Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made on vaccinating badgers to tackle the spread of bovine tuberculosis.

We have undertaken government-funded badger vaccination in several areas where four-year intensive badger culling has ended and are continuing to bolster our capability to deploy even more badger vaccination in post-cull areas from this year.

Defra has provided financial support for a 5-year project in East Sussex to support delivery of vaccination over 250 squared kilometres. The project is in its third year and provides a template for future large-scale badger vaccination approaches. Cage-trapping and vaccination training courses continue to be streamlined to make them less time-consuming and more accessible, with further funding to develop an e-learning platform this year. In June 2022, we launched a new simplified licence for vaccinating badgers, significantly reducing the administrative burden for those who are trained to undertake this activity.

We have also applied a new subsidy to the BadgerBCG vaccine. This cuts the cost of the vaccine by almost 50%, making it more accessible to vaccination groups. This, and other initiatives will make it easier and should encourage more farmers, landowners, and other groups to get involved in badger vaccination.