who is completely satisfied that the information required from Sodexo has been supplied. The hon. Lady must understand that there is an investigation going on and in some of these cases it might lead to criminal prosecution. [Interruption.] No, the FSA is clear that it must be guarded about what information can be revealed in case the investigations are impinged upon.

[Mary Creagh]

I find that answer extraordinary. The Secretary of State has a duty to tell the public what he knows and in every other case where supermarkets and other suppliers have found adulterated meat products, their suppliers have been named. How is the public sector supposed to check?

I want to move on to a letter from John Young, a former manager at the Meat Hygiene Service, who sent this letter from High Peak Meat Exports to DEFRA in April 2011. It warned the Government that bute-contaminated horsemeat could illegally enter the human food chain because of failures with the horse passport system, which I have raised in the House before. On 17 February the Secretary of State ordered an urgent investigation into those claims. What has that investigation found, and has he discovered why his Government colleagues ignored that warning?

[Mr Paterson]

To clarify the previous answer, Sodexo made it clear to all its customers which products there was a problem with. It has withdrawn them all but in the case of an investigation which might grow criminal, it would not be sensible to reveal names of suppliers. This is a criminal conspiracy which covers 23 different countries, and it does not help the police to arrive at prosecutions if information is revealed.

On horse passports, we are clear that we have fixed the problem of bute getting into the food chain. No carcases will get into the food chain until they have tested negative for bute. That is absolutely clear, and we are clear that the horse passport regime which we inherited from the hon. Lady’s party needs reforming, and we will do that in due course.

Point of Order

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I will take the point of order, and any response if the Minister wishes to respond, but I must emphasise that that will be that. We are not having a whole debate on the issue that arose at the start of the urgent question.

[Mary Creagh]

I would like to set the record straight—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say to Members who are shrieking that they should cease doing so. Mr Burley, you are now eagerly consulting your BlackBerry or iPhone, and that may be a more profitable activity for you than shouting from a sedentary position. Let me make it clear that the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) will be heard, and the Minister will be heard, without unnecessary distractions.

[Mary Creagh]

I would like to give the Minister the opportunity to set the record straight. He is right that I received last Friday the names of three UK companies suspected as passing off horse as beef. I immediately e-mailed and wrote to the Secretary of State, on that day, offering to share the information with him. I received a response from him on Monday asking me to hand it over. He was obviously unaware that I had already handed it over to the FSA on Saturday, and that it had reassured me that it was already in possession of those names. Will he now withdraw the disgraceful slur and apologise to me?

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

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I have here the e-mail exchange between the FSA’s director of operations and the hon. Lady. He repeatedly requests further information and evidence on the comments that she made in the House, and her reply is:

“I am very anxious to protect my source from any repercussions.”

She then seeks to bargain with the FSA for further information before releasing her information. I am happy to put that into the public domain if it would help, but I think my comments were entirely justified.

Horsemeat

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will make a statement on horsemeat in the UK food chain and joint police and Food Standards Agency action.

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

The Secretary of State and I are providing the House with very regular reports on the adulteration of processed beef products with horsemeat. As the House will appreciate, it is not possible to give a running commentary on active investigations. Therefore, for operational reasons, we were unable to inform the House of the Food Standards Agency’s plan to enter the two meat premises in west Wales and west Yorkshire earlier this week. As part of its audit of all horse abattoirs in the UK and the ongoing investigation into the adulteration of meat products, the FSA gathered intelligence that led to it and the police entering the two meat premises and seizing horsemeat. The FSA also seized all paperwork from the two companies and is investigating customer lists. The FSA suspended activities at both plants immediately. The FSA will continue to work closely with the police, and if there is evidence of criminal activity, I will expect the full force of the law to be brought down on anyone involved.

I met retailers and suppliers again yesterday, and they confirmed that they are on course to provide meaningful results from product testing by tomorrow. The Secretary of State has made a written ministerial statement today on the outcome of his successful discussions in Europe yesterday. The co-ordinated control plan proposed by the Commission is a welcome step to help address a pan-European problem.

The FSA’s most recent tests for the presence of bute in horses slaughtered in the UK checked 206 horse carcases, and eight came back positive. Three may have entered the food chain in France, and the remaining five have not gone into the food chain. The FSA is working with the French authorities in an attempt to recall the meat from the food chain. I understand—I am sure that the House will be glad to hear this—that the results of bute testing in the withdrawn Findus products have come back negative. The chief medical officer and the chief executive officer of the FSA will be making a statement on both these matters later this morning.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that statement. I am sure the whole House will welcome Tuesday’s raids by the FSA and the police. May I ask him whether all customers of the meat-processing plant have been contacted about the raid and alerted to a potential risk?

I am glad that the FSA is investigating the concerns about horsemeat entering the food chain that I first raised with Ministers last month. Action must be taken to deal with any criminals whose activities have so badly damaged consumer confidence in the UK food industry. I raised the problem of bute-contaminated horsemeat being released into the human food chain with the Minister at Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions last month. What action did he take with the FSA to reassure himself after I raised those concerns? Was he aware of bute contamination before that day? Will he explain why, up until four days ago, all horses were being tested for bute in this country but were still being released for human consumption? I am astonished to hear that a further three could have entered the food chain in France, given that I raised this issue with him last month. That is astonishing. We were in the middle of a horsemeat adulteration scandal; this is just catastrophic complacency from him.

It is totally unacceptable that all UK horses were being tested for bute at slaughter but still being released into the human food chain until four days ago. We know that, with more than 9,000 horses slaughtered in the UK for human consumption abroad last year, we must make sure that horsemeat intended for humans is not contaminated with bute—it really is as simple as that. So why did the Minister not act immediately when I raised this issue three weeks ago in this House? Why did he not order full testing, and order that horses should be released only when clear from bute, the moment I raised this with him? We need to know whether the horsemeat entering the UK in these adulterated products contained bute.

Will the Minister tell the House whether the FSA has conducted its own tests on the Findus products to ensure that action can be taken through the criminal courts? Which other countries are testing their horsemeat lasagnes? Which other countries have received those horsemeat lasagnes? We hear from the media that they went to 16 countries, so why have they been withdrawn in only six countries—Britain, Ireland, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway? What has happened to the products in the other countries? Has the Minister sought or received reassurances from his EU counterparts that the products have been withdrawn in all EU countries?

Yesterday, the Secretary of State travelled to Brussels for a meeting with his EU counterparts. That arch-Eurosceptic had a damascene conversion to EU labelling regulations on the way. He wants more of them, he wants them quickly and he wants the Commission to hurry up with them—so much speed when his Government have spent the past two years blocking Labour MEPs’ attempts to get better country of origin labelling for processed meats and ready meals. [Interruption.] They do not like hearing it, but they are all keen on it now, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

We are all very happy to hear that, but unfortunately the hon. Lady has already exceeded her time. I think a last sentence will suffice.

[Mary Creagh]

Is there not a danger with the EU testing that the most high-risk products will be withdrawn over the next three weeks and quietly disposed of? Yesterday, the Secretary of State said:

“Nobody had a clue that there was adulteration of beef products”,

yet the Government were told by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland that it was testing last November. It seems that he and his colleagues are just totally clueless.

[Mr Heath]

Listening to the hon. Lady, one would fail to understand that probably the biggest investigation into criminal behaviour that has ever been conducted across Europe is going on at the instigation of this Government and as a result of the actions of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. He instigated the meeting of Farming Ministers of the affected countries and the Commission, established Europol in a co-ordinating role, brought forward the labelling of ingredients for products as an emergency item within the EU, exchanged data at a speed that was never done under the Government whom the hon. Lady supported, brought forward an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health to consider probable thresholds, and got the matter on the agenda for Council on 25 February. That is a quite remarkable achievement in a very short time. The Government are committed to proper investigations based on evidence.

Let me finish with one point raised by the hon. Lady—[Interruption.] If she would stop shouting at me, I will give her the answer. She raised the criminal investigations following her assertions in this House about phenylbutazone. She was repeatedly asked by the Food Standards Agency to share the information she purported to have and she refused to do so. I think that every citizen in this country has a duty to provide evidence to the relevant investigating authorities when there is evidence of potential criminal behaviour.

[Mary Creagh]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We cannot have a point of order in the middle of the exchange. The hon. Lady can make a point of order later and I will of course hear it at the appropriate time.

Horsemeat

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I shall try to bear your comments in mind, Mr Speaker.

I beg to move,

That this House notes that up to 100 per cent horsemeat has been found in supermarket and branded processed meat products and that horsemeat has been found at the premises of a UK meat processing plant; notes with concern that seven horses which tested positive for phenylbutazone (bute) contamination have entered the human food chain, including one in England; further notes that meat supplied to UK prisons, labelled Halal, has tested positive for pork DNA; recognises that the Irish government and Northern Irish Executive have called in the police and specialist fraud units to tackle the problem of horsemeat adulteration; further recognises that thousands of jobs depend on consumer confidence in the UK and Irish meat industries; and calls on the Government to ensure that police and fraud specialists investigate the criminal networks involved in horsemeat adulteration, to speed up the Food Standards Agency official tests so that results are back in 14 days and restore consumer confidence in the meat industry by working with the food industry and other EU member states and EU institutions to define new testing, labelling and traceability standards for the meat industry to protect consumers from fraud.

It is four weeks to the day since the Irish authorities told the UK Government that they had discovered horsemeat in burgers, and 10 million suspect burgers were withdrawn. Products from Tesco, Iceland, Co-op, Lidl and Aldi have all tested positive for horsemeat. The burgers came from Silvercrest Foods in Ireland and Dalepak Hambleton in Yorkshire, subsidiaries of the ABP Food Group. A third company—Liffey Meats in County Cavan in Ireland—was also found to be supplying products with horse DNA.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Lady take this opportunity to correct comments that she made in column 612 of yesterday’s Hansard? She said that 70,000 horses are unaccounted for in Northern Ireland and being sold in the lucrative horsemeat trade. That is not the case; the evidence relates to the Republic of Ireland, not Northern Ireland. The Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is a responsible organisation and made the claims not about Northern Ireland but about the Republic. Will she join me in a cross-party promotion of Northern Ireland’s red meat sector, which produces among the best, most traced and tastiest food in this country? I would be delighted if she agreed that our border is more secure than a slip of the tongue on the Front Bench.

[Mr Speaker]

We are deeply obliged to the hon. Gentleman, who has now made his speech.

[Mary Creagh]

I am happy for the record to be put straight on that; in the heat of the debate, I made a slip of the tongue. I am the granddaughter of a cattle farmer in Northern Ireland, so it is incumbent on me to recommend the meat of the good cows of Northern Ireland.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my fellow Yorkshire MP for giving way. May I ask her to correct another part of the record? I think she will find that no contamination was found at Dalepak in north Yorkshire.

I congratulate the hon. Lady on the motion, but it lacks one thing—whether on purpose or by accident, I do not know. There is absolutely no reference to the British meat trade; its fresh, processed or frozen parts have not been implicated. We do not want any collateral damage to our excellent trade, which meets the highest standards of traceability, welfare and good food.

[Mary Creagh]

I believe that traces of horse DNA were found in products that emanated from the Dalepak plant in Hambleton; if the hon. Lady has information to the contrary, I am sure that she will take the opportunity to put the record straight. The British meat industry is not mentioned in the motion because now is not the time to be talking down the British meat industry, as she says.

Burger King, which sells a million burgers a week, gave “absolute assurances” that its burgers were fine; two weeks later they tested positive. Representatives of TRG, or the Restaurant Group, which runs Frankie and Benny’s, revealed last Monday that they had discovered a batch of meat at Rangeland Foods that tested positive for horse.

Furthermore, last Monday, the Irish authorities discovered a 900 kg block of mostly horsemeat sitting in the cold store of a Northern Ireland burger producer, Freeza Meats. The meat had been impounded during a routine inspection five months ago. I congratulate the inspectors from Newry and Mourne council, who on a routine inspection had concerns about that meat’s packaging and quality and about the absence of labelling on some products. If meat does not have a label, we have absolutely no idea where it has come from.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her leadership on this issue. She and the highly respected Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee have said that they would not currently eat processed beef products. Does she share my amazement that Ministers are still encouraging people to do so?

[Mary Creagh]

A range of mixed messages has been coming out of the Government. The Secretary of State said on Friday that he would be happy to eat processed beef products, but said on Sunday that doing so could be injurious to human health—[Interruption.] Well, he said that substances could be found that could be injurious to human health; I remember him saying it on the Iain Dale radio show.

The issue is difficult because yesterday the chief medical officer said that testing had never been done, because nobody wants to test humans to find out who is susceptible to the serious blood disorder aplastic anaemia—of course, it would be completely unethical and impossible to conduct such a test. The Government are in a difficult position. They may be trying to minimise public concern, but there is no safe dose of bute in humans.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that as the responsibility now lies with the retailers to help restore confidence, there should be an aggressive campaign by all of them to assure their customers that all the beef that they buy from now on will be British? What more can be done so that customers have confidence that they really are eating British beef?

[Mary Creagh]

The beef on sale right now in UK supermarkets is probably of a higher quality than ever. Lots of local and independent butchers have seen a spike in trade lately as a result of what has happened.

I said that there was no safe dose of bute for humans. I am not a medical expert, but bute can cause serious adverse side effects so should be consumed only under medical supervision—[Interruption.] Government Front Benchers are chuntering already, Mr Speaker; that is not a good sign.

The positive test on Freeza Meats led the inspectors to the meat trader, Martin McAdam, who admitted to buying the meat from a UK company, Flexi Foods, in Hull last July. A spokesman for Mr McAdam said:

“That shipment was the first one that came to light. Subsequently other tests identified other shipments of meat.”

He has identified the names of other companies involved, and on Friday I received that information. These UK food companies may or may not have supplied suspect meat products to Mr McAdam, but while there is a question mark over them, the food industry has a right to have that information.

On Friday I wrote to the Secretary of State offering to share that information with him. When he replied to me yesterday, he urged me to hand it over to the police and to the Food Standards Agency, as I already had done, and I assume that he now has it. On Saturday, however, after a conversation with one of the food industry representatives, I realised that the Secretary of State had not revealed the names of those firms to the food industry at the meeting. Yesterday, when I asked him why not, he failed to answer. Why did he not tell the food industry where to look? Why has he not released those names to the public so that we can have full transparency on this problem? If the Government want the industry to test on the basis of risk, why did he not share the names of the companies at Saturday’s meeting?

In the FSA advice to the public sector issued at 10 o’clock on Sunday night, the Secretary of State laid the responsibility for food safety squarely on other people’s shoulders. He said:

“We are reminding public bodies (schools, prisons, hospitals, armed forces) of their responsibility for their own food contracts. We expect them to have rigorous procurement procedures in place with reputable suppliers.”

If he knows that there are problems with some UK-based companies, why has he not told head teachers, local authorities and hospital bosses about the companies that are being investigated? I am happy to give way now if he would like to intervene.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

I am very happy to do so. I have been restraining myself, Mr Speaker, because of your injunction to be as brief as possible. The Food Standards Agency, set up by the hon. Lady’s party when in government, has been quite clear in giving advice to all those who supply to public institutions such as prisons, schools and hospitals. As I said yesterday in my statement and will say again in a few minutes, food suppliers have the ultimate responsibility for the quality of what they sell.

[Mary Creagh]

We are none the wiser about whether the Secretary of State knows the names of these companies, which prompts the question of whether the FSA has told him or whether he has asked it. Perhaps he will clarify that.

On Friday the FSA said that the police were involved, and I thought that things were under control. However, on Friday night the Met police said that they had had talks with the FSA but there was no live criminal investigation. Will the Secretary of State tell us what action the FSA has taken against these companies? Has it been into their premises and seized evidence, and why have the police not been called in? If there are no problems with these companies, will he say so clearly now, on the record?

Last Thursday, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced its statutory testing regime, with 28 local councils purchasing and testing eight samples each. However, the Secretary of State cannot seriously expect people to wait 10 weeks for the results. Does he think that surveying just 224 products across the country rises to the challenge of this scandal when he has asked the supermarkets to test thousands of their products by Friday? How many of the 10 million withdrawn burgers have been tested? Are there any plans to test them now? If they had been tested when they were withdrawn, Ministers would able to reassure us or tell us the extent of this scandal, but because they were paralysed by fear or incompetence, or both, we are still in the dark. Will the Secretary of State confirm that only a fraction of the supermarket tests will be completed and reported by this Friday?

Will the Secretary of State tell the House how many products the large public sector catering suppliers will test and how many product lines members of the British Meat Processors Association will test? Yesterday I asked him which members of the British Hospitality Association and the British Retail Consortium have withdrawn their products as a precaution and whether any of them have withdrawn products that may have gone to schools and hospitals. Is he prepared to answer those questions today?

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

As a crofter and a producer, I should refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am pleased to say that the butchers in Stornoway have seen an upturn in trade as a result of this problem. It surely beggars belief that it has happened given all the tagging that has been going on in the industry. When I send a couple of beasts—lambs—to my cousin to be slaughtered, the vet has to see them. Surely we should now be pressurising the supermarkets and major retailers to stock from as close to source locally as possible—the best of Scottish lamb, beef, or whatever—to make sure that we do not have a repetition of this situation.

[Mary Creagh]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns for the British meat industry. As he says, we have one of the strongest food traceability systems in the world. The British Retail Consortium’s food traceability system and authorisation of processing plant is recognised to global standards. What I worry about is the very large worldwide web that has led to some Findus products coming in from Romania via Cyprus, the Netherlands and a company in south-west France. It is inexplicable to me why that meat is being transported to all those different areas and what is happening there. Every time it is transported, there are moments of risk when it can be interfered with. That is where the problems arise in the meat trade rather than at the stage that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

For many years, we have been campaigning in Ayrshire to export many of these products to places such as China, because manufacturing in this sector in China is always a bit suspect and people there will not accept these types of manufactured goods. I believe that the situation we now face will affect that trade. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is an important element in resolving this situation?

[Mary Creagh]

I do agree. The British food industry is a £12 billion industry, and hundreds of thousands of UK jobs depend on it. I know from talking to farmers across the country that they are trying to export their animals, including pigs to China, and various products all over the place, and that people are coming here to look at some of our excellent rare breeds of beef that work particularly well in particular types of climate. This is obviously a very worrying time for the UK food industry.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady mentioned the upsurge in trade in local butchers over the past week. Some 30% of butchers across the whole United Kingdom had an increase in usage over the past weekend. Does she think that the traceability that is currently present within the whole United Kingdom—England, Wales, Scotland and, in particular, Northern Ireland—should be the key factor in our being able to have good products on the butchers’ shelves and in the supermarkets every week?

[Mary Creagh]

I agree that good traceability will be key to solving this crisis. I look forward to the Secretary of State putting in place robust measures with the entire food supply chain to make sure that this type of scandal cannot hit our industry again.

Yesterday the Secretary of State talked about inheriting the Food Standards Agency and our food regulatory system. He is right—he did—but unfortunately his Government broke it up in 2010.

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

No, we did not.

[Mary Creagh]

The hon. Gentleman was not in the Department at that time.

The FSA website has chapter and verse on what happened. It says that in July 2010

“the food authenticity programme was transferred from the…(FSA) to Defra along with food labelling and composition policy not related to food safety or nutrition. The food authenticity programme supports the enforcement of food labelling and standards legislation through the development of methods that can determine whether foods are correctly labelled. Food authenticity…simply refers to whether the food purchased by the consumer matches its description.”

I would say that consumers who are purchasing beef burgers that later turn out to be horse would fall within that remit. The Government removed the budget and brought the 25 officials responsible for labelling the content of food back into DEFRA. In response to my parliamentary questions, we find that there are now just 12 officials working on food authenticity in DEFRA. The Secretary of State is responsible for the labelling that tells us what is in our food, the Department of Health is responsible for nutritional labelling, and the FSA for allergen labelling. That is why the official food sampling survey is a joint DEFRA-FSA survey, is it not? Will the Secretary of State confirm that this will be the very first survey of product content that his Department has carried out since his Government removed compositional labelling responsibilities from the Food Standards Agency in June 2010?

This ideological Government, who want to deregulate everything, actually created a bureaucratic nightmare for the food industry when they fragmented the FSA’s responsibility for labelling, because now manufacturers have to go to the Department of Health to look at calories, fat, salt and sugar, to the FSA to look at allergens, and to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for what it should say on the tin.

Has the loss of more than 700 trading standards officers in three years made this type of consumer fraud more widespread and less likely to be detected? Is the Secretary of State confident that the FSA’s Meat Hygiene Service, which has just been merged into the FSA, can be cut by £12 million over the four years from 2010 to 2014 without affecting its ability to detect breaches of the law or to tackle a disease outbreak?

On abattoirs, at DEFRA questions nearly three weeks ago, I asked the Minister with responsibility for food, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), whom I am glad to see in his place, about problems with the horse passport system. I was concerned that horses contaminated with bute were being slaughtered in UK abattoirs and entering the human food chain. Of the nine UK horses that tested positive for bute in 2012, one was stopped, five went to France, two to the Netherlands and one to the UK. Has the Minister considered the possibility that horses are going from UK abattoirs into the food chain?

The FSA sampled 156 horses for bute out of the 9,405 horses that were slaughtered in UK abattoirs in 2012. Nine of those horses tested positive, which is a 6% positive rate. If we scale that up to the 9,000 figure, we will see that it suggests that more than 500 horses contaminated with bute may have entered the UK human food chain last year. I raised that point two and a half weeks ago, but received a garbled response from the Minister. I am glad to see that he has stopped burbling now.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way again; she is being very kind. What is her view on placing dye on meats that are not meant to go into the human food chain? That would give a clear visual signal and would probably prevent an awful lot of meats from finding their way into the human food chain, whether they come from the knacker’s yard or any other source.

[Mary Creagh]

I do not know how condemned meat is currently dealt with, but I have heard tales of people bleaching meat. Whatever happens to this meat, when it is condemned it needs to be permanently removed from the food chain. Clearly, something much more significant needs to happen to it, but the treatment of condemned meat is something that I am not fully aware of at the moment. I am sure I will learn a lot more about it in the next 24 hours.

As the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) said, there is evidence of an illegal trade in horses from Ireland to the UK and a programme on the subject will be aired tonight. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has also contacted me to say that it has seen horses that have been double microchipped and double passported in order to “clean” the horse. It has also given me examples of horses being microchipped at auction—many horses do not contain a microchip—and given a clean passport. Microchips can be bought for as little as 12p on the internet and it is clearly not an offence to buy one. If a microchip is put into a horse and a passport obtained from one of the 75 societies that can issue horse passports in the UK, the new passport can be linked to the microchip so that the horse looks like it has a clean history.

The increase in the number of horses and the decrease in horse prices mean that putting horses into the food chain is attractive. At the abattoir, Government inspectors check only the microchip with the passport, and if they correspond, the horse is slaughtered and allowed into the food chain. I am glad that, as of yesterday, all horses being slaughtered in UK abattoirs are now being tested for bute, but the Minister should have acted on that two weeks ago, when I first raised the issue in the House. The passport system is clearly not working as it should. The lack of a central database and DEFRA’s decision to stop funding it in 2012 only adds to the lack of visibility of where the horses are and their bute status. Does the Secretary of State regret scrapping the national equine database to save £200,000? [Interruption.] The Minister says no—I think he might regret that. [Interruption.] I look forward to hearing what the Government’s traceability system actually is.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

On working with horse passport agencies and the national equine database, does the hon. Lady agree that NED was actually far more of a competition, progeny and pedigree record, and that it would not have been possible to find out whether a horse on it had bute?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mary Creagh]

The national equine database was as the hon. Lady describes it, but the fact that it no longer exists does not help with tracking and tracing where horses have gone. There were, I think, more than 1.2 million horses on it. I will need to check the numbers, because that figure is from memory—[Interruption]—and with noises off. Michael Frayn could not have written this farce any better. My point is that without the national database, which would have eventually had a link to the microchips, the opportunities for fraud are much easier. Another issue is that of bute not being written into animal records. That needs to be looked at again.

Government Members have talked about a ban on EU imports. It has been very convenient to blame the Poles and the Romanians, but so far neither country has found anything. The risk of a Romanian horse being given expensive veterinary medicine such as bute is smaller than it is in countries such as the UK and Ireland.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

The question of whether the animal has been injected with something might be a point for discussion. However, whenever people go into a shop for a beefburger, they are not looking for a horse burger, so it has to be what it says on the packet. In my opinion—I trust that this is also the hon. Lady’s opinion—it is not meat produced in the UK, but meat from outside that causes concern for many consumers. Should not all meat coming into the United Kingdom be quarantined and tested before being released into the food chain?

[Mary Creagh]

We need a proportionate response. The problem with the meat found in the Northern Ireland freezer is that there was no label on it at all. In such cases, how can we say where the meat has come from? That is the problem with that approach. On quarantining and testing meat, we need to make sure that what is coming in is exactly what it says on the label.

During yesterday’s statement, I thought I was going to see unicorns dancing over a blue moon as the hon. Members for Stone (Mr Cash) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who are noted, famous Eurosceptics, called for more EU regulation and asked what the European Commission was doing and whether the Health Commissioner was in control of the situation. It has been an interesting revelation for Members of all parties to see the important role that European Union regulations play.

There is an issue with large quantities of horsemeat coming in from countries such as Canada and Mexico. Kilos and tonnes of the meat come in without any traceability or any guarantee about what the horses have had injected into them.

[Dr McCrea]

One thing we can be sure of is that the meat did not come from Northern Ireland. Our traceability is second to none. It was the alertness of Newry and Mourne council that got it stopped in Newry. The meat was not from Northern Ireland, so it had to come from outside. We need to find out exactly where it came from, who was responsible and who acted in a criminal way, and then bring them to book.

[Mary Creagh]

I could not agree more, which is why I have questioned the Secretary of State so closely on the matter of the UK meat trading companies that have been named. The Secretary of State waited three and a half weeks to meet representatives of the food industry and then brought them in on a Saturday. They have now had two meetings in just four days.

Our regulatory services protect consumers and our food industry. They allow it to export all over the world. Their job has been made much more difficult by the Government’s decision to fragment the responsibilities of the Food Standards Agency. Members on both sides of the House want the British public to have confidence that the food that they buy in the shops and that comes from our producers is correctly labelled, legal and safe. The Secretary of State is responsible for ensuring that it is. It just is not good enough to say, “We don’t know what’s in your food, but whatever it is, we guarantee that it’s safe to eat.” The British people deserve so much better than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we must make absolutely sure that we do not create further regulatory burdens. What we need to do is to make the checks more relevant to the products. I will come to that point in a moment.

[Mary Creagh]

It is great to hear this most Eurosceptic of Secretaries of State doing his bit for European co-operation in this area. Will he press his European colleagues to carry out random testing in their countries like that being carried out by UK supermarkets?

[Mr Paterson]

The shadow Secretary of State is again ahead of the game with respect to what I will say in my speech. I said yesterday in my statement that I have a gut feeling—actually, it is a clear belief—that too much is taken on trust in the current system. Too often, it is taken on trust that when a truck is loaded, the contents of the pallets are marked on the manifest and the certificate. From that point on, nothing is looked at. I agree entirely with the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) that we need to do more testing. I discussed that yesterday and again this morning with Lord Rooker. When this is all over, there will be a process of learning the lessons. I will be keen to establish more systematic testing of products so that we actually look at the material. That answers some of the hon. Lady’s questions about the Freeza plant in Northern Ireland. At the moment, the system is very much paper-based and too much is taken on trust.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) and the Opposition on securing such a timely debate on the eve of the discussions that the Secretary of State will have in Europe with his counterparts, and on the back of two meetings with industry. Today, we should be celebrating the food industry for the reasons that the hon. Lady set out and the people it employs. I represent one of the largest meat-producing constituencies. We celebrate Thirsk having the largest fatstock mart in the country, and Malton having a smaller mart. Farm-gate prices are falling and there is currently a crisis in the sheep industry. It is widely recognised that we are worried about the state of the lamb industry in the north of England; we fear that many sheep producers may go out of business.

We perhaps ought to take a lesson from this issue and revise our eating habits as consumers. When I was brought up I remember having a small roast with the family on a Sunday and using leftovers to go into other dishes during the week. Were we to do that and encourage manufacturers from now on to take British-sourced beef into processed and frozen foods, that would be the speediest way to restore confidence in the food industry. Retailers accept their responsibility and have risen to the challenge set by the Secretary of State. My concern is this. I am proud to have the Food and Environment Research Agency headquarters in my constituency at Sand Hutton near York, but it seems perverse that we continue to accept contaminated and suspect meat consignments, testing within a week and with the results by Friday, yet we now may have to re-export some of the suspect meats to Germany and elsewhere for testing. That is a little bit gross and I hope that that will not be the case.

I will dwell for a moment on what I believe the Secretary of State and the Government can do. Before I do so, I assure the hon. Member for Wakefield that insofar as Dalepak is concerned—it will issue a statement to this effect—the trace in its consignment was found to be less than 1%. Under present rules, that is not deemed to be contaminated meat. It would help everybody if we stopped talking about contamination when there is a trace. We need to move the debate on to what is a trace, and at some stage the FSA or the Department will have to say what trace is acceptable. We are never going to get an entire sample free of any trace, for perfectly understandable reasons.

[Mary Creagh]

I take on board what the hon. Lady says. I believe that the tests that are being conducted will look for equine presence up to 1%, not to 0.1%. That relates to the pork found last week in halal products that were supplied to a prison. Is she saying that it is not possible to guarantee to consumers from certain faith groups that we can never get rid of traces of other animals? What does that mean for factories branding themselves as halal? Does that mean that they can no longer deal with pork products?

[Miss McIntosh]

That is a separate debate. We would need to look at the costs of two separate lines, one for beef and one for pork. We need to reconsider what is acceptable as a trace and differentiate that from contamination. This debate is about gross contamination of 60% to 100%, and that is what is so offensive to consumers.

We need an assurance—whether from Romania, France, Poland, Ireland, Sweden or wherever—that exporting countries in the EU are conducting both physical and product labelling checks at the point of export. Until we have that assurance from the Commission, consumers will not have much confidence in the process. It is my firm, personal belief that if product checks had taken place, food contaminated with horsemeat would never have entered the food chain. However, the fact is that it is in the food chain; as far as we know, it is continuing to enter the food chain; and we are continuing to find more contamination in frozen foods.

I practised in the EU many years ago, so my knowledge of EU law is extremely rusty, but the Cassis de Dijon case involved the passing off of an inferior alcoholic product as Cassis to go into such drinks as kir royale and other luxury products. The inferior product clearly did not fit the bill. I understand that the member state concerned was allowed, for a temporary period, to suspend imports of products being passed off as something else until such time as a ruling could be given.

All I am asking is for the Government to stop this chain of events. There are 27 member states, or however many there are now, relying on the Food Safety Act 1990, which is entirely compatible with European food labelling regulations. I would imagine that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will have huge support from all other member states in the European Union, but until we can again inspire confidence in the food industry and allow the retailers to get on with what they are good at—delivering safe, healthy food to our supermarkets—then we ought to recognise what other hon. Members have said today. This is an opportunity to recognise the excellence of British-produced beef, and to try to see to what extent that can be used.

I accept the Secretary of State’s point about a premium product now going for premium prices, but he must accept that the labelling provisions, the traceability and the additional animal welfare conditions that we in this country uniquely impose on our producers have increased costs. Farm-gate prices are going down. Feed costs have gone up. The cost of transporting animals to slaughter has gone up. Slaughterhouses are fewer and further apart. We ought to use this as an opportunity to encourage retailers to look to sourcing locally produced beef for their processed and frozen products. I celebrate the contribution of the beef industry and other meat industries to the UK, not just to locally sourced food. Much that is produced in Thirsk, Malton and Filey will go abroad for breeding purposes, because of the uniqueness and life history of each particular herd.

This debate is timely. Perhaps the FSA has been caught on the back foot. When in November the FSA was told by the Food Safety Authority of Ireland that DNA tests were to be conducted on particular products entering the food chain through our supermarkets, it was a wake-up call to the FSA here to do similar tests. It was of concern to the Select Committee to hear that the original contamination could have been in the food chain for up to one year—who knows, it might have been longer. We need to get to the bottom of this. I accept the assurance that criminal proceedings will follow, but we all know that the wheels of the law move extremely slowly. The Secretary of State has the opportunity tomorrow to take this argument to Europe. It is a Europe-wide problem so we must have a Europe-wide solution. I believe that the answer lies in our food-labelling provisions and European law. I hope that this debate will give him all power to his elbow in tomorrow’s negotiations.

Horsemeat (Food Fraud)

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of his statement. Four weeks ago, the Irish authorities alerted the UK Government that they had discovered horsemeat in burgers stocked by UK supermarkets, including Tesco, Iceland and Lidl. Last Monday, we discovered that meat labelled as halal and served in UK prisons had tested positive for pig DNA. On Thursday, the scandal spread from frozen burgers to frozen ready meals, as we discovered that Findus beef lasagne contained up to 100% horsemeat. On Friday, this incompetent Secretary of State and his food Minister went home—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Everybody wants to make their contribution, and the only way they will is by being a little quieter. People may not like what is being said, but they should at least have the courtesy to listen.

[Mary Creagh]

On Friday, No. 10 told the press that the Secretary of State was working hard at his desk, getting a grip on this crisis. But in fact he had to be called back to London from his long weekend—crisis, what crisis? Until Saturday’s panic summit, he had not actually met the food industry to address this crisis. The food Minister had met with the food industry just once, exactly a week ago.

On Friday, I received information that three British companies were involved, potentially, in importing beef that actually contained horse. I wrote to the Secretary of State, offering to share the information with him. I also handed it to the Serious Organised Crime Agency. On Friday, the FSA said that the police were involved, so I was reassured. However, on Friday night the Met police said that they had had talks with the FSA, but that there was no live criminal investigation. On Saturday, after a conversation with one of the food industry representatives, I realised that the Secretary of State had not revealed the names of those firms to the food industry at the meeting. Why not? If the Government want the food industry to test on the basis of risk, why did the Secretary of State not share the names of those companies at Saturday’s meeting?

On Thursday, DEFRA announced its statutory testing regime, with 28 local councils purchasing and testing eight samples each. Does the Secretary of State seriously expect people to wait 10 weeks for the results? Can he confirm that that will be the first survey of product content that his Department has carried out since his Government removed compositional labelling from the Food Standards Agency in 2010? He talks about the FSA’s operational independence, but it is not responsible for the content of our food—he is. When will he stop hiding behind civil servants and take some responsibility? Does he think that surveying just 224 products from across the country matches the scale of this scandal, when he has asked the supermarkets to test thousands of their products by Friday? Can he confirm today to the House that not all of those thousands of tests will be completed by Friday?

Can the Secretary of State tell the House how many products the large public sector catering suppliers will test and how many lines the members of the British Meat Processors Association will test? In his letter to me last Friday, he stated that some members of the British Hospitality Association and the British Retail Consortium have withdrawn products as a precaution. Can he tell the House which members have withdrawn which products, and whether any of them supplies schools, prisons and hospitals? The supermarkets have acted with speed and a degree of transparency on this that puts him to shame. I am disappointed that the hospitality industry and caterers have not been as candid.

In his letter to me, the Secretary of State said that the FSA is taking up individual suspicious incidents with authorities and the police across Europe. He said in the media this weekend that there is an international criminal conspiracy at work. Does he think that international criminals are present everywhere in Europe apart from in the United Kingdom? The French Government estimate that the Findus fraud alone has netted criminals €300,000. This is clearly big criminal business. Why have the UK police not investigated on the basis of the intelligence supplied? Has he had the full results of the tests carried out by the Irish authorities?

At Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions nearly three weeks ago, I asked the food Minister about horses contaminated with bute slaughtered in the UK and entering the human food chain. It has now been confirmed that of the nine UK horses that tested positive for bute, one was stopped, five went to France, two to the Netherlands and one to the UK. However, when council officials approached the people who had supposedly taken the horse to eat it, they had no knowledge of what had happened to it.

There has been talk of an EU import ban, but has the Secretary of State considered the possibility that horses are going to UK and Irish abattoirs and entering the food chain in the UK? Which horse abattoirs in the UK are on the FSA’s cause for concern list? Have any horses presented for slaughter in the past month been rejected by officials because of concerns over their passports? If so, where and how many?

The Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has clear evidence of illegal trade in unfit horse from Ireland to the UK for meat, with horses being re-passported to meet demand for horsemeat in mainland Europe. It says that there are currently 70,000 horses unaccounted for in Northern Ireland. Unwanted horses are being sold for €10 and sold on for meat for €500—a lucrative trade. It is convenient to blame the Poles and Romanians, but so far neither country has found any problems with its beef abattoirs.

When will the Secretary of State get his story straight on bute? This horse medicine is banned from the food chain for a reason. On Friday, he said:

“I would have no hesitation at all in eating these products.”

Yet on Sunday he said that this food could be injurious to human health. The Health Secretary said it is just a labelling issue. Is this not symptomatic of the Government’s dangerous complacency?

I note the chief medical officer’s advice to people this morning. What levels of bute have to be present in the meat for it to be a human health risk? Will the Secretary of State tell us what the safe limits of bute consumption for human beings are, given that it is banned from the human food chain? The British public must have confidence that the food they buy is correctly labelled, legal and safe. When Ministers came to the Commons to answer my urgent question on 17 January, the food Minister said:

“It is important that neither the hon. Lady nor anyone else in this House talks down the British food industry.”—[Official Report, 17 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 1027.]

These invisible regulatory services protect our consumers and our food industry, and allow it to export all over the world. [Interruption.] I think Government Members would do well to listen as this issue is of interest to their constituents and the lack of information from their Government has been nothing short of a disgrace.

This weekend consumer confidence in British food was sinking like a stone. Food is a £12 billion industry that supports hundreds of thousands of UK jobs and exports. In common with No. 10, it is rapidly losing faith in this Secretary of State’s ability to lead them through this crisis.

[Mr Paterson]

You would not think that we had inherited Labour’s system would you, Mr Deputy Speaker? You really wouldn’t. I always admire the hon. Lady—she really has a nerve.

This issue is a European competence. As agreed by her Government, the independent Food Standards Agency was set up and we have followed their policy of respecting that independence. Today, I talked to its chairman, Lord Rooker, whom she knows well, and he agreed that we had respected its independence. In the early stages of this history, this was an issue of trace DNA in an Irish abattoir. Once it came to the Findus case, where there was a significant volume of horse material, it took on a whole new dimension. He agreed that it was then appropriate that the Secretary of State should become publicly involved, as I have been in recent days. The hon. Lady is critical of the FSA’s survey—on which I wish it well. I raised it with the noble Lord this afternoon, and he agreed that April was the intended end date for these results, but that he could possibly publish some of them as he works through.

The hon. Lady completely misses the point that the retailers are responsible for the quality and content of their food. That is laid down in European law. Her Government passed a statutory instrument in 2002. [Interruption.] There is no point in the hon. Lady shouting. She must understand that under the current arrangements it is for retailers to decide. She has completely missed the point that they are responsible for testing, they are responsible for the integrity of their food and they are responsible to their customers. They have a massive self-interest in this, because obviously they want their customers to come back. She will be pleased to hear that we had a most satisfactory meeting on Saturday, and they will be bringing forward meaningful results by the end of this week.

The hon. Lady went on a bit about the police. [Interruption.] I agree with my hon. Friends that she went on and on about the police. This is a serious issue, and the FSA has raised it with the Metropolitan police, but the hon. Lady must understand that until there is a criminal action in this country, they cannot take action. However, the FSA has been in touch with Europol, because it does look as though there have been criminal cases on the continent.

The hon. Lady mentioned the Irish test. I have had a conversation this afternoon with Minister Coveney. We have agreed that there will be protocol between our two independent agencies to agree testing equivalents and to work extremely closely together, because our two food industries so often work in co-operation on either side of the Irish sea.

The hon. Lady mentioned horses. Today, Lord Rooker will announce that further to our recent announcement that all horses slaughtered in this country will be tested for bute, no carcase will be released until it has been proven positive.

Finally, the advice on food is very simple. I have been completely consistent. It must have been in an interview and I think she mis-heard the second part of a sentence when I was speaking. I have been absolutely clear. The independent agency that gives professional advice is the Food Standards Agency. I, the hon. Lady, hon. Members and the public should follow its advice. As long as products are free for sale and have not been recommended for withdrawal by the FSA, they are safe for human consumption. I recommend that she follows the advice of the independent agency that her Government set up.