Badgers and Bovine TB

Robert Flello Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Glindon]

I hope that the Minister has noted my hon. Friend’s concerns.

The Minister and the Secretary of State should listen to the experts and the scientists and, instead of pressing forward with plans for culling, refocus their efforts to eradicate bovine TB by concentrating Government resources on developing vaccination methods, along with other measures that are currently being deployed. Other countries where bovine TB is a problem, such as New Zealand, Ireland and the USA, are all working on vaccines. The Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has carried out vaccine trials in Gloucestershire, as has been mentioned, so momentum is growing in that direction. Culling is not the answer. Sound scientific evidence tells us that we must move in a different direction and try to work with the measures, some of which the current Government are carrying forward, put in place by the previous Government, which definitely work.

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

My hon. Friend is making an extremely good point, and I am very grateful to her for securing today’s debate. [Interruption.] I wish that Government Members would not heckle, because it is so annoying. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) has mentioned dairy farmers who are, quite rightly, opposed to this and who, quite rightly, do not want culling on their land. Will my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) spend a moment addressing the issues around a free-for-all cull, where licensed guns are wandering around looking for anything black and white moving in the undergrowth? Will she spend a moment addressing what will happen when there is a dairy farmer slap bang in the middle of one of these areas who says, “No, we are not having that on my land”? How will that affect the supposedly scientific cull?

[Mrs Glindon]

I have spent a number of hours reading all kinds of evidence about this, and the main worry about policing and control is that there is none. Natural England will license the guns, and farmers and landowners will come together and train people to shoot, but it must be emphasised that the shooting will not be controlled as it was under the scientific trials. The problem is that the shooting might be random and that there will be no one to enforce any safety measures whatever. The badgers will be shot as they are running or moving along as badgers do in the undergrowth, but who will keep people off the target site or ensure that the shot badgers are killed outright and not wandering off in pain to die a cruel death or, if wounded, wandering away from their setts and spreading the disease?

I urge the Minister to rethink culling. The science is the route, and the science says, “Do not cull!” Will the Minister consider the vaccine route? Resources should be poured into vaccine, ensuring that farmers and badgers have an equal say and that we do not look at killing before we look at curing.