Badger Culling

Debate between Paul Monaghan and Margaret Ferrier

Monday 27th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Dr Paul Monaghan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) on opening this debate with an excellent speech. We last debated badger culling on 7 September 2016, in a debate that I led in this Chamber. Today, we are debating e-petition 165672, which calls for an end to badger culling, rather than an extension of culls to new areas.

Ending the badger culls is an eminently sensible and empirically sound proposition supported by almost 110,000 members of the public. I welcome the public support for the issue, and Mr King’s leading role in initiating the petition. The e-petition notes that experts in both disease control and animal welfare agree that badger culls have proven to be ineffective and inhumane. I add that the culls are also ruinously expensive, wasting taxpayer money at the rate of more than £6,000 per badger inhumanely slaughtered.

In September, I noted that bovine tuberculosis, or BTB, affects beef and dairy cattle herds in England, and that although Scotland has been officially free from the disease since 2009 and Wales is increasingly demonstrating how to bring it under control, the incidence of infection in England is rising, particularly along the edge areas, which threatens further herd outbreaks and the perpetuation of absolute misery for England’s farmers.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

I join my hon. Friend in commending the work done in Scotland to ensure that we have been certified free of the disease for the last eight years. Does he share my concerns about the repercussions for TB control, particularly among cattle, of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU?

[Dr Monaghan]

I absolutely agree, particularly in relation to the evident risks of the spread of infection if appropriate cattle movement control and biosecurity measures are not implemented. That is why the Scottish National party is participating in this debate, even though it relates primarily to England and to the impact of bovine TB on England’s farmers.

We should be in no doubt that bovine TB is a very serious problem, and that killing badgers on an industrial scale is probably making the situation worse. Badger culling is nothing less than a costly distraction from the implementation of an effective solution, which requires a focus on sound animal husbandry and biosecurity, including vaccination, increased cattle movement control measures, and improved infection testing.

We know that bovine tuberculosis is caused by mycobacterium bovis, which is excreted by infected cattle on to the land they graze, where it survives in the soil and is then passed to other cattle and other species. Nevertheless, the predominant mode of transmission in cattle is nose-to-nose, and such transmission is encouraged by trading and moving cattle between herds. Indeed, evidence suggests that the number of new herd breakdowns appears to double approximately every nine years.

In the last decade alone, the UK Government have slaughtered 314,000 otherwise healthy cattle in an attempt to control infection. In 2013, more than 6 million bovine TB tests were performed in England in an ineffective attempt to identify the disease, leading to the slaughter of more than 26,000 cattle. Such skin tests are only 20% to 50% effective. The Minister will be interested to know that a new study, published just last week, shows that, as I argued in September, the tuberculin skin test fails to identify up to 50% of reactive cases. The skin test has always been a herd test, not an individual test. Its efficacy is hindered by the ability of the disease to hide in animals whose immune response is suppressed. In cattle, this could be due to a range of factors, including age, history of exposure, pregnancy and fluke parasite burden.

The ineffectiveness of the test means that in the last decade, the rising incidence of the disease has cost the UK taxpayer more than £500 million. Today, 20% of all new herd breakdowns are detected only in the slaughterhouse, such is the ineffectiveness of the overall testing programme. The inability to bring the disease under control resulted in a cost to the UK taxpayer of almost £100 million in 2014 alone, and the additional cost to farmers is estimated to run into tens of millions of pounds annually. The financial costs are staggering. The rise in the incidence of the disease in England is giving rise not only to an increase in the number of beef and dairy herds affected, but to increased geographical spread and consequently a spiralling cost to the UK taxpayer—more than £1 billion in the next decade alone, by the estimate of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The crisis that England’s cattle farmers, and their families and communities, face cannot be overstated. If the disease continues to increase unchecked in England, it will also begin to threaten herds in other nations that are currently free of the disease, such as Scotland, and that are successfully combating it, such as Wales. I am certain that we all want to avoid that. In that context, it is frankly inexplicable that the rising incidence of bovine tuberculosis in England is being attributed to badgers, because research shows that, even in remote areas of England where bovine TB is rampant, 86% of badgers are clear of it.

The Government must stop allowing farmers to believe that the level of infectious TB in badgers is much higher than it is, and that culling might make a difference when we know that it will not. Despite the huge amounts being spent, no substantial or respectable body of scientific work has ever been produced that contradicts the conclusions of the study by the independent scientific group on cattle TB, which initiated the randomised badger culling trial in 1998. That study, as we have heard, found that reactive badger culling resulted in significant increases in cattle TB incidence, to the extent that culling was abandoned early in the trial. The study concluded, first, that

“badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB”;

secondly, that

“weaknesses in cattle testing regimes mean that cattle themselves contribute significantly to the persistence and spread of disease in all areas where TB occurs”—

that is, cattle themselves are the disease reservoir; thirdly, that

“cattle-to-cattle transmission…is the main cause of disease spread to new areas”;

fourthly, that

“substantial reductions in cattle TB incidence could be achieved by improving cattle-based control measures”;

and, finally, that

“agricultural and veterinary leaders continue to believe, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, that the main approach to cattle TB control must involve some form of badger population control.”

In short, the scientific evidence does not identify a causal relationship between the presence of badgers and a rising incidence of bovine tuberculosis in cattle. The current approach means that the people of England can have as much bovine tuberculosis as the UK Government are prepared to pay for.

History shows us that bovine tuberculosis is an ugly opponent, and that dealing with it requires scientific precision in testing, movement controls and selective removal. In the 1960s, bovine tuberculosis infection was reduced by around 80% in under four years. That reduction involved short-term actions in return for long-term benefit. The intelligent and evidence-led approach is to deploy interferon gamma and apply the emerging late-stage tests for hidden bovine tuberculosis, such as RPA 7, alongside biosecurity measures and cattle movement restrictions. Resources must be directed towards testing and control, and plans for expensive and divisive badger-culling pilots in England must be put on hold. There is already more than enough evidence to show that the controversial free-shooting method does not work. The strategy must now be to seek to deploy gamma testing in the pilot areas, and plans should be initiated to invest heavily in supporting livestock controls, with unequivocal backing from the UK Government.

Further attempts to disguise the failure of the badger cull programme are futile. Compelling recent evidence from Wales and Ireland shows that there is no value in addressing the hypothetical contribution from badger culling, especially while the overwhelmingly critical cattle-to-cattle transfer remains uncontrolled. No other country is seriously considering such a pitifully crude, wasteful and ineffective solution to bovine tuberculosis as badger culling.

In September’s debate, the Minister noted the policies that he is overseeing:

“We have annual testing in the high-risk area and four-yearly testing in the low-risk area. We have annual testing in the edge area and six-monthly testing in hotspots in the edge area, and we continue to consider rolling that out. We have contiguous testing in the high-risk area where there is a breakdown, and we have radial testing in the low-risk area, going out to 3 km, where we have a breakdown. We are now consulting on greater use of the gamma interferon test so that we can pick up the disease faster. We are also looking at what more can be done in other species. We are constantly trying to refine and improve our cattle movement controls”.—[Official Report, 7 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 219WH.]

There is scope for further work on those points. What progress has the Minister made on controlling slurry spreading, on managing deer populations, on limiting hunting with hounds, on restricting cattle movements and, above all, on challenging weak biosecurity measures, including feeding infected cattle to hounds? I say “weak”, because it has recently been brought to my attention that Natural England has rolled back on farmers’ risk assessments; indeed, I understand that in five of the seven new cull areas, only 5% of participants’ farms had received biosecurity visits from Natural England by mid-September 2016. It is unsurprising, then, that Natural England failed to release information from its biosecurity monitoring forms for all the new cull areas and has abandoned the assessment ratings of good, fair and poor that were used up to 2014. Why is that, Minister?

By 2015, the percentage of participants’ farms with cattle that had not—I emphasise not—been visited by Natural England monitoring staff was 55% in west Gloucestershire, 63% in west Somerset, and 68% in Dorset. I repeat that those are the percentages of participants’ farms that were not visited. That is not science-led or evidence-led practice, Minister. Why was a small team of between just seven and 10 people monitoring biosecurity visits from 2012 to 2015? Has the team been expanded to an appropriate level? I also note that the UK Government no longer collect data on the humaneness of culling badgers. Again, why, Minister?

There is also further evidence of a failure to assess the wider ecological impacts of culling. A report by the Food and Environment Research Agency in 2011 identified a range of outcomes from the culling of badgers that could result in disruption to ecosystems. The report identified the potential impact of the resulting change in the abundance of other species on a wide range of habitats, and it indicated that screening exercises and appropriate assessments should be carried out where badger culling was proposed. However, with a total of 10 licences having been issued to date, the UK Government have failed to conduct appropriate assessments to determine whether badger culling is creating wider ecological impacts that affect species and habitats protected under the Bern convention. That is yet another reason why badger culling should be suspended.

The historical and contemporary evidence increasingly demonstrates that the true engine driving the ongoing spread of bovine TB is, and always has been, the so-called problem herds with recurrent and/or persistent chronic TB. The proposition that the inhumane persecution of badgers will miraculously control TB infections is ridiculous, which is exactly why the Welsh Government have abandoned badger culling and why the European Union has never agreed with the UK’s policy in this area. This is a disease more likely to be carried on the boots of human beings than by badgers.

The UK Government should abandon the tuberculosis skin test as the primary means of identifying infection and new herd outbreaks, and should instead adopt modern methods and technologies to address this disease. Specifically, they should adopt gamma interferon tests and robust systems of biosecurity. Combined with a co-ordinated badger vaccination policy in high-risk areas for bovine TB in England, and restricted movement of cattle, this course of action would represent a more progressive and intelligent approach, and it would realise results within months. It would also be more humane and better support England’s farmers.

Just as I did in September, I again ask the Minister to please look to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales; to recognise the important contribution of rigorous blood testing regimes and effective movement controls to reduce the risks of cattle-to-cattle transmission; to introduce a centrally co-ordinated and comprehensive badger vaccination policy in high-risk infection areas in England, focusing on reducing the incidence of this dreadful disease in cattle; and to please stop the regressive and medieval practice of badger culling, which the public abhor, and which diminishes our collective humanity.

Chagos Islands

Debate between Paul Monaghan and Margaret Ferrier

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Westminster Hall

[Dr Monaghan]

The islands are an archipelago. There are hundreds of islands and more than enough space for everyone.

In 1982, when the truth leaked out, the islanders exiled to Mauritius were awarded derisory compensation of less than £3,000 per person. Those exiled to Seychelles were awarded no compensation. It was noted then that it had been

“entirely improper, unethical, dictatorial to have the Chagossian put their thumbprint on an English legal, drafted document, where the Chagossian, who doesn’t read, know or speak any English, let alone any legal English, is made to renounce basically all his rights as a human being.”

Was the annexation improper? Certainly. Unethical? I have no doubt. Dictatorial? Absolutely. Those are strong words, but that is exactly how the UK Government have treated and continue to treat the people of Chagos. That is what the Minister is here today to explain.

I understand that Diego Garcia remains the United States’ largest military base outside north America. There are two runways, over 30 warships, more than 4,000 troops and a satellite spy station located on the island. The base has been used as a launch pad for invasions, including those of both Afghanistan and Iraq. It is still in use, and that use is still encouraged by the UK Government.

In 1966, terms for the lease of Diego Garcia were agreed at $1 a year. On expulsion, the indigenous population were allowed to take just one suitcase each. They were forced into the hold of the SS Nordvaer and transported to Seychelles, where they were held in prison cells before being transited elsewhere, many to Mauritius. Wherever they were sent, they were left without financial support.

A Foreign Office memo on the subject at the time, from Sir Paul Gore-Booth to diplomat Denis Greenhill, stated:

“We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls…The United States Government will require the removal of the entire population of the atoll.”

Denis Greenhill replied in August 1966:

“Unfortunately, along with the birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure and who are hopefully being wished on to Mauritius etc. When this has been done I agree we must be very tough and a submission is being done accordingly.”

It is impossible for the UK Government to hide behind that correspondence. The casual disregard for human life it evidences is chillingly calculated, unambiguous and staggering. Nevertheless that “tough” action provoked legal action that has ultimately led to all of us being here for this debate today.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

It was estimated in 2007 that the litigation costs to the UK taxpayer for Government action against the Chagossians had amounted to over £4 million; that has no doubt increased after more recent legal proceedings. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is hypocritical of UK Governments to spend money in that way when many Chagossians have been denied fair compensation from the UK?

[Dr Monaghan]

My hon. Friend has raised a valid point that I will come to shortly.

In 1975, a former resident of the Chagos archipelago, Mr Michel Vencatassen, initiated a claim for compensation in the courts of England against the UK Government. The claim was settled in 1982 in an agreement under which the United Kingdom would pay £4 million into a fund for the former residents of the archipelago. Together with a previous payment of £650,000 made to the Government of Mauritius in 1966, that £4 million was later held as

“full and final settlement of all claims”

arising from the removal or resettlement of the population of the Chagos archipelago—despite the fact that many Chagossians have received no compensation at all.

Other verdicts in the English courts went in favour of the Chagossians, in 2000, 2006 and 2007. But in 2008 the House of Lords overturned them all and ruled in favour of the UK Government. That bizarre ruling argued that the Chagossians were deprived of their right of abode lawfully. The ruling resulted in the formation of the all-party group on the Chagos islands, which has since met over 50 times and has attracted members of every single political party represented at Westminster. Full cross-party representation on such a group is very rare indeed.

Undaunted by the 2008 ruling, a group of Chagossians continued to pursue their claims before the European Court of Human Rights. In December 2012, the European Court judgment Chagos Islanders v the United Kingdom held that the claim was inadmissible, on the grounds that in settling their claims previously in 1982 and accepting and receiving compensation, the applicants had effectively renounced further use of legal remedies. Following the ruling, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), then Attorney General and speaking for the UK Government, said:

“we regret very much the circumstances in which they were removed from the islands and recognise that what was done then should not have happened.”

Fine words on a flawed judgement—flawed because, I note again, not all Chagossians were compensated.

Five weeks before the general election in 2010, parallel to the actions on deprivation of right of abode, the then Foreign Secretary, David Miliband—now, it is worth noting, president and chief executive officer of the International Rescue Committee, where he oversees humanitarian relief—ignored the advice of diplomats and rushed through the establishment of a marine protected area around the UK-controlled Chagos islands. That declaration was another significant, desperate and cynical attempt to anticipate legal claims on right of abode and to continue subverting the human rights of the Chagos people.

At The Hague on 18 March 2015, in its judgment Chagos Marine Protected Area Arbitration (Mauritius v United Kingdom), the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in favour of Mauritius against the UK Government concerning the declaration made on 1 April 2010 by David Miliband on behalf of the UK Government. The tribunal found that consultations on the marine protected area were characterised by a lack of information and an absence of sufficiently reasoned exchanges between the parties involved. It noted in particular that the UK Government engaged far less with Mauritius about establishing the marine protected area than it did with the United States. We need not speculate why.

More recently, on 4 August 2015, the UK Government announced a three-month consultation exercise on purported resettlement of Mauritians of Chagossian origin in the Chagos archipelago. That consultation period ended yesterday, when Mr Pierre Prosper, chair of the Seychelles Chagossians Committee, told me that although all Chagossians have responded to the consultation stating that they want to return, all have refused the terms of the UK Government’s offer,

“which reduces us to cheap labour for the military base, with no rights at all”.

Considering that consultation on resettlement, the Minister should know that the proposed conditions of resettlement amount yet again to a gross violation of the Chagossians’ most basic human rights.

The Prime Minister of Mauritius has also rejected the premise of the UK Government’s consultation and has demanded that Chagossians who wish to resettle on the archipelago should be able to live in dignity and enjoy their basic human rights. I support that view. The Prime Minister of Mauritius stated earlier this month at the United Nations General Assembly:

“The Chagos archipelago was illegally excised by the United Kingdom from the territory of Mauritius prior to its accession to independence, in breach of international law and resolutions of this Assembly.”

In the wake of that illegal excision, the Mauritians residing in the Chagos archipelago at the time were forcibly evicted by the British authorities, with total disregard for those people’s human rights. Most of them were moved to the main island of Mauritius. The Government of Mauritius are fully sensitive to their plight and their legitimate aspiration as Mauritian citizens to resettle on the archipelago. Mauritius welcomes the award of the arbitral tribunal delivered on 18 March 2015 against the United Kingdom under the United Nations convention on the law of the sea:

“We welcome the tribunal’s decision that the ‘marine protected area’ purportedly declared by the United Kingdom around the Chagos archipelago was established in violation of international law.”

That is an excellent summary of the current situation.

The current resettlement proposals offer no right of abode and stipulate that Chagossians must return to their islands as “contract workers”, with no right to buy land or property. Moreover, the resettlement is intended to be for a trial period, beginning with a two-year pilot, after which resettlement may be cancelled. During the pilot period, Chagossians will not be allowed visitors on their islands, despite hundreds of wealthy tourists visiting the islands each year, mooring their yachts, living in Chagossians’ abandoned homes and spending their time on the islands largely unmonitored. Similarly, unlike with Tristan da Cunha and Pitcairn, the UK Government’s resettlement proposals advise that no education services will be provided, thereby effectively excluding families with children from returning to their islands.

In short, the consultation and the terms of resettlement are transparent, unsatisfactory and quite obviously designed to scare the indigenous people and ensure that resettlement on the Chagos islands fails. The refusal of the consultation document to guarantee support for Chagossians if resettlement is cancelled after two years means that Chagossians face an unenviable dilemma, and an unattractive and very insecure future. Furthermore, many Chagossian groups in Europe—for example, in Switzerland and France—have not been consulted on the resettlement proposals at all. As an exercise in engagement, the consultation is therefore effectively worthless and should be viewed and condemned as such.

To be clear, the UK Government’s consultation fails spectacularly to address the key issues and should be roundly dismissed. It is, of course, welcome that the UK Government are considering how to make Chagossian resettlement a reality, but the terms of resettlement must be fair to Chagossians. The current proposals are not.

The basic premise advanced by the UK Government of there being “uncertainty” over both resettlement costs and demand is simply inaccurate. Indeed, recent freedom of information requests reveal that KPMG, which evaluated resettlement options and developed the costings, has described its own estimates as having been made with “pessimism”. It remains unclear who instructed that pessimism, but I am sure we will find out at some point. To put that pessimism into context, one estimate suggests “capital and training” costs of £267.5 million over six years to resettle 1,500 people. Another scenario is costed at £4.04 million per person to meet the capital costs of “resettlement and security” over the first 10 years.