House of Commons Hansard Debates for 13 Jul 1995

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We shall continue to argue a responsible approach based upon social need and a system which we hope will reward those who take up the opportunity that it offers while protecting families, children and the vulnerable.

A number of detailed plans have already been unveiled on welfare into work, and more will follow. The argument is still to unwind, but the general approach set out by myself, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and others is right. The application will be different from that which is emerging in Government policy. However, we all believe that that is a matter for the electorate to settle, and on that basis I watch future developments with some confidence. 6.56 pm

The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Peter Lilley): This has been an interesting debate and the standard of speeches, notably--as one would expect--from members of the Select Committee, has been high. Speeches have been made by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), the Chairman of the Committee, by the hon. Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Wicks) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Shaw).

There have been some nostalgic speeches from old Labour in the shape of the hon. Members for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn). There was the customary elegant speech from the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar). With his characteristic courtesy, he curtailed his remarks so that I would have time to reply. I am grateful to him and the least I can do is respond to his specific question about localisation and the reports in the newspapers.

The hon. Gentleman expressed the belief that, when something appears in the newspapers, it might automatically have some foundation. I can assure him that that has not been my experience. I do not know the origin of the story, but the hon. Gentleman is correct: when I talk about the proposition that, whenever we make a change, we should see whether there is any scope for localisation of the delivery and handling of the benefit, I am not thinking in regional terms or of differences in regional rates. The regional variations in living costs to which the article referred represent mainly the difference in housing costs. The system already reflects that difference through the fact that housing benefit is related to the level of rents in each area.

I am looking much more to the type of changes that we have introduced on a large scale, through community care, and on a smaller scale, through the changes that I have announced in housing benefit that give greater discretion to local authorities in the handling of that benefit from January next year.

I particularly welcome the Committee's report on the review of social security expenditure. That report and much of today's debate show how dramatically views on the reform of social security have changed since I called for a national debate in my Mais lecture two years ago. At that time, there was a widespread view that all that our system required was a removal of any restraints on higher spending. In his report "The Future of Welfare--A guide to the Debate", the Labour academic John Hills blithely suggested that there would be nothing wrong, in the long

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term, with spending an additional 5 per cent. of gross domestic product on social security. By contrast, in this report, a Labour-chaired Select Committee now accepts that the

"growth of Social Security spending is a cause for concern." I recognise that the more realistic position taken by the Committee owes a lot to the hon. Member for Birkenhead, who is almost the only Labour Member who is prepared to face the facts. The very fertility of his ideas should shame his Front-Bench colleagues out of their reluctance to come up with some new policy ideas. To be fair, there were some hints from the hon. Member for Garscadden that they would be more forthcoming in future. I welcome that.

My medium-term objective when I announced the review of social security spending was not to cut spending, but to stop it outstripping the nation's ability to pay. As I never tire of pointing out, on average, just financing social security costs every working person almost £15 every working day. The cost was set to grow faster than gross domestic product, as it had been doing. Reform obviously takes time. As the hon. Member for Birkenhead said in his recent book:

"changing the social security budget can be compared to navigating a great oil tanker . . . once a decision is taken it is a full three miles before any further impact can be made on the direction of the ship."

The hon. Gentleman granted himself a rather generous 20-year horizon for his programme for reform of the welfare state. Reform takes time because most change requires legislation. If, as I usually prefer, changes affect only new claimants, their impact takes time to build up. Nevertheless, the changes that have already been announced should reduce the growth of spending by £4 billion a year by the end of the century and by more than three times as much in the longer term. As it happens, growth in social security spending in real terms during my first three years--which the hon. Member for Birkenhead suggested marked a period of failure--has been less than the underlying rate of 3.3 per cent. a year, although I accept that that is as much to do with the economic recovery as to do with the initial impact of my reforms, which will take a considerable time to build up.

The real measure of success against which I wish to be judged will be the reduction in the underlying rate of growth in social security. The measures that I have announced should cut the rate from 3.3 per cent. a year faster than inflation to just 1.3 per cent. a year over the next three years, settling at about 2 per cent. thereafter. I do not pretend that that is necessarily enough, but it does mean that the share of GDP taken by social security, which has almost trebled since the war, should decline gently henceforth.

If Opposition Members complain that spending is still growing too rapidly, they should remember that the Labour party has opposed almost every reform that I have introduced. In effect, the Opposition are telling taxpayers that they want them to cough up the best part of £4 billion a year extra during the next Parliament and £14 billion a year extra in the long term--and that is before implementing any of their, I regret to say, still profligate spending plans.

The Select Committee was right to recognise that the growth of social security spending is a matter of concern not just because of the tax burden it imposes on people, but because it reflects a growth in welfare dependency. I

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hope that all of us would prefer people not to be dependent on benefit, but to be self-sufficient. The report illustrates the extent of dependency with the claim, which I am happy to say is mistaken, that half of all households contain someone on income- related benefits. That is incorrect. Some 27 per cent. of all benefit units contain someone on income-related benefits and about 30 per cent. of households do. That is still too high, but it is well short of the 50 per cent. suggested in the report.

Mr. Frank Field: The right hon. Gentleman should convey that view to the Prime Minister, who used those figures in an article in The Daily Telegraph the day before his re-election as party leader.

Mr. Lilley: I have a feeling that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was generously quoting the hon. Gentleman, thinking that his figure had been audited. I am happy to put the record straight. I want to take this opportunity to address a specific issue raised by the hon. Member for Birkenhead in his recent book, which was mentioned in the Select Committee report. The book "Making Welfare Work" is, like everything the hon. Gentleman writes, full of erudition, fascinating insight and interesting analysis and I agree with much of it, but in the final section he makes a number of assertions, as he did in his speech today, about the role of means-tested and contributory benefits which I venture to suggest are mistaken.

The hon. Gentleman states that the Government have pursued a policy of increasing the number of people on means-tested benefits at the expense of contributory benefits. I do not think that that was ever a deliberate policy of this Government--or, indeed, of previous Governments of most complexions, as there has been an increase in the number of people on means -tested benefits over a long period. The hon. Gentleman knows that that growth primarily reflects three things--first, the growth in lone parents, which is the largest single cause of the increase, and he does not suggest that that could be replaced by contributory benefits; secondly, the impact of the earnings dispersion affecting lower-skilled workers, a subject with which I have detained the House frequently and which I spelt out at some length in my Ulster lecture; and, thirdly, the transfer of support for housing from bricks and mortar to housing benefit, which is a means-tested benefit.

I have certainly not had a preference for extending means testing as an end in itself. In my Mais lecture I criticised those "proponents of means tested benefits who emphasise the fiscal savings but tend to ignore the disincentives on claimants." I emphasised that other methods of targeting benefits were usually preferable to means testing. As a result, most of the reforms that I have made have involved such methods--changing or tightening up on conditions of entitlement other than people's financial means and making benefits, where appropriate, more conditional.

For example, my main changes involve equalising the age of entitlement to state pensions for men and women and ensuring that incapacity benefit goes to those genuinely incapable of work. Both remain contributory benefits. Only a tiny fraction of the £14 billion of savings announced so far-- some £200 to £300 million--arises from the one reduction in the contributory element, that

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which relates to the jobseeker's allowance. That will be offset by other measures that will reduce reliance on means- tested benefits. I have explicitly ruled out means testing the state pension because that would penalise and discourage people who make additional provision for retirement. The contributory basic pension provides a platform on which people can--and, I am happy to say, increasingly do--build extra pension provision. Indeed, as a result of that, the proportion of pensioners who rely on income support has fallen since income support was introduced. That is an area in which there has been less reliance on a means-tested benefit.

The hon. Member for Birkenhead is not being remotely realistic when he suggests that contributory benefits could replace means-tested benefits for everyone who is out of work, thereby--as he implied--restoring incentives, eliminating fraud and saving money. In the first place, any form of unemployment benefit, whether contributory or not, must be means tested against earnings. Both unemployment benefit and income support are withdrawn if people earn more than a certain amount. Consequently, both contributory and non-contributory benefits for people who are out of work are equally likely to act as a disincentive to work and to create opportunity for fraud through working without declaring the work.

The suggestion that replacing income support and housing benefit by contributory benefits could save money is simply untenable. All of us who look realistically at social security know that there is a great prize to be gained if the budget can be curbed, but we also know that there is a political cost to be borne from those who have to forgo the money that we save.

We would all love to find a philosopher's stone that enabled us to spend less without creating losers. The hon. Member for Birkenhead seems to think that replacing means-tested benefits with contributory benefits is the stone. If it was, I should have no hesitation in stealing it from him, but, alas, there is no such thing in the sphere of social security as a philosopher's stone that would enable us to curb benefits without creating some losers.

A switch from means-tested to contributory benefits could save money only if some people who currently get means-tested benefits did not get the contributory benefit that replaced it. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not seriously propose to let people who have not been able to pay contributions starve or go without benefit. He plans to pay their contributions for them out of taxation so that they would still get benefits. It would be much like the present system, but with the names changed.

I will believe that the hon. Gentleman's system offers me the prospect of savings when he tells me who will be the losers from it. He is more forthcoming about who will be the winners. He implies that people who are not in work but excluded from benefit because they have a working spouse or sufficient savings to support themselves will be entitled to benefit. The cost of that would be very considerable indeed.

I hope that we can all agree that the best way to save money, and the way in which we are all obliged to seek to save money in the social security system, is by curbing fraud and abuse. I am glad that all hon. Members who have mentioned the subject have supported that view. The attack on fraud has always been a priority for me, and the Department has been increasingly successful in detecting

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and stopping it. The figures that I announced this week show that some £717 million of fraud was detected- -well over £60 million ahead of the target that we set ourselves.

A couple of hon. Members suggested that we are not being sufficiently vigorous on housing benefit fraud; it is expected that an additional £170 million--double the savings last year--will be saved in the current year. That is in addition to the savings made by the Benefits Agency and is the result of the changes that we have introduced to incentivise local authorities to set about combating fraud in their areas. Many of them simply were not doing so before. In future, they will be penalised if they do not. They will be helped by the computer system that we have provided, initially for the London boroughs but which will possibly be extended nationwide, if it works, to help combat cross-border housing benefit fraud. However, prevention is better than cure. We have been developing a strategy that is a quantum leap from a system based on detecting fraud that has already happened to one that prevents and deters it. In the past, we have been hamstrung by our ignorance of how much fraud there was and what sorts of fraud were going on. Unfortunately, those who defraud the system do not report to us. No one reports fraud as people report other crimes.

No other country has, up to now, found a means of measuring the amount of fraud. I have been wrestling with the problem since I came to the Department. During the past year or so, we have been carrying out pilot studies. We have tried to involve outside research bodies. We have finally developed a system of benefit reviews which, I believe, represents a breakthrough, nationally and internationally, in providing us with a measure of fraud and a baseline against which we will be able to measure future success in preventing it. That, in turn, has enabled us to spell out our strategy and the three main methods that we are proposing in a programme of 20 different projects, details of which I have put in the Library.

First is the benefit payments card, which is designed, first and foremost, to stop abuse of the payments order book system. It will also contribute to the elimination of identity fraud, but the savings on abuse of the order book system--the giro system--will provide substantial savings that, alone, are sufficient to justify the change we are making.

The second method is more home visits and checks on people to ensure that they do not make a fraudulent or false claim initially and do not subsequently become false claimants through failure to report a change in circumstances which renders the original claim invalid. The third string to our bow is more data matching and the use of information technology so that we can identify false claims and focus our effort on areas where false claiming is greatest.

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The programme that I have announced has generated a very positive response nationwide, as have the changes and reforms that I have introduced in the welfare state as a whole. Indeed, I found myself the recipient of rather unfamiliar praise from newspapers such as the Independent and the Evening Standard . That seems to have provoked the Leader of the Opposition into a speedy attempt to sing our song in another outbreak of karaoke conservatism, as I have labelled it in the past.

Hon. Members will recall that, last October, the Commission on Social Justice published its report. Most commentators rightly dismissed it as 400 pages of uncosted waffle, but the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) begged to differ. After all, it had been commissioned by his predecessor and was the product of almost three years work by 16 prominent Labour sympathisers. He described the report as

"a remarkable piece of work . . . undoubtedly the most significant and comprehensive analysis of the welfare state since Beveridge . . . The Labour party",

he pledged,

"will now discuss the proposals themselves."

Yesterday, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield gave another speech on welfare. He did not mention the commission or its proposals. Instead of 400 pages of uncosted waffled, it contained only 400 words of--hon. Members have guessed it--uncosted waffle.

The right hon. Gentleman went on to indulge in imitation--which, I am told, is the sincerest form of flattery--of my approach to the welfare problem. He first followed me by setting out six principles. He then tried to do so by aping Tory language, but Labour's approach has only three principles. The first is to mimic Tory rhetoric. The second is to oppose any policies that are actually consistent with that rhetoric, and the third is to avoid any commitment to specific policies of its own. In short, Labour's only consistent welfare policy is hypocrisy.

As the hon. Member for Birkenhead said, reform of the welfare state is becoming the central issue of the politics of our time. It is the key problem facing all Governments worldwide. It will be a key issue in the forthcoming general election, as it was in the major election upset in the United States. This debate has shown that we are winning the welfare debate. I believe that that bodes well for my party and for the country.

7.18 pm

Mr. Frank Field: The debate has shown, at least to me--and this is a surprising finding--how limited is the Secretary of State's view of the impact of social security changes on people's character. While he may worry about new Labour, we clearly have no need to worry about old Toryism. I think that we will continue this debate on Monday. Question deferred, pursuant to paragraph (4) of Standing Order No. 52 (Consideration of Estimates).

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Class III, Vote 3

Animal Diseases (Prevention and Control)

[ Relevant documents: Fifth Report from the Agriculture Committee of Session 1993-94, Health Controls on the Importation of Live Animals (House of Commons Paper No. 347-I), the Government's reply thereto, Cm. 2735 and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Intervention Board Departmental Report 1995: The Government's Expenditure Plans 1995-96 to 1997-98, (Cm. 2803). ]

Motion made, and Question proposed.

That a further sum, not exceeding £263,921,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to defray the charges that will come in course of payment during the year ending on 31st March 1996 for cash limited and demand led operational expenditure by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to: promote food safety, take action against diseases with implications for human health, safeguard essential supplies in an emergency, and promote action to alleviate flooding and coastal erosion; to encourage action to reduce water and other pollution and by other measures to safeguard the aquatic environment including its fauna and flora, to improve the attractiveness and bio-diversity of the rural environment and protect the rural economy; implement MAFF's CAP obligations efficiently and seek a more economically rational CAP while avoiding discrimination against UK businesses (including expenditure on existing CAP measures and schemes), to create the conditions in which efficient and sustainable agriculture, fishing and food industries can flourish, take action against animal and plant diseases and pests, encourage high animal welfare standards; provide specialist support services and allocate resources where they are most needed; provide for some inter-agency payments and undertake research and development.--[ Mrs. Browning. ]

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): With this, it will be convenient to discuss vote 4. I should inform the House that Madam Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the leader of the Liberal Democratic party.

7.19 pm

Sir Jerry Wiggin (Weston-super-Mare): I am delighted to have this opportunity to debate issues raised by the Agriculture Committee's inquiry into health controls on the importation of live animals. I note that Madam Speaker has selected the amendment in the name of the Liberal Democrats, and I understand that the subject that they wish to raise is about the health of animals within the United Kingdom. I shall not, therefore, go down that road but shall simply deal with our report. I do not wish to minimise the importance of the other subject, which relates to tuberculosis in badgers. As my Committee will investigate the whole of the dairy industry, I have no doubt that we shall receive evidence from the west country on that emotive but important subject during the autumn when we take evidence. When we set out to do this inquiry, we decided to concentrate on two separate subjects: first, the movement of live animals, particularly farm livestock, into the UK under the new single European market rules; and, secondly--the importance of this area became apparent to us--the rules concerning rabies, quarantine and the importation of pets, particularly dogs and cats. We were fortunate to be advised by Mr. Howard Rees, formerly chief veterinary officer with the Ministry of Agriculture,

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Fisheries and Food, and the late Mr. Tony Crowley, formerly head of the MAFF rabies section, who had advised the channel tunnel company on rabies prevention. We were shocked to learn that, sadly, he had died shortly after our report was published.

Those who simply believe everything that they read in newspapers may think that our report was only about rabies. It was not. However, the interest in that matter is fully understandable so I shall deal with our findings on rabies and quarantine first. Before doing so, I quote the Government's response to our report as it relates to farm livestock. It says:

"The Committee's investigation of this subject, including those incidents in 1993 linked to imported animals, is a valuable service to the public as it puts the disease threat firmly into perspective and refutes the more extreme and alarming predictions about imported disease made by some in the agriculture industry and the veterinary profession."

We approached the question of rabies in a similar fashion. We were open- minded, sought perspective and appropriate solutions, listened and made recommendations. I may not speak for the whole Committee, but it would not be unfair if I said that at the outset the majority of us felt that quarantine was absolutely necessary. The fact that we then unanimously agreed to move away from quarantine shows that we took evidence with great care. The result is perhaps all the more remarkable for the fact that our initial prejudices were moved. The deep-seated concern--indeed, hatred, worry and fear--about rabies is well merited. Rabies is an extremely unpleasant disease. If no treatment is given, it results in a lengthy, horrible and painful death. Furthermore, the antidote to a dog bite in a country where dog rabies is endemic consisted of a series--more than 30--of extremely unpleasant injections straight into the intestine. So not only was it a frightening disease but the treatment was none too good, either. MAFF has been spending some £750,000 a year on advertising the horrors of rabies in all ports, airports and some railway stations. It has been issuing leaflets about the dangers of rabies and a great culture of fear of the disease has been generated.

Let us examine the position as regards human beings. There are two sorts of rabies: fox rabies, which is endemic in Europe; and dog rabies, which is endemic in Africa, India, South America and elsewhere in the world. I have never met a Frenchman or German who worries about getting rabies. Our European neighbours do not regard the fact that some wildlife has rabies as a particularly frightening factor.

Moreover, science for human beings as well as for animals has moved on. I understand that, if one is bitten by a rabid dog in India today, provided that one receives the antidote within two to three days, one would have no problem in surviving. The antidote is now a series of injections--five or six--rather like tetanus, so it is not as frightening as it was. The official advice from doctors if one is travelling in those countries is that, unless one expects to be more than a week away from medical attention, there is no need to be vaccinated against rabies. So we must put the whole matter in context. The world has moved on, and medical science has changed. Nothing that the Select Committee has recommended or would want to do would increase the chance of rabies entering the United Kingdom. We emphasise that point at

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the beginning of our report and say that our recommendations would not endanger the desirable rabies-free status of these islands. I remind the House, however, that the Rabies (Importation of Dogs, Cats and Other Mammals) Order was passed in 1974 and is therefore more than 20 years old. As I said, science has moved on in the human and animal worlds and the current rules are now outdated and expensive. I shall say a word about animal welfare in a moment.

Our recommendations should provide protection at least equal to, and arguably better than, the present quarantine arrangements. We have recommended a belt-and-braces system whereby a pet cat or dog would be permanently identified by tattoo or implanted chip. It would be vaccinated and then tested to ensure that the vaccination had taken. In any event, we have recommended importation of cats and dogs only from Europe and countries where rabies is not endemic. The present system has two great weaknesses. The first is cost. Various figures have been given to us, but it seems unlikely that six months' quarantine for a dog would cost less than £1,200 and it could be as much as £1,800 or £2,000. For a cat it would be less--£800 or £900. None the less, it means six months' confinement. We all know that smuggling goes on and I have some figures on that. However, the inducement now is to get over those expenses and there is a very positive financial advantage if one can smuggle an animal into the UK.

I shall now discuss animal welfare. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) is sitting behind me. He takes a strong interest in animal welfare matters. I would say to him and to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that to lock up a domestic pet in strange surroundings for six months, if not cruel, is highly stressful. The figures show that a proportion of cats and dogs do die in quarantine, and it is probably accepted that that is frequently a result of the stress induced by being parted from their owners.

We recommended that animals would be allowed into the United Kingdom without quarantine only in certain circumstances. The animals must enter from another European Union state or a country that is recognised as being rabies-free and which carries out appropriate policies to maintain its rabies-free status. They should be permanently identified by a unique number, which should be marked as a tattoo or contained in an electronic microchip. They should have spent at least six months continuously in the approved country before becoming eligible to enter the United Kingdom. Thus, a dog that had come from India would have to pause elsewhere in the European Union for at least six months if it were to be eligible for the scheme, and there are very few cases of dogs carrying rabies for six months. The animals would have to have been vaccinated with an approved inactivated rabies vaccine at the age of three months or older. About four months after vaccination, a blood test would have to be carried out by an approved laboratory to determine whether the animal is immune from rabies. The four months between vaccination and blood testing would act as a pseudo -quarantine period.

After being blood tested, animals can enter the UK within 12 months of the initial vaccination. If they travel frequently between the United Kingdom and approved countries, they must receive annual booster vaccinations

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and travel within one month of such vaccinations being administered, and then only subject to a satisfactory blood test.

The pet owner would have to obtain an import licence from MAFF, specifying the port and time of entry into the UK, and the divisional veterinary officer responsible for the point of destination would have to be informed. Finally, the animal would have to be accompanied by a passport giving a record of its vaccinations and its health certification. That is a pretty demanding and onerous

requirement--certainly more than we require of any human being that I know. If there was any failure to comply with such requirements, the animal would have to go into quarantine or be re-exported. We recommended that, at this stage, quarantine should be required in all other circumstances.

What are the risks? What are the real risks of a rabid dog entering the country? They are very slight. Since 1972, 100,000 dogs and 50, 000 cats have been through the UK quarantine system, of which only two developed rabies--one dog from the United States and one dog from Zambia, countries which, under our proposals, would continue to be subject to quarantine.

It is worth bearing in mind the fact that, as I said earlier, the rabies in Europe--the strain adapted to foxes--is not nearly as threatening to human beings as dog-adapted "street" rabies in other parts of the world. Dogs and cats can contract fox-mediated rabies, but it would seem that they are unable to pass it on.

We have recommended a system similar to that introduced in Sweden. Sweden has been rabies-free since 1886. It has two borders, one with Norway and one with Finland, which are open borders. It has a high reputation for animal health. It wishes to remain rabies-free, yet it has adopted that system. Even more remarkable, when we went on our visit to Denmark, we found there a country with a 50 km open border with Germany, where there is endemic rabies, and not far away--and from time to time a rabid fox will cross into Denmark and cause trouble.

The Danes have gone much further than the Swedes; they have allowed importation of dogs from any country in the world, with a passport, a certificate of vaccinations but no double test. I doubt whether any country in the world relies more for its living on a clean health chit than the Danes do. Their main livelihood lies in dairy and pig products, and without a high reputation for health standards, Denmark would find it extremely difficult to make its living exporting, as it does, worldwide.

In addition, the prevalence of rabies in Europe is decreasing rapidly. The World Health Organisation report shows that, between 1989 and 1994, the annual number of cases of rabies in European Union member states fell from a peak of 8,509 to 1,582, and it continues to fall. That is entirely due to the European Union's oral vaccination programme, using inoculated baits for foxes. We were privileged to have a briefing on that matter. The original bait was chicken heads. The foxes thought that that was quite clever and used to collect them up, 15 or 20 at a time, so it was not the most economical method of vaccination. A new and more luscious bait was therefore devised which apparently produces in excess of 80 per cent. successfully vaccinated foxes. Once the amount of rabies in a fox population has dropped below a certain level, there are not enough host animals to sustain it, so that programme is proving extremely successful. I should

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say that it was never our intention that we should import foxes or, for that matter, any other wildlife from the European Union. The Standing Veterinary Committee in Brussels calculated that, if 1,000 unvaccinated dogs per year were picked randomly from the population and imported into the United Kingdom, it might be expected that a dog incubating rabies would be imported once every 1,250 years. If 5,000 dogs were imported randomly each year from Germany, which is the European Union country with the greatest incidence of rabies, only one animal every 31 years would be expected to be incubating rabies. With vaccination and blood testing, that already remote risk would be reduced even further.

We should consider what motive might drive someone to seek to bring in a rabid dog. Every pet owner wants their pet to be healthy. They spend money on inoculations; they will take it to the vet; they want it as their companion. If some malicious person wishes to introduce rabies into the country, they could have done so a long time ago illegally anyhow, so what are we defending against? The answer must be the cost and welfare considerations.

I have explained that the vaccine technology has changed since the Waterhouse report. The Waterhouse committee was set up after a case about 20 years ago. The modern vaccines were available in the late 60s and early 70s and even then quarantine was recommended, but nowadays there is a substantial smuggling problem. Like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security, who earlier said how difficult it was to find or quantify cases of social security fraud, I fear that we have no way of quantifying smuggling, but it is worth bearing in mind that, between 1985 and 1993, HM Customs and Excise dealt with 492 cases of illegal entry involving dogs and 273 involving cats--and I suggest that that is very much the tip of the iceberg. One does not have to go very far to find examples. Among our forces in Germany, one can hear a good deal of talk about how they might get over some of the little problems, such as the six months of quarantine and the cost involved.

We see the present system as a ludicrous and unnecessary waste of money. We believe that it is bad for animal welfare and distressing for the owners, and that it restricts freedom of movement. I read in an evening paper today that the Battersea dogs home spends £40,000 on advertisements about the problems associated with people turning their pets out at the beginning of their holidays, leaving them on the streets and abandoning them. Pets could go with their owners to Spain, Italy, France or wherever these people go. Much more importantly, the French, the Italians and the Spanish could bring their dogs here. I understand, although it is not mentioned in our report, that the barrier to bringing pets here is a serious inhibition to tourism. If we had the arrangements that we have in mind, people could bring their pets with them and it would be good for business.

The Government's response was that they were quite happy about our recommendations on farm livestock, presumably because they suited the Government's purposes. We remain extremely surprised, however, at the negative response to our recommendations on rabies. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary in her place and I am sure that she will wind up with encouraging words.

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She will recall that on many occasions we have argued strongly that Ministers, when taking advice on technical matters from their scientists, should do what their scientists tell them. We do not understand why the scientific advice that Ministers are being given on this subject is so at variance with the experience of countries such as Sweden and Denmark. I shall therefore press my hon. Friend to make her case clearly.

This week, the British Medical Association sounded off on the subject of rabies. There followed a series of statements in the association's report, mostly restricted to the basic principle that if we have not had rabies we should not change anything because the system has worked. Of course it has worked. We are simply saying that there is a better way to achieve the same objective. There is quite a piece in the BMA recommendations about foxes--I was a bit mystified by the BMA's apparent expertise on foxes--and the British Veterinary Association took a similar view. It just so happens that Mr. De Vile, who is president of the BVA, served on the BMA committee as well. Presumably his prejudices have been carried from one organisation to the other.

Sir Roger Moate (Faversham): I think that I heard my hon. Friend say a moment ago that he recommended that the Government should accept scientific advice. Does my hon. Friend not cast the BMA and the British Veterinary Association as sources of good scientific advice? Why does he reject their advice?

Sir Jerry Wiggin: I certainly do not. However, if my hon. Friend studied the BMA report, he would find that there is nothing at all scientific about it. It is simply a statement of prejudicial facts, written on BMA paper. It is very irresponsible of such an organisation to produce statements based on prejudice and not on fact.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington): Is it not the case that, if the hon. Member for Faversham (Sir R. Moate) had been on the Committee six months previously, he would agree with the hon. Gentleman today? He would have changed his mind too.

Sir Jerry Wiggin: I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham (Sir R. Moate) has to say in a few moments. When the Community passed the Balai directive, the United Kingdom found itself in a difficult position. Here was a directive which said that, if people complied with a series of precautions not dissimilar to those that we have suggested--although somewhat more stringent, I admit--so-called traded dogs and cats could come in and out of the United Kingdom without quarantine. In theory at least, that system has been working for a few months.

The conditions are so stringent that, I understand, the few dogs and cats to have tried it have mostly failed the tests. However, the fact is that the Government, advised by their scientists, are prepared to allow traded dogs and cats to come in and out, but are not prepared to allow this to be the case with pets. What is the difference? What is the difference in risk? Surely the Government are right to agree to the principle. In that case, it is quite illogical not to agree to its extension.

The international panel of experts on animal diseases--the Office Internationale des Epizooties--sees a system of vaccination and blood testing as a perfectly viable alternative to quarantine for rabies. Even the BMA, about

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which I was not very polite just now, suggests only that quarantine should remain until additional requirements can be fulfilled. My Committee feels most strongly that the UK should move towards a more rational and appropriate means of protecting our rabies-free status. I am delighted to see my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on the Front Bench, and I welcome him to his new position. We look forward to having him in front of our Committee in due course. I hope that he has been listening with an open mind to this debate and that he will, in due course, study our report with care.

We are having to wait until other countries, such as Norway, Sweden and Denmark, have satisfied us that all their precautions work perfectly well. For a country of our size, that is a great pity. In a debate in the other place on 15 March, Earl Howe--then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food--hinted that with effective enforcement, alternative systems could provide the same level of assurance as quarantine. That would be a welcome step forward in Government policy since the reply to our report was published. Incidentally, during that debate, of the nine Lords and Ladies who spoke, all except the Minister were in favour of our report and against quarantine.

To deal briefly with the subject of farm livestock, we found that there was considerable feeling about various problems which had arisen, especially in relation to warble fly. Imported animals had clearly been given fraudulent certificates or had simply not been properly inspected before being imported. We had a look to see whether the new arrangements, under the single market, were satisfactory. We considered foot and mouth disease, brucellosis, Newcastle disease, Aujeszky's disease and many others which cause farmers a great deal of concern.

Diseases in animals are detrimental to the animals themselves, to good husbandry and to the wealth of farmers. Disease threatens livelihoods and the survival of businesses. Some diseases are transmissible to humans, putting the health of farmers, farm workers and their families at risk. We in the United Kingdom have never taken lightly the diseases of farm animals, and nor should we. Our island status has allowed eradication of the worst livestock diseases and has prevented others from becoming established.

Our high animal health status has been achieved at great cost and we should not allow the Community's rules, or anybody else's, to reduce that status. Between 1983 and 1990, £38 million was spent on eradicating Aujeszky's disease, of which pig producers contributed £27 million. Indeed, I remember replying to an Adjournment debate on that subject and reminding farmers that, although we were happy for Aujeszky's disease to be eliminated, we did not see the Government contributing too much to that effort. As I have said, the farmers contributed most of the money and there has been a very successful campaign which must not be damaged.

We fully understand that the single market caused the farming community some concern. The new system of veterinary checks is very different, and there was considerable concern, especially in the case of cattle, that it might have been at fault. The Committee did not find that to have been the case, but we recognised that things had changed.

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Under the previous system, importers applied for an import licence from MAFF and the animals were then certified by the vet in the country of origin. The certificate was then checked on arrival at the point of entry in the United Kingdom and the animals were held for a further 21 days as a precaution, particularly against foot and mouth disease.

Both those procedures have now changed. The European Union adopted an eradication scheme for foot and mouth and it is now free of that disease. The United Kingdom could no longer justify the 21-day holding period, and it was removed in 1992. As of January 1993, point of entry checks were abandoned in favour of spot checks and checking at the point of destination.

Under the new system, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is notified of animals to be imported, the points of entry and journey plans via a Europewide ANIMO computer network. It was not working particularly well when we went to see it in operation, but the officers were managing very well with faxes and they seemed to know when and where the animals were coming from, so we were satisfied that all was in order.

The removal of the point-of-entry holding period for foot and mouth disease eliminated an economic barrier to the import of lower value cattle as dairy replacements. Livestock has been bought recently from countries such as Holland and France because it is cheaper than the rather higher class stock that is available in the United Kingdom. Between 1990 and 1993, the number of cattle imported from France and the Netherlands increased from 90 and 150 to about 6,200 and 5,500 respectively. With that increase in numbers came a heightened disease risk, which we accepted.

The Committee considered that the majority of problems were caused by the increased volume of imports and by the type of animals imported-- particularly those originating from behind the former iron curtain. Some of the disease scares may not have been detected under the old system. That is particularly true of imported cattle infected with warble fly larvae and those vaccinated against foot and mouth disease, which contravenes the principles and rules of our scheme. We decided that there was no disease time bomb and we gave a general endorsement to the system, which was borne out by subsequent events. The Committee was concerned that some aspects of the system needed fine-tuning. We urged the Government to ensure that the European Union devoted sufficient funds to the Community veterinary fund to allow the disease control and eradication programmes to operate effectively. There is a substantial problem with swine fever in Germany, and the Germans are very keen to give up their slaughter policy and return to inoculation and vaccination. That would be completely wrong, and it would undermine the purpose of the central programme.

We urged the Government to make clear representations to the European Commission about the need to consider and rapidly approve the additional trade guarantees which allow member states to impose conditions on imports where special circumstances apply. Perhaps more importantly, we suggested that there should be a one-week compulsory holding period for imported animals at the point of destination to allow the state veterinary service to conduct appropriate checks on health certificates. That point of destination could well be the

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farm of ultimate destination, but the animals should be kept separate and examined. That is a common-sense precaution. We also suggested that the European Union should instigate measures to assure itself that the standards of veterinary training and of the state veterinary services in all member states are of a uniformly high standard; that adequate penalties are applied to any veterinary surgeon who is found to have falsely certified an animal; and that certification procedures throughout the European Union are harmonised, with documentation in the languages of both the importing and the exporting countries.

It was very difficult to get the vets and Ministry officials to admit to the Committee that the training schemes for vets in Greece were not adequate, but I can tell the House that they are not. The European Union was wrong not to take a more open approach to the issue. It investigated the veterinary services in all member states and reported its conclusions to the state concerned, but it did not make the report available elsewhere. It is crucial to the operation of a health scheme that those who certify animals are trained to an adequate standard. We have the highest standards of qualifications and experience in this country and we should insist upon the same standards in our EU partner countries.

The Committee was grateful that the Government were in broad agreement with its main recommendations, but it would be helpful if the Parliamentary Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mrs. Browning), could indicate what progress has been made in implementing the recommendations.

We suggested that stock imported into the United Kingdom should be marked with specially coloured tags and we found it difficult to understand why the Government failed to accept our recommendation. Their view was that the new animal identification system, which was introduced under directive 92/102/EEC and came into effect in the United Kingdom on 1 April 1995, would ensure that an animal's country of origin could be established. However, I am afraid that the Government have missed the point of the proposal. We wanted to ensure that an animal in a pen with a special coloured tag could be identified immediately as an imported animal. It should stand out as such, as occurs in other countries in the European Union. That was virtually the only recommendation in that part of the report with which the Government did not agree.

We welcome the fact that MAFF has relaunched the "Don't import disease" campaign. We hope that we set out the principle that those who buy stock abroad should ensure--if necessary at their own expense--that the stock is healthy before bringing it into the country. We would like to know more about the progress of Government efforts to persuade the EU to publish the full Bendixen/Dexter report on the quality and structure of veterinary services in member states, to which I have referred.

The Committee also dealt with problems with horses, birds and fish. Hon. Members will be interested to learn that yesterday MAFF appointed a new inspector of imported fish. While we welcome that move, there are many other problems to consider also. Caged birds continue to be smuggled into the country and the prices at which they are advertised for sale clearly show that the birds have not come through the normal importation

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