Badger Cull

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

Twenty Members wish to speak, so I want to make some progress.

If it is not the most effective way of stopping TB, why is the cull going ahead? There is a very simple answer: it is a simple solution to a complex problem. The alternatives—stricter controls on cattle, faster and more TB testing, and more restrictions on cattle movements—promise yet more hardship and expense for hard-pressed farmers, and for the Government. The Government believe that vaccinating badgers—the approach taken by my colleagues in the Welsh Assembly Government—is too expensive, but owing to the high cost of policing the expected protests against the shoots, the expense of the cull now exceeds that of vaccination.

The UK’s top badger expert. Professor Rosie Woodroffe, has analysed the numbers. The Government estimate that badger vaccination would cost £2,250 and that the cull will cost £1,000 per square kilometre per year, so at first sight the cull is cheaper than vaccinating. However, when the Government’s estimate of the cost of policing the cull—£1,429 per square kilometre per year—is added, vaccination becomes the cheaper option. What a pity for farmers that DEFRA Ministers cancelled five of Labour’s six badger vaccination trials. Early results from the remaining site near Stroud show a 79% reduction in TB transmission to unvaccinated badger cubs, which means that they are almost certainly less infectious to cattle and to other badgers. Two or three years of vaccination would give badgers full immunity as the old badgers died off.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has given us a tremendous number of statistics, for which I am grateful. Will she now tell us how many farmers she has consulted, and will she give us a few statistics relating to the number of cattle that have already been destroyed?

[Mary Creagh]

I am in touch with farmers all the time, and I have had a meeting with the National Farmers Union. I have met farmers in Derbyshire and, indeed, all over the country.

The wildlife trusts, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the National Trust are all vaccinating badgers on their land. The Zoological Society of London and the wildlife trusts are pushing for volunteer involvement in badger vaccination, which would greatly reduce the costs. According to a report published today by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, for which I pay tribute to the Committee and its Chair, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh):

“The vaccine has been available for 3 years but the government should now produce a clear strategy for using it.”

That is a pretty damning indictment of what the Government have been doing for the past three years. As a result of Labour’s investment, we now have a cattle TB vaccine and a DIVA test to differentiate infected and vaccinated cows.

The Select Committee report is critical of the Government’s approach to cattle vaccination. It says that the debate on cattle vaccination is unclear, and that

“the government must accept a great deal of the blame for this”.

It says:

“The quality and accuracy of the information that Defra has put into the public domain has been insufficient and inadequate.”

The Government have delayed field trials of the cattle vaccine after misinterpreting EU rules, and they must now undertake those trials as soon as possible.

I must make it clear, however, that neither a vaccine for badgers nor a vaccine for cattle will work on its own. We need a coherent policy framework to tackle all aspects of this complex disease. The Independent Scientific Group has suggested several key principles that could form the basis of such a framework. Page 175 of its report states that

“the movement of TB infected cattle...poses the greatest threat to the disease security of uninfected farms and particularly so in the case of farms in low disease risk areas”.

According to the report, cattle movements

“are also likely to make a significant contribution to the local spread of infection in high risk areas.”

Page after page of the report lists different control strategies for low-risk and high-risk areas, some of which were implemented by the last Government and some of which are now being adopted by the present Government.

We welcome, for instance, the risk-based trading strategy on which the Government have embarked. There must be transparency in the marketplace to prevent farmers from unknowingly importing infected cows into their herds. However, the Government have not investigated, for example, the 40% of farms in high-risk areas in the south-west that have consistently avoided bovine TB. What are those farmers doing to protect their farms? How are they trading, what is their biosecurity, and what are their husbandry practices? Can they be replicated? What can we learn? Until we get to the bottom of that, we will not find a solution.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Mary Creagh

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I have in my hand a graph from Ofwat’s website about the annual average bill. The hon. Gentleman will see—I am not sure whether he can see this far, but I would be happy to pass it on to him—that when we passed the relevant water legislation in 2000 water bills dropped from an average of £325 a year to £285 a year. During that water review period, water bills were much lower. We took action across the country and that will also have affected the hon. Gentleman’s constituents in the south-west. He is also ignoring the fact that we asked Anna Walker to consider the issue of affordability. We have had the Walker report and only one aspect of its many recommendations is being debated today. The rest are being left, I am afraid, on the long finger.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

I paid water bills in the south-west for 13 years under the hon. Lady’s Government and I cannot remember my bills ever being stable or not increasing considerably. I do not know where she has got her figures from—perhaps she is looking at a national figure—but I can assure her that my bills have not reduced.

[Mary Creagh]

Does the hon. Lady think that the £50 a year for which the Bill provides until the end of the spending review period is adequate compensation for her constituents? It will undoubtedly be eaten up by the next two years-worth of price increases in cash terms.