Badger Culls (Assessment)

Roger Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Caton. We should not, however, be having this debate, because the cull actually flies in the face of scientific opinion. Furthermore, having the cull takes no notice whatever of public opinion and blatantly disregards the will of the House. Only earlier this year, on 13 March, after a debate in the main Chamber, the majority in favour of abandoning the badger cull was 218, yet the Government are ploughing on regardless. They seem to have forgotten that they are elected by the British people, and not by the National Farmers Union.

[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman draws our attention to the vote in the House. I do not think that he was in Parliament at the time, but the House voted in favour of the Iraq war, which then proceeded, even though the people were against it.

[Chris Williamson]

That may be true, but on badger culls scientific, parliamentary and public opinion are at one, yet the Government are completely disregarding all those areas of clear opposition to their direction of travel on the issue.

As I was saying, the Government and all of us present are elected by the British people and not by any single issue group. Ministers seem to be behaving as if they were the parliamentary wing of the National Farmers Union. The NFU, however, does not even represent the vast majority of the farming industry. According to the NFU’s own website, it claims some 55,000 members—

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[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Well, that is the hon. Lady’s prejudiced view. She does not know yet whether it will work, because this is a four-year trial.

[Roger Williams]

The hon. Gentleman draws our attention to the public cost of this illness, but the cull that is now taking place is actually at the farmers’ expense. Does he agree that if there is no improvement or if, in fact, it makes things worse, farmers will not be willing to pay for something that acts against their interests?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am extremely grateful for that intervention. The hon. Gentleman must have been reading my notes, because I make that point very well. As he said, these two trials are entirely at the farmers’ expense, and there would be very little cost in policing them were it not for the activity of the protesters. If we set the cost of culling against the cost of what the farmers are providing, there is no doubt about it: this cull is very considerably cheaper than the cost of vaccination, which is not yet proved to be working either. I would be interested to know, when the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) speaks, whether she thinks vaccination is working in Wales.

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[Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)]

I declare an interest as a member of the National Farmers Union, the Farmers Union of Wales, and the Country Land and Business Association. Indeed, I still own and keep some cattle. A couple of weeks ago we had a clear TB test, but we have only seven cattle on the farm, now. We used to have well over 200, but because of the difficulty of managing them, as a result of TB, it was decided to get rid of them. We are not the only farm that has taken that decision.

Bovine TB is a very dangerous disease, for cattle and for badgers. It is a zoonotic disease, and it affects humans as well as animals. That, indeed, is why in the 1950s and 1960s there was a great move to rid the country’s cattle herd of bovine TB. Many human beings were infected by drinking raw milk. If the Government did not believe that TB was still a matter of public health, they would presumably wash their hands of it and let farmers get on with things on their own. However, it is still a very serious disease not only for animals but for human beings.

In about 1971 the infection link between badgers and cattle was established and in 2007 the report of the randomised badger culling trials—I am not quite sure whether Professor Krebs or Professor Bourne was in charge at the time—said that between 40% and 50% of cattle infections resulted from transmission by badgers. That was established in an entirely independent assessment. Little mention has been made of DEFRA’s 25-year TB eradication strategy and what it entails—[Interruption.]—I am sorry if I have not paid attention. It is being rolled out at the moment and includes more frequent—yearly—testing in areas where there is bovine TB, more movement restrictions, increased biosecurity, and vaccination at the edge of areas of spread of the disease.

The disease is out of control, spreading northward and eastward at an increasing rate. We must try to hold it back, to protect areas that are still free of bovine TB. The Government have decided to do that through a vaccination strategy, because they realise that culling in an edge area could lead to perturbation and increase the incidence of the disease. However, in areas where it is well established, and where other ways of controlling it have proved ineffective, they have introduced a pilot culling scheme. That approach is based on the randomised badger culling trials, which said that if culling were to be effective it would have to be on a bigger area with, if possible, hard boundaries to prevent perturbation. Perturbation in those areas, however, will not have much effect, because the disease is already well established. Probably up to 40% of the badgers are infected, so the movement of badgers will not make much difference there.

We cannot really assess the success of the culls at the moment, because we need at least four years’ information to find out. That is another thing that the randomised badger cull trial showed: results would not be obtained for about four years. However, it showed that even when those culls had stopped there were improvements in the cull areas and those surrounding them.

We must do more work on oral vaccines for badgers, vaccination for cattle, and the polymerase chain reaction that provides a possible test for infection in badgers. With that, we could trap and test badgers; the healthy ones could be vaccinated and released, and the infected ones disposed of, as vaccination could do them no good. There is a huge amount of work to be done, but I still believe that the pilot cull trials that the Government have instigated are an important part of that work in the heavily infected areas.