Bovine TB and Badger Control

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point. The annual testing that we glibly talk about poses an enormous burden on farmers and is a fraught event. Virtually the whole of the west of England is on annual testing, and he is absolutely right to fear for his farmers in Nottingham that the interval might be reduced, because putting a herd through the skin test is an horrendous experience. That is another good reason to get on top of the disease quickly, before it spreads into his area.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Given the figures we have heard from the Secretary of State, why did his Department’s impact assessment say that the cost of the cull outweighs the benefit to both farmers and taxpayers?

[Mr Paterson]

We should be concerned about the cost of not doing the cull. The sums involved in our proposals are very modest compared with the cost of carting off 26,000 healthy cattle, and the number will grow every year. We would be heading to a bill of £1 billion—how many times have I said that, Mr Speaker? The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but the problem is the result of the passive attitude of the Labour Government since 1997.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

Thought has been given to that. We had a drought summit last week, and I have said publicly that hosepipe bans are more likely this year because we have had our second dry winter. The important point, however, is local connectivity. That is the key. Water companies explained to us at the summit how they are connecting to their neighbours. It is important for the House to know that transporting water over a significant distance is prohibitively expensive. The idea of building a pipeline to transport water from the north-west, which pleasantly has it in abundance, to the south-east, which traditionally does not, might sound attractive, but it is prohibitively expensive. However, local connectivity produces, in essence, a virtual national grid.

Today, our reward for all that investment is world-class drinking water and a cleaner environment. Water supplies are also safer, better and more secure than ever before. Water and sewerage services also remain relatively inexpensive compared with other household bills, and are good value for money. The average bill stands at just over £1 a day. At the same time, water companies are investing £22 billion over the current five-year price round in mains replacement, flood resilience, river improvements and better water quality in 55 wetlands and bathing areas.

However, a minority of customers struggle to pay their water charges, either because they are on low incomes or because they live in areas where bills are higher than average. In fact, 23% of household customers across England and Wales spend more than 3% of their disposable income on water and sewerage charges. We now want to start tackling that problem. The Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill will allow us to provide support to keep bills down in the south-west and to reduce the risk of future infrastructure developments, such as the Thames tunnel super-sewer, raising bills disproportionately. Clause 1 creates a general power to enable the Government to make a payment to water companies for the purpose of reducing charges payable by customers. The only circumstances under which we currently envisage using that general power is in support of South West Water customers. We believe that the circumstances they face are exceptional.

Anna Walker’s review of charging for household water and sewerage services, which was commissioned under the previous Government, identified why households in the south-west face the highest water bills in the country. At privatisation, South West Water had the lowest regulatory asset base per property. Since then, the company has had to invest around £2 billion to raise the standard of its infrastructure to the same level as the rest of the country. With comparatively fewer customers, the cost of new investment per property has been higher there than anywhere else. The benefits of that investment include improved water quality, reduced leakage, cleaner beaches and better bathing water quality, as enjoyed by the south-west’s many visitors. However, the costs have been borne solely by South West Water customers, whose bills have risen as a result. I would like to pay tribute today to hon. Members past and present in all parts of the House who have devoted years to raising the profile of this historic unfairness on behalf of their constituents.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept that average water bills across the country are set to rise by almost 6% in April and that this Bill will do nothing to help the vast majority of people, who have seen their incomes cut or frozen? Why should water companies not have to tighten their belts like everybody else?

[Mrs Spelman]

I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that water companies are indeed tightening their belts like everybody else. The rise that he described is the one set out by the economic regulator Ofwat, as an indicator of the overall level of inflation, which has not a little to do with the economic mess that we inherited from the previous Administration. However, the important point for the hon. Gentleman is this. He and I share the use of Severn Trent Water’s services, and companies such as ours will be able to introduce a company social tariff, which would assist the most vulnerable in the water area where we reside. Indeed, it would be open to every company to do so, and we have published a consultation about the company social tariff.

Dangerous Dogs

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Robinson]

I agree. They should have given much more positive support beforehand, but they could not take any action under the existing legislation. I will come back to that in a moment, but it is one of the principal things that needs to be addressed. As things stand, the case is for a civil action rather than criminal proceedings.

As I have said, this is not a party political issue. Indeed, the Prime Minister in a letter to the Communication Workers Union just before the election, when he was Leader of the Opposition, made it clear that he and the Conservative party were very much in favour of the action that I wish to recommend. He wrote:

“We support extending dangerous dogs law to cover all places including private property”.

That is a clear statement from the then Leader of the Opposition and now Prime Minister. I hope that the Government can find some impetus in the light of that support.

The more general statistics are interesting, but I will not detain hon. Members with them for too long. I have already mentioned that 6,000 postal workers are injured every year. Some 2,500 adults and 2,700 children are treated for injuries every year. In the past four years, six children and two adults have been killed. The attacks seem to come in spates. The past few years have seen a further spate of attacks in London that have been so bad that the Met has set up its own special dog unit in response.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

A constituent of mine, Mr Naylor, has asked me to raise this very point with my hon. Friend. The burden on the authorities and the taxpayers is growing daily because of the lack of control and responsibility exercised by owners. We need more control over the behaviour of owners, whether that be via an insurance policy—that idea has been floated in the past—or some other mechanism. We cannot have the general public picking up the bill for irresponsible dog owners.

[Mr Robinson]

Getting all dog owners to pay into an insurance fund relating to a small minority of dogs would tar everybody with the same brush. Over the centuries, dogs have been man’s greatest friend. They are appreciated in families such as mine and by children. That idea would also be grossly unfair at a time of extreme stringency for all families. It is a question of getting the owners to change their behaviour and become responsible. I regret to say that that is a more general problem throughout society at present.

In the case of Mrs Foskett, the owner refused to even have the dog looked at. He shunted it off to a friend. We do not know where it is yet, but it continues to be on private premises and to pose a danger, which is not good enough. He even refused to have the dog put under the temporary care of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals while it undertook training. That is, by any standards, irresponsible behaviour. I agree with my hon. Friend that part of the solution is to change that, but the application of criminal law—the greatest sanction the country can impose on any individual—would be a good step forward. Making the law apply to individual premises would begin the change of mindset that my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) are seeking.

Forestry (England)

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

Yes, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I thank him for his positive approach. There certainly is an opportunity to improve and enhance biodiversity. Non-governmental organisations such as the Woodland Trust have expressed a desire to increase the rate of restoring plantations on ancient woodland sites, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is keen to look at the restoration of heathlands. That is precisely the opportunity that this fresh approach affords.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I am not sure that it is ever wrong to terminate a failed policy, but given the sudden and abrupt end to the right hon. Lady’s plans, will she tell us how much public money has been wasted on this fiasco so far?

[Mrs Spelman]

The advantage of modern technology is that documents such as consultation documents are now largely viewable online, so in the figures that I gave about the number of responses that we had received and the number of hard copies dispatched, the hon. Gentleman will be able to see that the public expenditure is minimal.

Public Forest Estate (England)

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

That is indeed what has happened. [Interruption.] Yes, it has happened in the past. Why the shock? Some people cannot manage the timber or the forest. Forests cost money to run, so what the Forestry Commission does is advise the private sector on how best to manage them. I do not see any problem in that.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Surely what the thousands of people who are contacting MPs about this matter are concerned about is not the public sector buying out private forests, but private developers preventing their families from using them, as the Secretary of State says her children were able to use them. Those developers will build golf courses, luxury chalets and adventure parks on those forests. What is proposed is an excuse for private developers to deprive everyone else.

[Mary Creagh]

That is a good point, well made.

Sustainable Livestock Bill

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hart]

I do, and we sometimes forget that there is a strong social and economic ingredient in that definition; it has been missing so far in this debate. I am sure that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South will tell us that we have got that wrong, but I have seen nothing, in the hundreds of e-mails that we have had so far, to convince me that the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) has been properly addressed.

It is odd that the Bill focuses purely on livestock production. It seems obvious that if we are to talk about sustainable farming, we should not restrict ourselves purely to livestock. I am not convinced that the Bill has been properly considered in that respect. To pluck one example from the sky—no pun intended—let us consider poultry production. It seems odd that we have not properly examined the argument that intensive poultry production has less of an adverse carbon footprint than extensive poultry production. That has not been addressed, nor had consumer purchasing habits until the hon. Member for North Antrim raised them. There is a reference in the Bill to rural resilience. I do not know what that is, in the context of the Bill, but I do know that it is something with which I have been extremely familiar for 10 years. The resilience of the rural community is far from being a satisfactory excuse to increase the burden of regulation on the rural community. We cannot possibly simply depend on the resilience of our friends in the livestock industry for the purposes of the Bill.

We have not discussed in any great detail the Bill’s possible adverse effects on livestock producers. There was one reference, and only one, this morning to profit—a sort of dirty word, it seems, when we talk about sustainability. Unless there is profit in farming, and unless there is the sort of profit that enables farmers to invest long term as opposed to short term, then there will be no sustainability of any sort—no environmental sustainability, no social sustainability and no economic sustainability. There was a famous bumper sticker in America a year or so ago, which quite simply said, “No farmers, no food”.

We overlook the sustainability question and the long-term profitability of farming at our peril. While there has been a bit of a debate about intensive dairy units and what number of cows constitutes unacceptability, it seems interesting that, at long last, there are people out there who are prepared to consider investing several million pounds in UK agriculture. We have been striving for generations to persuade people to do that. The moment somebody comes up with a cost-effective way of doing so, we fall on them like a pack of wolves and try to stop them. We have got to be careful about being carried away by a scare story.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

As I listen to the hon. Gentleman, I wonder whether he is talking about the same Bill as I have been looking at. One of its central themes is to try to reduce dependency on imported meat and the risky practices that happen outside this country. I thought that that was a major defence of British farming and I am surprised that he does not support that.

[Simon Hart]

I think we are reading the same Bill, but it strikes me as odd that, of 1,000 livestock producers in my own part of west Wales, not a single one has written to me suggesting that I support this measure—not one.

[Steve McCabe]

The hon. Gentleman should have explained the Bill to them.

[Simon Hart]

Does the hon. Gentleman wish to intervene? I suspect that the sponsors of the Bill are responsible for explaining it to the people whom it affects. My earlier comments about having to be careful that legislation is not seen to over-regulate our farming industry, and thereby make it less competitive, must be taken seriously. In the hon. Gentleman’s favour, I would say that the aspirational elements of the measure are to be commended. It is fair to say that there are a number of Members across the House who might not be able to support the Bill today, but who support its aspirational elements, particularly local procurement for institutions such as the NHS and the Ministry of Defence. Indeed, I think the Conservative party manifesto said that we would pursue such a measure. Perhaps the Minister could expand on that. Equally, as we have heard, farmers have signed up enthusiastically to a number of environmental schemes, with the possible exception of Glastir in Wales, which has proved to be a bureaucratic nightmare, unlike its excellent predecessor.

To conclude, I want to deal with the question of balance. With all these things, it is difficult to strike the right balance between encouraging and generating economic sustainability in the farming industry which, in my opinion at any rate, leads to environmental sustainability, and the interests of those who wish to use the land for non-agricultural or non-food production purposes. It is difficult to strike the right balance between those who have a duty to produce good-quality, affordable food and those who maintain sensible, measured and worthy considerations. Perhaps my greatest concern is that the Bill does not seem to strike that balance. Although it rightly puts the focus of responsibility on the Secretary of State and on the politicians, it does not deal with that in a way that, if enshrined in law, would be fair, reasonable or balanced. It is good to see a measure that regulates us rather than farmers, but it is not quite in the right condition yet. For that reason, for anybody who has a real interest in striking that balance and in supporting the desire of rural communities to be economically, socially and environmentally sustainable and responsible, it is impossible, at least on this occasion, to support the measure.