Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(11 years, 7 months ago)
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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 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
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(11 years, 7 months ago)
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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.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(11 years, 9 months ago)
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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.
Horsemeat
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(11 years, 10 months ago)
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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 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.
Horsemeat (Food Fraud)
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(11 years, 10 months ago)
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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.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Paterson
Last week I met Commissioner Borg, the EU Health Commissioner, to agree a way forward for developing a workable cattle vaccine. A provisional timetable has now been agreed, and a copy of the letter outlining this to me has been placed in the Library this morning. It acknowledges the UK’s leading role in pressing forward on a cattle vaccine. and for the first time recognises that we are on course to deploy a vaccine. The legal and scientific process could take up to 10 years. In the meantime, we will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to check the progress of this terrible disease.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I am in receipt of evidence showing that several horses slaughtered by UK abattoirs last year tested positive for phenylbutazone —or bute—a drug that causes cancer in humans and that is banned from the human food chain. It is possible that those animals entered the human food chain. Is the Minister aware of this?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(12 years ago)
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Mr Paterson
I enjoyed my visit to Exeter and I pay tribute to everyone who pulled together—councils, public services, the Environment Agency and all those who managed to repair the railway line. I saw where it had been breached and they got the line working the day after I was there. I hope it reassures my hon. Friend to hear that the first phone call I made on leaving Exeter was to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport who had already been on the case to ensure that the vital rail link was restored. I totally endorse my hon. Friend’s point about transport links and flooding.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I echo the condolences of the Secretary of State to the families and friends of those who lost their lives in the floods.
Last week, there was an announcement of a new £120 million U-turn on flood defence spending. However, even after that announcement, the Government will still spend less on flood defences in 2013 than Labour spent in 2008. Just 30% of that money will be spent next year because the Environment Agency no longer has the staff capacity to get the money out of the door. It is difficult to decide which is more incompetent: cutting the budget too far in the first place or, when they change their mind, not having the capacity to get the money out of the door and to the communities that need it.
Mr Paterson
I love the way the hon. Lady always looks for the downside in a story—her ingenuity is tremendous. The fact is that on 11 September, within a week of coming in, I met the chairman of the Environment Agency, Lord Smith. We saw a great scheme, which, in fairness, her Government launched in Nottingham. I asked him to come forward with proposals for future flood schemes, as the benefits in Nottingham were clear—not just 16,000 houses protected by the £45 million scheme, but the 500 acres freed up for development, which had previously been blighted. He wrote to me, quickly, on 26 September, and I am happy to give the hon. Lady the letter. We have put what he asked for into practice, to the letter: another £120 million, which will be of great benefit and save a further 60,000 houses from flooding.
Mr Speaker
I appeal to colleagues to speed up the exchanges. We have a lot to get through, and questions and answers are too long.
Mary Creagh
Of course, it is great to build flood defences, but it is just as important to maintain the ones we already have and to keep our rivers clear. Yesterday, however, the Chancellor announced that a further £60 million would be cut from DEFRA’s budget, so can the Secretary of State guarantee that no further cuts will fall on the Environment Agency’s river-dredging and maintenance budget, which is already set to fall from £108 million in 2010 to just £60 million in 2015?
Mr Paterson
As the hon. Lady knows, we inherited a hideous mess from her Government and are taking time to put it right in a very difficult world environment. I have to go back to my early reading, when I came into the House, of “Erskine May”, but she must stick to the truth on these issues. In total, with all the agencies involved, the Government will spend more over the four-year term than the Labour Government spent over their last four-year spending round.
Flooding
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(12 years ago)
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Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his update.
I begin by paying tribute to the emergency services that worked to evacuate homes, rescue those who were stranded and keep people safe this weekend. I echo the Secretary of State’s thanks to staff of the Environment Agency and local councils who worked all weekend—and throughout the night on Saturday—clearing rivers and ensuring that flood defences were activated.
Hon. Members from across the House will wish to send their condolences to the family and friends of the three people who tragically lost their lives. With two months’ worth of rain set to fall in the north of the country today, we are not yet in the clear. The communities affected face months of disruption and upheaval. People who were cleaning up after the July floods have been flooded again, and some have been flooded more than once this week. Pubs that were looking forward to their busiest period are throwing out carpets and cancelling bookings.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs classes areas as being at low, medium or high risk of flooding. Have this week’s floods triggered the medium-risk threshold that activates the Cabinet Office civil contingencies secretariat? Will the Secretary of State tell the House how many schools, roads, railways and businesses have been affected across the country so far, and how many people have been evacuated? How many acres of productive farmland are under water, and what estimate has he made of crop losses to farmers?
The Secretary of State mentioned the Somerset levels, which rely on drainage boards. The Environment Agency, however, is already consulting on changes to flood management, pump houses and maintaining river courses. Will he guarantee that those operations will be protected in future? What contact has he had with the Department for Education to ensure that children whose schools have been flooded continue to be educated? What contact has he had with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on the recovery effort? Is he aware that there is no statutory obligation on fire services to respond to flood events, and does he share my concern that the current round of cuts to fire and rescue authorities, particularly in metropolitan areas, is reducing our resilience to flood events in future years?
The Secretary of State’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), told the House in a written statement in June that central Government would cover 100% of local authority costs under the Bellwin scheme, yet today the Secretary of State has announced that just 85% of their costs will be met in the case of the latest floods. Why is that?
Councils have just one month after a flood incident to lodge with the DCLG a claim for reimbursement under Bellwin. However, Bellwin covers only the costs of immediate action to safeguard life and property, such as evacuation and rehousing, not the capital costs of road repairs. Just three of the 20 areas flooded last summer have reached the Bellwin threshold to receive any money at all from the Government. Have the Government made any payments to those three councils for the costs of the June and July floods? If, as I suspect, they have not, when can councils expect that money?
What measures has the Secretary of State put in place to help the other 17 councils whose claims did not meet the Bellwin threshold? Whether the Government cover 85% or 100% of the costs, their failure to help 17 of the 20 councils affected in the summer is no help at all. What funding will he put in place for major capital expenditure on damaged roads?
After the 2007 and 2009 floods, the Government set up the flood recovery grant as a one-off payment to councils to help households seriously affected by the floods. This Government have chosen not to help communities in that way. Why is that?
What support will the Government give to those who are under-insured or uninsured? The answer has to be more than warm tweets from the Prime Minister. As we move from response to recovery, flood-hit communities are growing more and more anxious about the availability and affordability of flood insurance. The Secretary of State’s predecessor told the House in June that
“we are at an advanced stage in intensive and constructive negotiations with the insurance industry”.—[Official Report, 25 June 2012; Vol. 547, c. 26.]
Yet the Association of British Insurers has stated today that a deal on the future of flood insurance has “stalled”. We were promised a deal in the spring, and then by July. It is now November. What has happened? If the deal is not done by the time of the autumn statement in just nine days, the risk of people being unable to insure, mortgage and eventually sell their home will rise exponentially. We must not have whole communities blighted because the Chancellor refuses to negotiate in good faith. When will he get a grip on the issue?
We know that every pound invested in flood defences saves £8 in costs further down the line, yet this Government have cut capital spending on flood defences by 30% from the 2010 baseline. They are spending less on flood defences now than we were five years ago in 2007. As a result, 294 flood defence schemes have been deferred or cancelled. Will the Secretary of State resist any pressure from the Treasury to cut flood defence spending in the next comprehensive spending review?
Last Monday in Westminster Hall, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), told Members that
“while the flooding incidents of this summer were locally significant, we did not witness the devastating effects of previous years.”—[Official Report, 20 November 2012; Vol. 553, c. 93WH.]
Communities that have been devastated by flooding should not have to listen to Ministers telling them that their experience is not nationally significant. Today and this weekend, we have once again had a reminder that floods are the greatest threat that climate change poses to our country, and flood-hit communities deserve not to have to go through that terrible experience again.
Mr Paterson
I thank the hon. Lady for echoing my tributes to the Environment Agency, councils and all those who have worked so extraordinarily hard in recent days. I thank her also for expressing her sympathies to those who have lost relations and friends.
The hon. Lady asked detailed questions about the picture on schools, roads and crops. It is too early to tell, because the current weather is carrying on, and I think we had better review those questions when it settles down.
The hon. Lady mentioned local councils. We are co-ordinating the matter carefully and meeting DCLG on a regular basis, including on the subject of fire services. She mentioned the Bellwin scheme, which we have continued in exactly the same vein as the previous Government. There is a 0.2% threshold, and we have said that we will pay up to 85% of costs. We will keep that under review and keep assessing the situation as it develops.
The hon. Lady mentioned flood insurance. Today’s story is complete nonsense. The first meeting I had on taking office was with the ABI. We have had constructive and detailed discussions with it since, and there was a senior level meeting as recently as the end of last week. I am looking forward to receiving the ABI’s latest suggestions. We are determined to arrive at a replacement for the statement of principles that provides universality, is affordable and does not put a major burden on the taxpayer. I would like to remind the hon. Lady that the statement of principles covers 2003 to 2013, and we inherited absolutely nothing from the previous Government on this issue.
The hon. Lady mentioned spending on flood defences, and there is a complete canard about this reduction; our reduction is 6% over the whole spending round compared with what Labour spent over its spending round. I would have thought that she would have been pleased that our partnership scheme is really working, and a range of schemes that were just on the threshold and did not make the cut will now go ahead. In the last major incident, in 2007, 55,000 homes were flooded but this time the figure is 5,000 to 6,000. That is still traumatic for those households, and I repeat that my real sympathies are with those affected. I stress that we are continuing with a major programme of flood defence schemes to reduce the number further.
Bovine TB and Badger Control
Debate between Owen Paterson and Mary Creagh(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mary Creagh
Bovine TB is a terrible disease, but the Secretary of State’s cull was never going to be a silver bullet. Then, last Thursday, we saw the first signs that the badger cull was shaping up to be another Government disaster. As Ministers went to ground, the Secretary of State’s own press office told “Channel 4 News” that the policy was being scrapped, but an hour later they rang back—it was unscrapped. To have to announce one U-turn may be regarded as misfortune, but two U-turns in one afternoon looks like carelessness, even for a Government as weak and incompetent as this one.
What was the reason for the wobble? I had asked some parliamentary questions, and Ministers’ answers revealed some awkward facts. My first basic question was how many badgers there were in each cull area. The answer was that the Government
“have yet to issue definitive target figures for the two areas”.—[Official Report, 17 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 296W.]
The cull is predicated on killing at least 70% of badgers in an area. How could it proceed when Ministers did not know how many animals there were? We had said all along that the cull was a shot in the dark, and here was the proof. It was that admission, two days before the cull was due to start, that meant DEFRA was wide open to a judicial review for being in breach of the law. The Government’s own best estimate of badger numbers was far higher than previously estimated, making both culls more expensive than forecast. That would mean more expense for farmers and increasing the contingency fund, the bond that farmers are required to lodge with Natural England. Why did Ministers not ask how many badgers farmers needed to kill before this whole fiasco started?
What sort of announcement is the Minister making today? Is it like the forests U-turn, when they pulled the plug and then set up an independent panel to kick it into the long grass forever, leaving just enough cover to save the Prime Minister face; or is it like the infamous Health and Social Care Bill, when the Prime Minister pressed the stop button, waited for things to calm down and then carried on regardless? Is this delay a proper U-turn or a pretend U-turn? I think that the country deserves to be told.
We welcome the tougher measures on biosecurity that the Secretary of State announced last Friday. He says the cull will start again next summer. He has blamed the weather and the police, yet his own colleague the Home Secretary said that the cull must not go ahead during the Olympics and Paralympics. What happens if the weather is bad next year? What estimate has he made of the impact on the tourism industry of a cull next June? Does he expect MPs and the public to believe him when he says that the cull will happen next summer? If it does not take place, is there not a risk that his Department will be pursued for costs by farmers left out of pocket as a result of his incompetence? Is not the truth that the Prime Minister yanked him back from his festival of fromage and fizz in Paris last night and told him it was game over? Who exactly is in charge?
After months of agonising, with hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money having been spent on consultations, counting badgers, training marksmen and issuing licences, and after thousands have been spent by farmers setting up companies, we have had another U-turn from this incompetent Government. They have spent two years puffing life into a policy that should never have left the ministerial red box. After just six weeks in his post, the Secretary of State has discovered that DEFRA is filled with elephant traps for the unwary. With forests, circus animals and now the badger cull, he has completed a hat trick unmatched by any other Department.
Labour has always said that the badger cull was bad for taxpayers, bad for farmers, and bad for wildlife. This Government are out of touch with the nation. This cull should have been stopped months ago. Today we have the right decision for all the wrong reasons. The cull has been stopped because of the Government’s endemic incompetence. They should have listened to the scientists, the charities and Labour Members, and made policy based on the evidence instead of twisting the evidence to fit their policy. Once again, Ministers present the House with a disaster entirely of their own making. Once again, it is farmers and taxpayers who are left counting the cost.
Mr Paterson
I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words in welcoming me to my place, but it was pretty thin stuff, wasn’t it, Mr Speaker?
Let us start with Professor Lord Krebs, whom the hon. Lady quoted. He confirmed the policy when he said in April last year at a meeting of independent scientific experts:
“The science base generated from the…Randomised Badger Culling Trial shows that proactive badger culling as conducted in the trial resulted in an overall beneficial effect compared with ‘survey only’ (no cull) areas on reducing new confirmed cattle herd breakdowns which is still in evidence 5½ years after the final annual proactive cull.”
The hon. Lady then touched on the comments of the chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, but failed to say that his recent quote in full is this:
“The proposed pilot culls differ from the RBCT in a number of ways. Additional biosecurity aimed at reducing perturbation effects, any predictions as to the efficacy of the culls will be accompanied by uncertainties. However, if the results were similar to those of the RBCT we might expect a 12 to 16% reduction in bovine TB over an area of 150 km sq after nine years relative to a similar unculled area. It will be important to monitor the results and to subject them to rigorous statistical analysis to assess humaneness, safety and efficacy.”
That is exactly what the pilots were for: they were the logical conclusion—[Interruption.]