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Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire): This is a serious situation that calls for statesmanship. Our Front-Bench spokesman asked a series of questions regarding further regulations, and not one of them was answered. The Minister blew his top and gave us a rant. Will he reconsider now? He will have notes on all those questions. Will he give the answers to which hon. Members and my constituents are entitled? Pits in my constituency have been destroyed by the Deputy Prime Minister and the farms are due to be destroyed, so we need serious answers to serious questions.
Mr. Hogg: In the last two weeks, I have had the pleasure of standing at this Dispatch Box on three occasions--I have made two statements and I opened a debate last Thursday. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has done likewise. We had the pleasure to appear before the Select Committee for Health and the Select Committee for Agriculture for about six hours, in the course of which we answered many questions. The hon. Gentleman should read the record more assiduously.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith (Wealden): My right hon. and learned Friend is well aware that Conservative Members have total confidence in the way in which he has conducted the negotiations, but is he also aware that there is a growing loss of confidence in the integrity of the European Union Ministers with whom he is trying to negotiate? If, despite Britain's efforts, the worldwide ban continues much longer, will my right hon. and learned Friend assure the House that he will consider its legality?
Mr. Hogg: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind remarks as to confidence. He is indeed right when he refers in those terms to the action of some overseas Ministers. It is important that we secure a lifting of the ban. The justifications for the imposition and the maintenance of the ban are not based on logic or science, and we are looking earnestly and urgently at the legality of what has been done.
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan): Will the specialist accountants, who are to tell us how much damage has been done in our constituencies, look specifically at the problems of the specialist beef producers, people who are not dairy farmers--to whom
culled cows are an additional aspect of income--but whose entire income is caught up in livestock; people who cannot market their cattle; people, perhaps on the hills, who cannot sell their cattle? Will instruments such as the hill livestock compensatory allowance, which exist to help such people, be used?
Has the Minister seen the report from TSB Scotland, which estimates that, even with a 25 per cent. decline in demand, there will be 6,000 job losses throughout the food chain in Scotland? Does he know that that report also said that the way forward was a specifically Scottish policy response to mitigate the scale of the disaster?
When the Minister was unable to persuade our customers to lift the ban, did he then, as the hon. Member for East Antrim (Mr. Beggs) recommended, go down the route of arguing that the quality assurance schemes in Scotland, Northern Ireland and elsewhere can be used to identify cattle as BSE-free? Can they get through the ban until such time as all cattle can be identified as BSE-clear? Every single producer in my constituency to whom I have spoken during the past two weeks has agreed that only by declaring them BSE-clear can cattle from Scotland or elsewhere be marketed with confidence in the future.
Mr. Hogg:
On the narrow question that the hon. Gentleman asked regarding accountants, their purpose is to look to the abattoirs. On the broader question of the prosperity of the Scottish beef industry, I am happy to say that, while I was in Luxembourg, I had the resolute assistance of my noble Friend Lord Lindsay, who has responsibility in this matter and who was acting on the express instructions of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, who is deeply concerned.
We are looking closely at what we can do to address the question of quality herds. There may well be steps that we can take in that direction, but most important of all is the need to restore market confidence and urgently to provide financial assistance. In that context, the package of intervention to which I have referred, and the action that I announced last week with regard to young bull calves, is of particular importance.
Rev. Ian Paisley (North Antrim):
Does the Minister agree that many British people look ill on criticisms offered by Ministers in Europe from countries where BSE is not even a notifiable disease? How do they know how much BSE is in their own country? Before they try to cast the mote out of the British beef industry's eye, they should cast the beam out of their own.
I thank the Minister for his tribute to the Ulster beef industry, but does he remember that our economic structure is built around that industry and that Northern Ireland is worse off now because of this crisis than any other part of the United Kingdom, because 70 per cent. of its beef is exported, and that trade has come to a standstill?
The present stocks in storage are worth £26 million. They are not moving at all. They cannot be guaranteed to be from cattle under 30 months old. Will those stocks come under the new rule, and will clearly defined help be given to the meat processing industry to get rid of those stocks, to empty the stores and to get the herds that are being fed and overfed on the farms to the abattoirs for slaughter and for export?
Mr. Hogg:
The hon. Gentleman has made a formidable case for the quality of British and Northern Irish beef. The quality of Northern Ireland beef is well known to hon. Members and is an essential part of the economy of the Province. It is for that reason that I was so pleased when I was in Luxembourg to have the assistance of my noble Friend Lady Denton.
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right when he makes the point that we in Britain have a range of controls relevant to the issue which are better than those that operate in most countries abroad, most particularly with regard to the disposal of specified bovine offal and the controls relating to feeding material for cattle. In those two respects, our regime is infinitely better than those on mainland Europe, where there must be many cases of undetected BSE. I am sceptical about the extremely low figures that are formally reported.
Mr. Alan W. Williams (Carmarthen):
Will the Secretary of State comment on the work of Dr. Harash Narang, the Newcastle virologist who, in the early 1990s, developed a test for BSE in live animals? Is that not the very kind of test that we now need, so that, instead of destroying whole herds, we can destroy only individual animals carrying the BSE virus?
Mr. Hogg:
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that a test for live animals would be a great advantage in the control of BSE, in terms of animal health and protecting the human food chain. Unfortunately, we do not have such a test at the moment and the best advice that I have is that there is no sensible prospect of our having one in the near future. I wish that that were otherwise, for the reasons set out by the hon. Gentleman, but the best advice that I have been given is that there no immediate prospect of one.
Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater):
Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that we recognise how hard he has battled in an extremely difficult situation, not made easier by the precipitate action of the European Commission, which has now made it difficult in the short term to remove the ban? My right hon. and learned Friend was right not to rush into some additional agreement on the slaughter policy, which could have been catastrophic for a large section of British agriculture and which would have been impossible to explain to Britain, or, perhaps, in the courts.
As we are not in the short term to have the assistance of our partners in Europe, the answers and the solutions to how to restore confidence now lie with ourselves. With the good sense of the British people, that will return, but it will take time. During that time, we must ensure that the fabric of the industry in all its aspects is, as far as possible, kept in being so that the restoration of confidence can be met by a continuing industry.
In that respect, my right hon. and learned Friend will have to deal over Easter with a raft of different questions from all sections of the industry, which, at the moment, have no answers to many difficult questions about which they are concerned. I am sorry to hear that he will be working over Easter, with his colleagues and the officials in the Department, but it is right that he should do so, in order to ensure that we have answers to as many questions as possible and that farmers, hauliers, slaughterhouses and everyone else involved have somewhere to go to get the answers that they need.
Mr. Hogg:
My right hon. Friend is right. I am sure that the precipitate action of our European partners has been
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