Matt Western
Main Page: Matt Western (Labour - Warwick and Leamington)Department Debates - View all Matt Western's debates with the Cabinet Office
(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
I want to begin by echoing the tributes paid to my constituency neighbour, the late Paul Flynn, who sadly passed away this year. He was an outstanding parliamentarian, a fantastic champion of Newport and a great neighbour to me. Although we have an equally wonderful successor in my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones), I know that Paul is in our thoughts, and it was lovely to hear those tributes.
The Prime Minister quoted Newport’s Goldie Lookin Chain earlier, which was one of the stranger moments in my time here—and I say that having been an Opposition Whip for the last couple of years. I will leave it to GLC to say how they vote, but if the Prime Minister has a free evening on 21 December, he may still be able to get a ticket for their 15th anniversary world tour of Wales concert at Newport Centre, courtesy of Newport Live; more dates are available.
It is clear that the Queen’s Speech today is a programme that the Government have no way of implementing before a general election, in the shadow of Brexit. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson), who made an excellent contribution, was right to say that we just do not know what on Saturday we will be voting on, and I say that on behalf of the steelworkers, the Airbus workers, the food producers and more in my constituency. But I cannot let today go by without mentioning a number of issues that are important to my constituents. There is much to say, but I will include the lack of a credible green deal to tackle the climate emergency; an economy that does not work for many in our country, with more children, families and pensioners living in poverty; and the lack of action for the 1950s-born women hit by pension changes, many of whom are in real poverty in my constituency.
I also want to focus on the Government’s lack of measures to support the manufacturing sector and the fact that there was nothing of note to say on steel. The Prime Minister spoke today of a “new age of opportunity”, and he has spoken previously about his vision for the UK to become the home of electric vehicles. As laudable as those warm words are, it is crucial that the Government act on that if we are to truly make the UK the home of electric vehicles. That should include a proper commitment to build a UK supply chain for electric cars.
That action needs to be fast, because on 2 September Tata Steel said that it would close Cogent Power’s Orb works in my constituency on 20 December. The works is part of the fabric of Newport and its history, having been there since 1898, and it employs 380 people on site. But this is not about the past; it is about the future. This is the only plant in the UK producing electrical steel. With investment, it could make electrical steel for electric vehicles, allowing the UK to have an end-to-end supply chain. If we lose this plant, we will lose that chance and have to import the steel for electric motors.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making such an important point about how crucial the Orb is in producing high-value steel. The UK has to have a future in the production of high-value materials, particularly steel. If we are to have a viable automotive sector with hydrogen-powered units and electric vehicles in particular, with Jaguar Land Rover, Aston Martin and others producing cars in this country, these sorts of steel are crucial.
Jessica Morden
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He is right, and it is a point I will come on to make. These are speciality steels, and we cannot afford to lose the capacity to make them.
There is a plan to save the plant. Community union and its consultants, Syndex, are calling for Tata to reinvest money from the sale of Cogent Power Inc in Canada into the Orb and for the UK Government to help by investing £30 million. That would be just a small proportion of the total the Government have awarded Jaguar Land Rover, which is owned by Tata, which has secured a £500 million loan guarantee to help the company sell electric vehicles.
We need concerted investment in the electric vehicle supply chain. Orb can be a vital cog in the wheel. It can be part of the infrastructure strategy that the Government alluded to in the Queen’s Speech. If we did that, we could save the only electrical steel plant in the UK, which could and should have a bright future as demand for electric vehicles is only set to grow. Labour has said that we will accelerate the electric vehicle revolution with 2.5 million interest-free loans for the purchase of electric vehicles, a new requirement for the Government car fleet to be 100% electric by 2025 and action on the private fleet.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (IGC)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), another Nottinghamshire MP; if nothing else, we are united in our determination to fight hard for the county that we are both proud to represent. I am afraid that I must disabuse him of some of his final comments about “getting Brexit done”. We hear many things said about Brexit, and most of it is inaccurate when it comes from those who still seek to make the case for the hardest form of Brexit—a no-deal Brexit. Even if the Prime Minister, notwithstanding tonight’s news that a deal is not possible in any event by Saturday, got a deal, and even if it passed through this Parliament—rather than there being the confirmatory referendum that I and many others would like—the idea that Brexit would miraculously be done, and that that would be the end of it, is for the birds.
If the hon. Gentleman and many other Conservative MPs had only applied themselves to all the great debates that have taken place in this Chamber, they would know why so many of us did not vote for the Prime Minister’s deal. I think that he did not vote for the deal until the final occasion; on the two previous occasions he chose to vote against it. But never mind that. If he had actually listened to the voices of those who, like me, voted against the former Prime Minister’s deal, he would know that one of the primary reasons we were so against it was because it did not actually tell us what our final relationship with the European Union would be. That deal was nothing more than a leap in the dark: a blindfold Brexit, as many of us called it. In particular, it did not settle that final trading relationship.
The Gracious Address, or the Queen’s Speech to use that parlance, is nothing more than a small box of sweeties put together and assembled to try to persuade the British people, particularly people in the midlands and the north, in the event of a general election, to vote Conservative on the back of apparently having delivered Brexit. In many respects, it is nothing more than a dog whistle to some of the most base of our prejudices and fears. In my experience, it will not deliver. In a moment, I will explain that, particularly in relation to crime, of which, as a former criminal barrister, I have some understanding. It was a very sorry speech which, to sum up its failings, offered no vision whatever. It did not even begin to embrace the many problems we have, Brexit aside, to look to the future and to offer hope, in particular to young people.
As we all know, if we do not have a good strong economy, we cannot do all the other things that we seek to do, whether that is to invest in our services or to invest back into our economy to make sure that our people prosper and that we can, in turn, pay for those services. Where was the reboot that our economy so desperately needs? Where were the reforms for business, which it has been crying out for now for a number of years? It was nothing more than spend, spend, spend. It is incredible that Conservative Members supporting the Queen’s Speech have the audacity to criticise the Opposition—rightly when they look to magic money trees that do not exist—when the Government are embarking on exactly the same folly: making promises to spend money that is not there. As we know, the Government’s own assessment shows that, whichever way you do Brexit, it will reduce our future prosperity and reduce jobs. That is the Government’s own assessment.
Matt Western
The right hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. She talks about prosperity. Does she agree that one of the great challenges and threats to us presently is the uncertainty being faced by small businesses? I am not talking purely about the uncertainty of Brexit, although that is a huge factor. We see declining consumer confidence and growing threats from the likes of the China-US trade war, which is having a wider impact on our economy. We should be doing more for small and medium-sized businesses, but there was nothing, was there?
Anna Soubry
No. I completely agree. There was nothing for businesses of any size, or indeed in any sectors. I have listened to the debate over the past two hours. I remember the comments of the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who sadly is no longer in his place. He celebrated the successes of the manufacturing sector—he talked about pharmaceuticals, for example—yet nowhere in the Queen’s Speech is there any measure, not one, to mitigate what will happen if we leave the single market and the customs union. The just-in-time supply chains absolutely rely on, depend on and have been created from that single market.
Ironically, the single market found its greatest supporter in the former Prime Minister and former leader of the Conservative party, Margaret Thatcher. We all know that, without the single market and the customs union, our manufacturing sector—the 450,000 jobs, by way of example, in the automotive sector—will be particularly badly hit. There is no plan and no vision of how to mitigate the harm that Brexit will do to our society. It is about not just the manufacturing jobs, but what will happen to the 80% of our economy that relies on the service sector, as well as, of course, what I celebrate: the free movement of people throughout the European Union and the huge benefits that that has given to our economy. We have had no real plans there and no real solution.
Looking at the lack of investment, notably, in our infrastructure, as I said to the Prime Minister, I am concerned that there is no mention of HS2 phase 2b: the line that goes through my constituency, with the east midlands hub at Toton, and then goes up to Leeds. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) is not in her place. I did not intervene on her because this is not really a debate about HS2, but HS2 is not just about taking people to London. In my constituency, it is about taking people up to Sheffield, to Birmingham and to Leeds, about providing the essential connectivity that is at the heart of a modern public transport system and about the ability to bring all these pieces together. HS2 plays a critical part in that. It provides the extra capacity and is an engine for growth. We know that, wherever those hubs exist—we have seen this from other examples in France and HS1—we find the new skilled jobs, the new exciting world of work, that can be built around that connectivity with all that it gives.
I pay tribute to the comments of the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who rightly talks about the value of investing in electric cars. She speaks with passion about her constituency and what that would mean for her. We certainly want people to use public transport, if we are going to achieve these hard targets that we have set ourselves for climate change, but we also need to make sure that our cars are electric. One per cent. is certainly not enough. When I was a Minister in the old Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, I sat on the inter-ministerial group for the electrification of vehicles. We had so many plans and ideas, looking at the development of battery research and the implementation of the chargers that must be put in over the full length of the United Kingdom, as my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said. None of this work has been done. Everything has been glued up with the process of Brexit. My fear is that, if we leave the EU, it will still not get any better because we will see the harm and damage that will be done to our economy.
Services rely on a successful and growing economy, but I do not think there is anything to encourage businesses to grow in this Queen’s Speech. Without those services being properly funded, we simply will not be making the investment that we have to make as a nation. One of the great joys of the time that we are in recess, especially in the September break—and about the only benefit of the unlawful Prorogation—is that it gives us all an opportunity to visit our schools and really put that effort in. That is one of the things that I did, and it is simply not acceptable in this day and age that, for example, Chilwell School in my constituency, which was built in the late ’60s—flat-roofed, under the old Consortium of Local Authorities Special Programme system—is not fit for purpose. That is not good enough. It does not inspire young people and does not help a school that is desperately seeking to improve its standards and to offer all children the greatest opportunity to reach their full potential.
I also went to Foxwood Academy, for children with special needs, which, again, was built in the early ’70s under the CLASP system. It has corridors that are not even wide enough properly to accommodate wheelchairs. This is a special school, with flat roofs. Again, it is absolutely not fit for purpose. The deep irony is that only last week we heard from the Government that they were spending £8 billion on no-deal Brexit preparations, which would provide 400 brand spanking new schools throughout the United Kingdom—schools that are needed.
The hon. Member for Mansfield talked about social care. He wrongly said that we do not work cross-party in this place: we absolutely do. Maybe the problem is that he has not taken part in that enough. For years now people have talked about the need to work cross-party to achieve real changes in social care for our elderly population and that still has not taken place. I suggest that there are still no plans in the Queen’s Speech. We are not meeting the needs of our elderly, or of those children and young people with special needs.
We need big, bold, imaginative government to deal with the challenges of climate change and we need rigour. The party that I have the pleasure of leading—a small band but nevertheless important—takes the view that the target for complete carbon neutrality should be 2040. That is the rigour that is now needed.
I know the clock is against me, but I am nearly done—
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
The Queen of our great country is a beacon of stability, of good sense and of serenity. It was a true honour to be in Parliament today when she delivered her Gracious Speech, and it is an honour to be in this Chamber to speak tonight.
I have been a Member of Parliament for two years, four months and six days—two, four, six—and I genuinely believe that the vast majority of people who go into politics do so because they want to make a difference. Where we see good things happen in our constituencies, we want to replicate them. Where we see bad things happen, we want to eradicate them. We want to move forward, and yet, for the past two years, four months and six days, I have often felt that we are going round and round in circles. Every Wednesday, when we meet for Prime Minister’s Question Time, it feels like yet another groundhog day. This week gives us a chance: a chance for hope, a chance to end that merry-go-round, a chance to get that first phase of Brexit done and move on—and people across the country are crying out for us to move on.
I voted remain, but I know it is vital for our democracy that we respect the fact that we gave people the vote, and we should deliver on that vote. However, I also know that the EU is our largest trading partner, and that many EU countries are our closest allies. No deal is not a good deal. It is not good for the UK, it is not good for the EU, and it is certainly not good for Ireland. I urge everyone who is involved in the negotiations today—I see that the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), is here—to roll up their sleeves, to work night and day, to be creative and to find compromises, and I urge everyone in the House to take the same approach. I say to certain Members—particularly the Leader of the Opposition, who just loves the chaos, and who wants more confusion because he is feeding on it for his own political gain—“History will not forgive you. I urge you to back a deal and end the chaos.”
We have just had our longest Session. The Queen’s Speech contains much positive news—news of investment in the NHS, in infrastructure, in schools, in the police and, of course, in caring for our environment—but sometimes, in order to appreciate where we are and where we need to go, it is necessary to look at where we have come from. I remember when, 10 years ago, the Conservative Government took over from Labour. Our country was suffering a massive economic failure. Our country had some of the highest levels of debt in the world. Our country was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Our country had run out of money. Reducing public spending was not an ideological mission; it was done because Labour had blown all the cash.
Rebuilding our economy meant supporting entrepreneurs, backing innovators, and making sure that we were at the forefront of some of the fastest-growing sectors—the tech revolution, financial services, science and research, and the space sector—because those were the sectors that were driving investment and creating opportunity. The harsh reality is that 10 years ago, 1 million young people were not in employment, education or training. They had been left by Labour on the edge of society, with no opportunity. Yet this year, in my constituency, 650 people started apprenticeships.
Ten years ago, one in five young people had no job; today we have record employment and record youth employment. Government do not create jobs, businesses do, but it is up to us to create the environment that allows our economy to flourish, and it is because of those policies that we are in the position today to give the opportunities offered in this Queen’s Speech.
First, there is the record investment in our NHS. We know that the NHS needs a long-term vision. In Chelmsford we need more GPs, but that is why we have built a new medical school that is already training them. And we know that a long-term plan needs to come from the bottom up, which is why I am so pleased that the NHS long-term plan is written not by politicians but by physicians and frontline health professionals, and our Queen’s Speech gives us the opportunity to turn that plan into reality.
Before coming here I helped to finance infrastructures all over our country, all over Europe and all over the middle east and Africa, and infrastructure in this country is creaking. As I said in my maiden speech, people in Chelmsford spend too much time in traffic jams and on delayed trains; it is a waste of their time and it is a waste of our country’s productivity. I am honoured to chair the all-party group on infrastructure in this place, and I am pleased to see the national infrastructure strategy right at the heart of the Queen’s Speech.
In my constituency of Chelmsford we have many excellent schools, and I am constantly impressed by the standards of their students and the dedication of their teachers. Our schools have been under pressure in Essex: costs have increased and the number of pupils with special educational needs in my county has gone up by nearly 22%. Budgets are strained, and I am pleased that the Queen’s Speech gives that vital boost to our education, levels up the funding and gives the extra funding for special educational needs.
On crime and policing, it is no secret that over the past decade Essex police were under-resourced, but in the past two years moves have been made to rectify that, thanks to the Government’s changing the funding stream and to our excellent police, fire and crime commissioner, Roger Hirst, who has made it possible for us to already be recruiting 368 more police, with another extra 135 promised by the Essex Home Secretary just last week. We have city centre policing and more power for police, and in this Queen’s Speech we are also going to be making the extra effort to protect the most vulnerable in our society, the victims of domestic violence.
Finally, I want to talk about climate change. Our country has reduced emissions faster than any other large economy in the world. We are the first major economy to set net zero in our law; we are leading the world on renewables, especially offshore; we are leading the global fight against coal; and we are leading the global work to protect the poorest countries on our planet. We are also now leading the efforts to protect the world’s oceans: this tiny island is going to be protecting a third of the world’s oceans within the next decade.
Of course there is more to do.
Vicky Ford
No, we are short of time so I will not take any more interventions.
Of course there is more to do but this Queen’s Speech allows us to improve air quality and water quality and restore habitats for wildlife and plants, as well as fight back on plastic pollution. I am standing here having listened to the leader of the Scots Nats say he wanted to fight single-use plastic while staring across the Chamber at the single-use plastic cups that they have chucked under their seats. We need to take action for our planet. There is only one planet, we cannot replace it and we in this country are leading the world’s efforts to protect it.
This Queen’s Speech gives us a unique opportunity; let’s not squander it.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
I am delighted to take part on the first day of our consideration of the Queen’s Speech, which was more about a political programme for the forthcoming general election than about how this country is going to be governed. Sadly, the Brexit morass that will envelop us all will carry on, regardless of what happens on Saturday and whatever happens by the end of this month. I wish, however, to start on a conciliatory note and something I am pleased to add my comments on. I refer to the commendation of our late friend Paul Flynn. Paul helped me enormously. He always said I would become an MP and he proved to be right, and he came over to Stroud to help me on numerous occasions. I owe him so much and he is clearly someone we all miss on this side of the House, and I hope the whole House will feel the same.
The Queen’s Speech is significant not so much for what was in it—as I said, there was a lot of politicisation—but, sadly, for what was not in it. It contained no mention of the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, whose tragedy this whole House has to face up to at some point. It contained no mention of housing, which is the key issue for many of us in terms of how public service has to deliver much better. It did contain a mention of animal welfare, but it was minuscule compared with where we need to be going on animal welfare. A genuine animal welfare Bill is required, yet we are now talking about trophy hunting just as we talked previously about ivory bans, both of which are important in their own right but not what we should be doing, which is looking for a much more comprehensive approach. Many of our constituents vote on the issue of animal welfare and they feel we should be taking things forward much more quickly and radically.
Matt Western
My hon. Friend is making some powerful points. I believe he is alluding to the fact that this Queen’s Speech seemed almost tokenistic, in that it was almost like a shopping list of ambitions and touchpoints of things that the Government and Prime Minister felt to be important. How can there have been no mention of something as crucial to what is needed out there as housing, given that we have homelessness and rough sleeping at record levels, with people desperate and dying on the streets?
Dr Drew
That is what we should have been prioritising in this Queen’s Speech, along with the abolition of universal credit, which has proved to be a monumental mistake. There was nothing wrong with the concept, but the delivery of UC has caused such hardship, in all our constituencies, and it is beyond reform. We have to get rid of it and start with something different.
The Prime Minister, in defence of the Queen’s Speech, talked a lot about one nation. I know the Conservatives like to talk about themselves as the one nation party. Sadly, the way things could turn out means we could be facing one nation, because the other three parts of the United Kingdom, for various reasons, no longer seem to want to be part of this one nation. I really worry about the level of English nationalism, which is now driving the Conservative party. We have a fundamental problem and I agree with the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) that we need radical constitutional reform, and that includes devolution in this country of England, where we have failed to do anything to deal with the centralisation of power. That is a fundamental reason why people voted for Brexit; they did so because they feel disconnected from the way in which decisions are made. That comes into the need for a fundamental rethink, with votes at 16, electoral reform and unitary authorities, to which she alluded. As someone who spent 28 years on a parish and town council, I am pleased to say that that means taking power to the first level of government—it is not the lowest level. That is important, because people can then see what is happening in the communities.
Brexit has caused huge divisions, but it has also led to this Government wasting the past year. I regret and resent the fact that we will not be having the Agriculture Bill and the Fisheries Bill back—we did not even get as far as the environment Bill. All those are fundamental pieces of legislation that should have been enacted over the past year. We may disagree about what was going into those Bills. We had a critique in Committee, but, sadly for those who served on it—I led on behalf of the Opposition—the Agriculture Bill disappeared last November, never to be seen again. That does nothing other than cause disillusion. Farmers are asking, notwithstanding the uncertainty over Brexit, what policy is going to be in place if we crash out. More particularly, even if we do not crash out, we will need an agricultural policy that is understood and that takes account of the idea of public money for public goods. We need to see that in practice and see how it will work. At the moment, we just have a huge void.
I welcome the fact that the issue of mental health is in the Queen’s Speech, and hopefully a Bill will subsequently come forward, but there is a problem. Like many other Members, I go around my local schools—I have been to 40 schools in the past year—and besides funding and staff stability, the third issue that all schools raise with me is their children’s mental health. It is now at a stage where it is a crisis. We must not underestimate how bad things are. Of course, it is about not only the children but their families. We have a significant problem, even in Gloucestershire, with off-rolling. A lot of it has to do with parents who do not believe that their children can get special needs provision in the normal system, but it is also about the way parents can take their children out of school into so-called home education. There is nothing wrong with home education in theory, but they are not then educating their children, who are being taken out of school more as companions than in the context of a parent-child relationship. That should be addressed by proper investigation and, in due course, the putting in place of a proper legislative context.
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who is sadly not currently in the Chamber, talked about air quality as a key issue. I hope that will be addressed, either through the environment Bill or in its own right. I shall just add to what he had to say the significant issue of incineration, which leads to small particulates that have an enormous impact on the health of children in particular. We have never investigated it, and it should be paramount in the way we try to drive up air quality. Yes, of course traffic is seen as the major cause of the huge issue of our deteriorating health standards, but there are other parts to it. The disposal of waste through appropriate means by getting rid of it in a non-polluting manner is crucial, as is not creating it in the first place.
That brings me to the biggest loss in the Queen’s Speech: the failure to address climate change properly. The target of 2050 is far too late. Earlier this evening, I had the opportunity to go along to a meeting of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, at which three experts, including the former chief scientist Sir David King, basically argued that we are not anywhere near meeting the obligations in this country, let alone in the wider world. Warming of 2° will cause climate change catastrophe. We need to understand that, which is why I am proud to stand by my constituents. As many Members know, Extinction Rebellion came from Stroud. Many of my constituents are out there at every moment in time, and I am happy to help them wherever I can. I also pay due regard to Polly Higgins, the creator of the campaign on ecocide who latterly became a Stroud constituent. We need to look at ecocide and the implications—there is an opportunity for Members to come to a briefing this week—of how we can pass a law that means we will not leave a worse situation to our children and particularly our grandchildren. We should feel desperately keen to avoid doing that at any cost. Let us listen to the scientists and the campaigners, and let us do something in this place, rather than talk about it.
In conclusion, I am pleased that the Domestic Abuse Bill has been carried over and will hopefully see the light of day. Let us make sure that the legislation is not watered down and includes action such as banning sham marriages. We must make sure that it is not just linked to immigration and human rights but stands in its own right. The Opposition will debate the Bills as they come forward and seek radically to improve the legislation. We will make sure that there is an alternative. We heard earlier that it was all about the previous Government’s failings in power; I argue that austerity was a political programme. We are now coming to the end of austerity. It was such an unnecessary and punitive way for any Government to try to deal with the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. If we have come out of austerity, now is the time to see the real changes that are desperately needed, so that we have a more humane society that addresses issues such as housing, education and health, as well as trying to deal with the morass of Brexit. More particularly, we need to deal with climate change.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), who, as always, made many excellent points. I support the Queen’s Speech, which I thought was absolutely tremendous, and congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) on their excellent speeches. I draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, because that is a traditional thing that one has to do.
The most important point facing my constituents at the moment is, as always, tuberculosis in cattle. I keep coming back to this matter because—the hon. Member for Stroud mentioned the animal welfare element in the agriculture Bill—of the need to tackle this disease, and the issues that are hitting farmers time and again in the countryside. They all come down to the failure of the skin test to correctly identify infection in cattle. There is good news: a new test, the Enferplex TB test, has been approved by the World Organisation for Animal Health—or the OIE. It is an antibody test, and it is more reliable and more accurate. It will genuinely give us, as a nation, the opportunity to find the disease both in cattle and in badgers and to correctly identify it. Until we can do that, the progress we make will never be as good as it should or could be.
There is also work under way on enhanced skin tests and DNA in blood tests, but neither of those are approved by the OIE. The OIE does not approve any old test. It is a respected, proper international body and we need to know what the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is doing to make sure that these tests are adopted and that the fight against tuberculosis is successful.
I have farmers complain to me time and again of the heartbreak of watching their beloved animals being put down. To make matters even worse, they then get a message saying that, during the test later, there was no sign of infection in the animal. Those tests can take up to six months to culture but, by then, of course, my constituents are unutterably miserable and have been treated appallingly, so we need to move on. We need to use science to help to fight this horrible disease in cattle and to ensure that the badger population, which is healthy, is protected. The culling has been proven to work. The peer group review and the science add up. If you do it properly, you can reduce the incidence of outbreaks in cattle and, of course, that is good not only for the farmers and the cattle, but for protecting the healthy population of badgers.
Matt Western
The hon. Gentleman is making a very important point about some of the challenges that are faced in our rural communities, particularly by our farmers. When I speak to farmers in Warwickshire—there are very few in my constituency—they are very vocal about the concerns about TB. I have learned that one of the challenges that they face, or that we face, is that so many of these tests are undertaken by specialist vets, who are often from the EU—from eastern Europe. If we do not have that skilled migration coming from eastern Europe, the delivery of vets and their supply to rural communities will be under threat.
Bill Wiggin
That is a very good reason to have a better test and to win the battle against the disease, and then we will not need to do so many tests because the cattle will be clean.