Badger Culling

Roger Gale Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) on leading the debate. I want to touch on two issues: animal welfare and science. Anybody who has been brought up in the countryside and who understands rural England—I was brought up in rural Dorset, surrounded by farm land and livestock—knows and understands the devastating effect of epidemics and pandemics of bovine TB, foot and mouth disease, swine fever and bird flu. It is hard to describe how bad they can be—bad for humans, certainly, but infinitely worse for the wildlife and livestock affected.

My eldest son, who is now a vet in practice, began his career before he had even joined a practice by seconding himself to the Ministry of Agriculture and going out and ordering the destruction of thousands of cattle. He watched grown men, maybe twice or three times his age, burst into tears as he gave them the verdict. You and I know, Mr Streeter—you are from Devon—because we have seen those piles of carcases in flames, and it is not a pretty sight. I am not trying to suggest that bovine TB has yet reached pandemic proportions, but to the individual farmer and the individual holding the effect is the same: it is devastating.

Of course, for the wildlife and livestock it is equally bad. It has been said correctly on both sides of this Chamber that bovine TB is a terrible, painful, awful disease. It affects cattle, badgers, dogs and, we believe, deer, and it appears to be spreading. To do nothing is not an option, but we have to do the right thing. Just doing something might superficially play to the gallery and please a few people in rural England, but it is not going to solve the problem. I will not put words into your mouth, Mr Streeter—you are sitting in the Chair—but I suspect that you and I both understand that.

Apart from the hon. Member for Newport West, I am probably the only person in this Chamber who is old enough and ugly enough to bear the scars of Krebs. I have been through those debates and discussions and know very well that the outcome was what can only be described as conclusively inconclusive. People on both sides of the cull debate took from it what they wanted to prove their own cases. Post Krebs one could argue—I would not, but one could—that it was worth a try. Well, it has been tried, and it failed. With 15,000 badgers at a cost of £7,000 each—let us be generous and say £6,000 a badger—hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent for virtually no proven effect whatsoever. That is the bottom line.

My hon. Friend the Minister knows full well that I am a member of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, which has been widely misrepresented by some people in this House but is actually an organisation committed to farm animal welfare. We support many of the aims that the Government set out in their manifesto and we want to help see them through, but on this issue I believe that successive Ministers and Administrations have got it wrong. One of the things we have always tried to do is base our arguments on the science. The British Veterinary Association—I am merely an honorary member, but I do not think that I am misrepresenting its view—does not regard this as a satisfactory way forward. Why? Because it is wrong in science. That brings me to the second of the few remarks I wish to make.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I share a similar position to that of my hon. Friend in the BVA, which believes:

“Badger culling in a targeted, effective and humane manner is necessary in carefully selected areas where badgers are regarded as a significant contributor to the presence of bTB”—

I thought it would be helpful just to set out the BVA’s position.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I am afraid that the BVA is a faith of many churches. To some extent, it probably depends on which veterinary surgeons people listen to.

[Angela Smith]

I, too, am an honorary life member of the BVA. The BVA has made it clear that it does not support the free shooting of badgers, because it is inhumane, as was proved by the independent expert panel. As things stand, the BVA is not particularly happy with how the culling is being conducted.

[Sir Roger Gale]

There is an attitude that we have to use every shot—unfortunately literally in this case—in the locker, and I believe that we are going down the wrong path. I say that with no pleasure whatsoever. If culling worked and eliminated TB in badgers and cattle, I could probably live with the fact that it was necessary, because in the long run it would be the kindest thing to do. But we do not know how many of the 15,000 slaughtered badgers have even had TB, because they have not been tested. Where is the science in that? We do not know whether cattle are giving TB to badgers or badgers are giving it to cattle, or both, because that has not been proven.

I accept that vaccination is costly and difficult, but it is nothing like as costly and difficult as shooting badgers. We know that in Wales, where vaccination has been used much more widely—again, let us discount the wilder claims of success and say that that has probably had a 20% to 25% success rate—culling, at best, has had a 4% success rate. If the Minister has other figures and can demonstrate conclusively that the facts are otherwise, I would be very interested to hear them. So far, we seem to be a little short on statistics giving any indication that the policy that we are currently pursuing works. I want a policy that works. Whichever side of this argument we are on, I guess we are all on the side of wildlife and farmers, and everybody in the Chamber wants a policy that works.

The Republic of Ireland has developed what it believes will be an efficacious vaccine. The bottom line is that we are all looking for that, and I want to see us go down that road. Instead of wasting more time, money and effort going down a blind alley—pursuing a policy that does not work, has not worked and will not work—if we put all those resources and all our effort into finding a vaccination that works for cattle and badgers, we can solve the problem. I urge the Minister to take that away and think about it again. I am not saying that he has not thought about this issue—patently he has; he probably goes to sleep at night dreaming about it—but we need a solution that works.

Two things have not been pursued: one is vaccination, which I have mentioned; and the other, which others have mentioned, is proper ecological bio-control of the movement of cattle and of livestock generally. We know that works because we tried it during the last pandemic, so instead of messing around at the margins, let us get this right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am unlucky enough to represent a constituency in one of the areas in the UK with the most herd breakdowns, where TB is most prevalent, and farmers in my area would absolutely endorse my hon. Friend’s comments.

Rather conveniently, I was about to come to the Wales comparison. As the hon. Member for Newport West will recall, not many years ago the Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition in Cardiff first addressed the problem in policy terms. At that stage the advice that they—and the UK Government—had from the chief veterinary officer was that culling could form an important part of the overall control measures. It is being portrayed here, as it has been before, that somehow the advice to the Welsh Government has changed over the years; that somehow the Welsh Government are working to a different set of proposals. The truth is that the advice they have today is exactly the same as the advice they had then. For those who wish to go into the archives, that advice still maintains a reference to culling as potentially part of the programme for eradicating bovine TB in Wales.

It is fair to say, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) did, that the vaccination area in Wales, just north of where I live, covers a small, limited area. That vaccination programme has had to be suspended due to a reduced number of vaccines, as the hon. Member for Newport West commented. The reality is that the very encouraging statistics that have been quoted from Wales for the reduction in herd breakdowns from bovine TB are universal across the whole country. They do not simply reflect the activity in north Pembrokeshire and south Ceredigion. The implication that the vaccination programme has resulted in the 47% reduction in herd breakdowns completely misrepresents the truth. Those figures relate to a tiny land area just north of where I live, whereas the statistics that are being bandied about in the same paragraph relate to the whole of Wales. We keep talking about the importance of relying on science, but we also need to rely on proper, validated statistics. Making comparisons about a few hundred square kilometres of north Pembrokeshire and pretending that that is a reflection of the rest of Wales is a bit misleading.

[Sir Roger Gale]

Does my hon. Friend quarrel with the fact that in the vaccination areas there has been, at worst, a reduction of 20%, whereas in the cull areas the equivalent figure is miniscule—about 4%?

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend made my next point for me. I absolutely recognise that there is a discrepancy between those two numbers, but the problem is that we are trying to compare a non-identical set of figures and a non-identical timeline of events leading up to the particular measurement of the figures—I do not think I put that very clearly.

It is misleading to compare the numbers acquired over four years in north Pembrokeshire and south Ceredigion, during a five-year programme that had to be suspended, with a much longer process involving a different set of calculations in England. I myself find it frustrating, but we are not comparing apples with apples when looking at the two systems and processes in those two different areas. Saying, “Here is a solution that works; why don’t the stupid Government use it?” is massively over-simplifying the problem. Again, I do not want to put words in the Minister’s mouth, but we have known each other a long time, and if there was a solution or a magic pill that he could administer to make this all go away, I suspect that he would have done so by now.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

We publish the disease surveillance data annually in August. To pick up on the point that the hon. Member for Penistone and Stockbridge made, that includes data specific to the cull areas that we have under way. Having just implemented the new use and the adoption of the interferon gamma test, it is too early to tell how much impact that will have. What we do know is that the basic surveillance testing measures, pre-movement testing and restrictions have been in place for a number of years. As in Wales, they have undoubtedly contributed to holding the disease in check, but we know that, on their own, the measures will not be enough to roll the disease back.

We continue to do work on developing a cattle vaccine. The BCG vaccine can be used in cattle, but we know it is not 100% effective. It probably gives between 65% and 70% protection to herds, but that would nevertheless be beneficial if we could secure the right kind of test that could differentiate the vaccine from TB. Some years ago, we did manage to get in place an interferon gamma blood test that could do that, but it unfortunately threw up a lot of false positives, which is a common problem. We are now doing work to consider the skin test. We believe that we are close to getting a skin test that can distinguish between the disease and the vaccine. When we are able to get that in place, we will work towards starting trials of that.

A number of Members have raised the issue of Wales. As my hon. Friends the Members for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) and for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) pointed out, the area in Wales under the vaccination pilot represented just 1.5% of the country. Wales’s cattle movement restrictions almost mirror ours; there is very little difference. The differences tend to be in the types of restrictions on cattle markets, but they are minor differences. All the other approaches, on surveillance testing and restrictions, are remarkably similar. If we look at the figures, the latest statistics show that 95% of Welsh herds and 94.2% of English herds are TB-free, so the difference is not enormous.

The large drop in TB in Wales that has been quoted by a number of Members seems to be based on a reference point of 2012-13, which was a year with a very high prevalence of disease. In the past year, Wales has seen a 23% increase in the number of cattle slaughtered due to TB, while England has seen just a 4% increase, so we can trade statistics, but I simply point out that the approach in Wales to cattle movement controls is remarkably similar to what we are doing in England. The area covered by Wales’ vaccination pilot is nowhere near large enough to draw the conclusions and inferences that some Members are drawing.

To turn to the badger cull and the science, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn)—he opened the debate, and he has a long track record of campaigning on wildlife issues and animal welfare issues—rightly pointed out that badgers are sentient creatures and that we would not do the cull unless we needed to. As I have made clear many times before, I would not sanction the cull unless I believed it was necessary to combat this terrible disease. The advice we have from our chief veterinary officer is clear that we cannot eradicate the disease unless we also tackle the reservoir of the disease in the wildlife population. While the policy is contentious, it is the right policy. Sometimes Governments have to pursue the right policy, even if it is not popular.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I have been listening very carefully to what the Minister has been saying. I do not understand how he and the chief veterinary officer can assert that the reservoir is there when none of the animals that have been eliminated have been tested.

[George Eustice]

The issue was looked at extensively during the randomised badger culling trials, and we know that in the high-risk area, where there is a strong prevalence of the disease, around a third of badgers have bovine TB. That has been demonstrated previously.

On the science, there is no example anywhere in the world of a country that has eradicated TB without also addressing the reservoir of the disease in the wildlife population. TB was first isolated in badgers as long ago as 1971. In 1974, a trial was conducted to remove badgers from a severely infected farm, with the result that there was no breakdown on that farm for five years. Between 1975 and 1978, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food funded extensive work and demonstrated conclusively that there is transmission and a link between badgers and cattle. Subsequent work in Ireland reaffirmed that finding.

The Krebs review observed that, between 1975 and 1979, TB incidence in the south-west fell from 1.65% to 0.4% after the cull—a 75% reduction. Subsequently, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, more extensive work was done in three exercises. One was in Thornbury, where the TB incidence fell from 5.6% in the 10 years before culling to 0.45% in the 15 years after, which was a reduction of 90%. In Steeple Leaze, there were no breakdowns for seven years after the badgers were cleared. In Hartland, the incidence dropped from 15% in 1984 to just 4% in 1985—a reduction of more than two thirds. I have pointed out the historical data, as I did in the previous debate, because it is often tempting for this House to feel that it is considering issues for the first time, but the challenge of fighting TB is not new and a great deal was learnt during the 1970s and ’80s.