Badger Cull

Owen Paterson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:

“notes that bovine tuberculosis (TB) has, as a consequence of the lack of effective counter-measures, spread from a few isolated incidents to affect large parts of England and Wales, resulting in the slaughter of 28,000 cattle in England alone in 2012 at a cost of £100 million to the taxpayer; is concerned that 305,000 cattle have been slaughtered in Great Britain as a result of bovine TB in the last decade and that the cost is expected to rise to over £1 billion over the next 10 years; recognises that to deal effectively with the disease every available tool should be employed; accordingly welcomes the strengthening of bio-security measures and stringent controls on cattle movements; further welcomes the research and investment into both cattle and badger vaccines, and better diagnostic testing, but recognises that despite positive work with the European Commission the use of a viable and legal cattle vaccine has been confirmed to be still at least 10 years away; further notes that no country has successfully borne down on bovine TB without dealing with infection in the wildlife population, and that the Randomised Badger Control Trials demonstrated both the link between infection in badgers and in cattle and that culling significantly reduces incidence; looks forward to the successful conclusion of the current pilot culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset; and welcomes the Government’s development of a comprehensive strategy to reverse the spread of bovine TB and officially eradicate this disease.”.

Today’s debate is about getting to grips with Mycobacterium bovis, a bacterium that can affect all mammals including humans and has proved to be extremely resistant to all manner of attempts at eradication. It is a subject on which, over many years, there has been a great deal of agreement between the political parties. That was certainly the case in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, when a combination of political consensus and concerted action meant that we had the disease effectively beaten. In 1972, tests revealed only 0.1% of cattle in the country to be infected. I very much regret that as the issue has become politicised our grip on the disease has weakened, with the result that more than 60% of herds in high-risk areas such as Gloucestershire have been infected. The number of new cases is doubling every 10 years. I hope we can all agree that bovine TB is the most pressing animal health problem facing this country. The significance of the epidemic for our cattle farmers, their families and their communities cannot be overstated.

[Miss McIntosh]

The statistics show that the spread and increase in the United Kingdom is almost unique. Does my right hon. Friend attribute anything to the fact that we were, for very good reasons, the only country to have given the badger protected status in the 1970s—no other EU member state did so—so its natural predator has not been able to control the increase in numbers and the potential spread of disease through the badger population?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee for her question, and I thank her for her report published this morning. We are the only country that I know of with a significant problem with TB in cattle and a significant problem of TB in wildlife that does not bear down on the disease in wildlife. Section 10(2)(a) of the Protection of Badgers Act 1992 allows the removal of diseased badgers for protection and to prevent disease.

This disease was once isolated in small pockets of the country, but it has now spread extensively through the west of England and Wales. Last year TB led to the slaughter of more than 28,000 cattle in England, at a cost to the taxpayer of almost £100 million. In the last 10 years bovine TB has seen 305,000 cattle slaughtered across Great Britain, costing the taxpayer £500 million. It is estimated that that sum will rise to £1 billion over the next decade if the disease is left unchecked. We cannot afford to let that happen.

If we do not take tough, and sometimes unpopular, decisions, we will put at risk the success story that is the UK cattle industry. The UK’s beef and dairy exporters have worked hard to develop markets, which were valued at £1.7 billion in 2011. Our dairy exports alone grew by almost 20% in 2011. We cannot afford to put such important and impressive industry performance at risk.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

The NFU in north Yorkshire supports my right hon. Friend’s policy. It is desperate that this disease should not come north to Yorkshire, and it gives the policy its full support.

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I know that he is in close touch with the farming community, and we appreciate that it is under great pressure, which is why we are determined to introduce measures that will, we hope, reduce the disease in high-risk areas and, crucially, stop it going into low-risk areas.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State has highlighted the costs to the individual farmer and the taxpayer, but does he recognise that having disease-free cattle is important to the agri-food industry—a multi-billion pound industry in the United Kingdom that is especially important to economies such as Northern Ireland’s?

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the potentially very serious impact on the agri-food industry if we do not get a grip on this disease. We are determined to work on this policy, and to learn the lessons from the experience of the neighbouring state of the Republic of Ireland and other countries.

The task of managing bovine TB and bringing it under control is difficult and complex, but that is no excuse for further inaction. This Government are committed to using all the tools at our disposal and continuing to develop new ones, because we need a comprehensive package of measures to tackle the disease. International experience clearly shows that controlling wildlife species that harbour the disease and can pass it on to cattle must be part of that package.

[Mrs Main]

I have written to the Secretary of State on this matter. I asked about the impact of a cull in the context of the whole package of measures. I received a reply from one of his ministerial colleagues, which referred to the fall in badger TB rates in New Zealand, saying that was

“a result of rigorous biosecurity, strict cattle movement controls and proactive wildlife management.”

I have asked for clarification, however. How much of that success was attributed to the cull? The other two steps taken may well have contributed significantly. I hope the Secretary of State will expand on such details for the benefit of those of us who are torn over this matter.

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question, in which she raises one of the most pertinent points: there is no single solution. Removing wildlife alone is not the solution. There has to be parallel, and equally rigorous, work on cattle. There must be a mixture of both measures. That is the lesson to be learned from the countries I have recently visited, as I was just about to go on to explain.

In recent months, I have been to Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, and when I was in Opposition I went to the United States of America. All those countries have made great progress in dealing with very similar problems to ours by dealing with the wildlife reservoir and bearing down on the disease in cattle.

In Australia, a national eradication programme spanning almost three decades enabled official freedom from bovine TB—an infection rate of less than 0.2% under OIE rules—be achieved in 1997. Its comprehensive package of measures to tackle the disease in domestic cattle and wildlife included rigorous culling of feral water buffalo. Australia’s achievement is even more impressive when one considers the difficulty of the terrain and the size of the area over which such an extensive programme of testing and culling took place.

After my visit to Australia, I went to New Zealand. Its comprehensive and successful package of measures to eradicate the disease has focused on the primary wildlife reservoir of brush-tailed possums. As a result of its efforts, New Zealand is on the verge of achieving BTB-free status. The number of infected cattle and deer herds has reduced from more than 1,700 in the mid-1990s to just 66 in 2012.

The Republic of Ireland, too, has a comprehensive eradication programme, which includes the targeted culling of badgers in areas where the disease is attributed to wildlife. From massive problems in the 1960s—160,000 cattle were slaughtered in 1962 alone—the Irish authorities have turned things around to the extent that the number of reactor cattle has reduced to just 18,000 in 2012, a fall of 10,000 in the last 10 years. On their own figures, herd incidence has fallen to just 4.26%—a statistic we would dearly love to have here.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is explaining the Government’s policy very well indeed. Does he have any idea what proportion of badgers culled in the Republic of Ireland were carriers of TB? No one wants to see badgers culled unless there is no alternative, but many of them are diseased and will in due course die and suffer great pain.

[Mr Paterson]

That is a very helpful question. On first analysis, the estimate was about 16%, but the Irish have done a huge amount of work on this, and I admire the scientific manner in which they have gone about it, and on detailed analysis and after careful autopsy the proportion can be seen to be three or four times higher than that. That shows why this disease is so difficult to deal with: it is difficult to identify in both wildlife and cattle.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Section 4.5 of the Krebs report had some important things to say about the Department—then called the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food—and mathematical modelling, which is a hugely important tool that is not used as widely as it could be. What is the Secretary of State going to do to help drive forward that part of the work, which is clearly needed, so we get a better understanding of what is happening, with or without the cull?

[Mr Paterson]

That is an interesting question. We are following on from the Krebs trials—the RBCTs or randomised badger culling trials—and going to the next logical step, by learning the lessons from them and improving on them. One of the lessons was that 100 km is not a big enough area. We will extend it to nearly 300 km, so we have clear, definitive geographical boundaries. We will also be doing more analysis of the impact. These are two pilots, but the broad lesson to be learned from the countries I have mentioned is that we have to bear down both on disease in cattle in a very rigorous manner, as we are doing, and on disease in wildlife.

When I was in opposition, I went to Michigan and saw its stringent cattle and wildlife controls, which have enabled significant progress to be made, with a lowering of the prevalence of the disease in white-tailed deer in the endemic area by more than 60% and breakdowns in livestock averaging just three or four a year from 2005 to 2011. I could go on at great length, but I know we are short of time.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State is giving a lot of international examples, but I would like to know what lessons he is learning from the vaccination project in Wales, which shows that there clearly is an alternative. I have read the results of the project closely, and I would like to know what lessons he has learned.

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, but I ask him to wait a few minutes because I am coming on to deal with it. Let me first finish off the international comparisons.

[Mark Tami]

The Secretary of State has talked about how he has been around the world to look at all these approaches, but the science we are looking at is the science in the UK. Clearly, as even those in favour of a cull would agree, the actual progress it will make is very small, even if progress is taken as a fact. We need a combination of measures. As some Government Members have said, culling will make only a small difference and it will not eradicate the disease.

[Mr Paterson]

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman quite listened to what I said. If he makes comparisons with the countries I have mentioned, he will see that where there are strict cattle controls, movement controls and biosecurity, and countries bear down on the disease, the disease is reduced. The experience of the Republic of Ireland is spectacular and we should be humble enough to learn from it.

Let us consider other European countries. Badger culling is undertaken in France; there have been reports in just the past week or so of problems in the Ardennes, with infected badgers being culled. Deer and wild boar are culled in the Baltic countries, Germany, Poland and Spain. So we cannot ignore the lessons from such countries, which are so clearly presented to us.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Paterson]

I will take one more intervention, but I do want to give other hon. Members the chance to speak.

[Steve McCabe]

The Secretary of State is drawing on these European comparisons, so why does his own amendment talk about “stringent” movement controls, given that we have the loosest movement controls in the European Union, with about 40% of our cattle being moved annually? Surely he should start by doing something about that. Is that not a comparison he should recognise?

[Mr Paterson]

I do not think that is a very accurate statement. We have very strict movement controls and our farmers find them difficult to adhere to; they put real pressure on farmers.

If we are to tackle bovine TB, we must not only maintain rigorous biosecurity and strict cattle movement controls, but bear down on the disease in wildlife.

[Andrew George]

rose—

[Mr Paterson]

This really will be the last intervention I take for a while.

[Andrew George]

My right hon. Friend will recollect that the randomised badger control trials studied not only the effects of culling on the badger population and the prevalence of TB, but the actions of homo sapiens, and their capacity to intervene and to disrupt trials. Such actions were a factor in the trials and are a factor particularly prevalent in the UK but not prevalent in many of the countries he has named.

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know that you are an assiduous reader of Hansard, Mr Speaker, and you probably remember every one of my 600 parliamentary questions on this issue, one of which revealed that, as my hon. Friend suggested, 56% of the traps were tampered with during the Krebs trials and 14% were actually stolen. That is one of the lessons we are learning from the trials—there might be a more efficient and humane manner of removing badgers.

Anyone who has looked closely at this issue will see that a comprehensive cattle testing programme, combined with restrictions on cattle movements, remains the foundation of our policy. Restrictions have been further strengthened over the past year to reduce the chance of disease spreading from cattle. In January, we introduced a new surveillance testing regime and stricter cattle movement controls, which means that we will be testing more cattle annually and working hard to get in front of the disease, to protect those parts of the country where bovine TB is not a major problem. We will continue to maintain the significant effort we have put into enhancing cattle controls and combating cattle-to-cattle transmission.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Paterson]

Other Members want to get speak, so, if I may, I will push on a bit further.

Vaccination is another tool that we will continue to invest in—we are spending £15.5 million on research and development in this Parliament—one that I know many hon. Members would like to see deployed. Some £43 million has been invested since 1994 in this vital work, to which the shadow Secretary of State alluded. We, too, would like to deploy it more widely, but I am afraid that we are just not there yet in terms of either development or practicality, as has been clearly described in this morning’s Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report.

Oral cattle and badger vaccines will, I hope, prove viable, but they will not be ready to deploy for years, and we cannot wait while the disease puts more livestock farms out of business and threatens the sustainability of the industry. In January, the Minister of State and I met the EU Health and Consumer Policy Commissioner, Tonio Borg, to discuss our progress towards a cattle vaccine. He acknowledged that we have done more than any other country to take this work forward, but confirmed that the implementation of a legal and validated cattle vaccine is still at least 10 years away.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Paterson]

I will generously give way to the shadow Minister.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the Secretary of State clarify the comments he made a moment ago? If a viable badger vaccination, be it oral or injectable, were developed within the next few years, would he then have no intention to proceed with any cull? Would it be his preference to move forward with the vaccination of badgers instead?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paterson]

I was going to come on to deal with that question but I will touch on it now. Clearly, an effective badger vaccine has a valuable role to play, once the disease is under control. I have discussed this at length in the Republic of Ireland, where they have got the disease well on the way down. Once it can be got to those really low levels—this answers the question from the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty)—there is a definitely a role for a badger vaccine. There is no question about that, but the vaccine has to work.

My worry—I am jumping ahead a bit in respect of Wales here—is that at the moment there is nothing to be gained by vaccinating a diseased animal. Such an animal can continue to be a super-excreter and can continue to spread disease. That is the problem I have with the Welsh experiment. We are very interested in it and we will watch it carefully, but from my travels—I was particularly struck by the Irish experience, and they have done a lot of work on this—I know that the lesson is, “You have to get the disease down to a certain level to get healthy badgers, and then you protect them.” We all want to see healthy badgers living alongside healthy cattle, and the real lesson from Ireland is that the average badger there is now 1 kg heavier than before the cull was begun there. So the Irish have achieved where we want to go; they are getting a healthy badger population, which is exactly what we want, but that is the point at which vaccinations can be deployed. I am not entirely convinced that the Welsh Government are on the right track—I think they are going in too early, because they have not got a grip on the disease—but we wish them well.

Sadly, vaccination is incredibly expensive. The cost of vaccination in Wales stands at £662 per badger or £3,900 per square kilometre per year. Even if the practical difficulties could be addressed, we know that a large-scale programme of badger vaccination would take longer to achieve disease control benefits compared with a programme of culling on a similar scale.

[Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

May I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to one area of healthy badgers, just to draw on his point about vaccination? Cheshire is on the frontier in terms of the disease spreading north. I am working closely with Cheshire Wildlife Trust and the National Farmers Union to see whether there is the possibility of having a vaccinated band of badgers across Cheshire to prevent that northern spread. Will he work with those two organisations and me to see what can be practically achieved?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that useful question. I know that he is already talking to my hon. Friend the Minister of State about it. It is certainly worth examining the approach of creating rings, but the lesson from other countries is that we have really got to get the disease reservoir down first and then we can create a band. The problem is that with the level of disease we are talking about we cannot gain an advantage by vaccinating a diseased animal that is already a super-excreter—it can go on excreting disease in huge volumes. Another of my questions revealed that 1 ml of badger urine produces 300,000 colony forming units of disease, and it takes very few—a single number of those—to infect a cattle by aspiration. Such an approach will not have the effect, so what my right hon. Friend is talking about is well worth looking at, but in parallel with that we have to get the disease down.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Lady has tried hard, so I will give way.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the Secretary of State for so generously giving way. Does he recall comparing the search by scientists for a TB vaccine to Sisyphus—or Tantalus, as he later clarified it—because it was always out of reach? Does he understand how insulting many scientists found that comparison and how it undermines his scientific credibility? If he does not understand how science works, how we can trust his analysis of the evidence?

[Mr Paterson]

I think the hon. Lady is being a little hard. We have given credit to the previous Government, whom she supported, for their significant investment in vaccines. We will continue that investment, we had Commissioner Borg over and we had an incredibly constructive discussion. Sisyphus is trying to shove the rock uphill and Tantalus is reaching in the pool—it is incredibly frustrating for us all that a result is still 10 years away.

Let me get back to the badger vaccine and the important point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell). Early small trials on calves in Ethiopia show that it is only 56% to 68% effective. There is a lot of work to be done to get a vaccine that really works and then a vaccine that can be identified. To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), one cannot have international trade under OIE rules if one cannot identify a diseased animal and a vaccinated animal. The last thing I would do is cast aspersions on any scientists working on this question, as we all have a massive interest in arriving at a solution, but every time we look, it is at least 10 years away. According to the timetable Commissioner Borg has set us, we will do well if we stick to that 10 years.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Paterson]

I am going to push on.

That is another reason we plan to consult on a new draft TB eradication strategy for England over the coming months, which is mentioned in the amendment and will set out in some detail how we plan to reach our long-term goal of achieving officially bovine TB-free status for England. That will involve better diagnostic tests such as PCR—polymerase chain reaction—and targeted controls to bear down on the disease where it is at its worst, stop the spread across new areas and protect the relative disease freedom that large parts of the country already enjoy.

All those who take the problem seriously now accept that research in this country over the past 15 years has demonstrated that cattle and badgers transmit the disease to each other. There are few now who choose to argue that culling badgers, done carefully and correctly, cannot lead to a reduction of the disease in cattle.

In 1997, Lord Krebs and the independent scientific review group concluded that:

“The sum of evidence strongly supports the view that, in Britain, badgers are a significant source of infection in cattle. Most of this evidence is indirect, consisting of correlations rather than demonstrations of cause and effect; but in total the available evidence, including the effects of completely removing badgers from certain areas, is compelling.”

Since then, ongoing analysis of the results of the randomised badger culling trial has shown beyond reasonable doubt the important role that culling can play in checking the progress of bovine TB, despite any initial disruption to badger populations on the edge of the culled area. Professor Christl Donnelly, a former member of the ISG, wrote:

“In the time period from one year after the last proactive cull to 28 August 2011, the incidence of confirmed breakdowns in the proactive culling trial areas was 28 per cent lower than in ‘survey only’ areas and on lands up to 2 km outside proactive trial areas was 4.1 per cent lower than outside ‘survey only’ areas.”

I firmly believe, based on the best available evidence, that culling badgers to control TB can make a significant contribution to getting on top of this terrible disease. I have no doubt that the benefits from badger control will prove worth while to the businesses, farmers and communities that have suffered for too long. That is why it is crucial that the pilots go ahead.

The National Farmers Union has taken the lead on behalf of the farming industry and has planned and organised the pilot culls. It has been working tirelessly over the last few months to make them a success, ensuring all involved carry out their functions to a very high, professional standard and in ways that take full account of the need to protect public safety. I have been immensely impressed by the effort, commitment and determination that have been demonstrated by farmers in the two pilot areas, despite the unacceptable intimidation and hostility that some have endured.

The professionalism of the police, with whom we continue to work, also deserves praise. It is possible that some additional policing will be needed to enable peaceful protest during the pilots, and that may add to their costs. I hope it is not necessary for the police to deal with people who are intent on unlawful and threatening behaviour towards law-abiding and hard-working people. Such obstructive action cannot be allowed to prevent us from tackling the disease.

Opponents of the policy will say that it is possible to rid the country of bovine TB without tackling the problem in wildlife. There is no evidence for that in any other country where there is or has been a significant reservoir of the disease in species of wildlife that can pass it to cattle, as is unfortunately the case here. My experiences in Australia, Michigan, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland have absolutely reinforced that essential point.

Members might be told that we will fail because we do not have enough reliable estimates of badger numbers in the pilot areas. On the contrary, we have invested considerable time and effort in monitoring work to establish a reliable estimate of the number of badgers in the areas. Those figures were used by Natural England as part of the licensing process to set the minimum and maximum number of badgers to be culled. Members might also hear from some quarters that we are putting the badger population in those areas at risk of extinction. That too is untrue, as confirmed in the opinion of the Bern convention.

The two pilots will see the removal of about 5,000 badgers—a minimum of 2,081 in west Somerset and 2,856 in west Gloucestershire. That is about 10% of the 50,000 badgers killed on our roads each year or just over 1% of the estimated national population. The number of badgers culled and the culling method used in each case will be recorded by the operators and be part of the licence returns to Natural England. During the pilots, there will also be independent monitoring of the effectiveness, humaneness and safety of badger control.

I hope it is evident why the Government are committed to the policy. It is just one element of a comprehensive approach to the eradication of bovine TB, as our amendment to the motion makes clear, but it is an essential element and one that can help us start to win the war against a bacterium that has proved so damaging and resilient to other interventions.

We will not shy from tough decisions that we believe to be fully evidence-based and fundamentally the right thing to do. We will continue to work with all those who wish to see healthy cattle living alongside healthy badgers. I therefore hope that Opposition Members will reconsider their position and support our amendment, which sets out the broad, balanced and evidence-based approach we are taking to tackle this horrible disease.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Nia Griffith]

It is indeed difficult to make comparisons with other countries, where ecological patterns are very different. Perturbation has been mentioned by other speakers, so I will not go into great detail on that; instead, I want to talk about cattle vaccination, because that is what will put the farmer in control, and we should put a lot of effort into it. I am therefore saddened that whereas we spent £3.5 million on this in 2009-10, this Government have cut the funding for that sort of research to £2 million for the next financial year—

[Mr Paterson]

That is because there is no money, because you messed up the economy. [Interruption.]