---

Mr. David Nicholson (Taunton): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way so early in his speech. He referred in his opening sentence to a bombshell being dropped on the industry in the House. He will recall the Minister's response to the statement by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) in the House last Thursday, when he said that the Secretary of State for

13 May 1996 : Column 689

Health had precipitated the crisis. In the Western Morning News of 27 March, Mr. Graham Watson, the Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament for Somerset and North Devon, said:

"If the Government had set out to cause mass panic they could not have gone about it in a more destructive fashion."

Are the hon. Gentleman, the hon. Member for Huddersfield and the Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament suggesting that our colleagues should have kept silent about the research which regrettably gave rise to this problem?

Mr. Tyler: Of course not. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will make an equally long speech if he catches the Chair's eye later, but as my speech develops he will get his answer.

The Government have accepted that the cattle disposal scheme is in their hands--it is their responsibility. In response to my private notice question last Tuesday, the Minister of State--he is in his place now--said:

"I am driving the scheme and I accept full responsibility for it."--[Official Report, 7 May 1996; Vol. 277, c. 20.]

So the buck stops with the Minister, not with Brussels. Indeed, he slapped down the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), who suggested later that the problem was the fault of "the Europeans". The Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Grantham(Mr. Hogg) and the Prime Minister all made similar statements later last week about the Government's responsibility--and they were right.

Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge): In the exchange to which the hon. Gentleman has been kind enough to refer, I made the point that the beef ban was completely illegal and in defiance of all scientific opinion. How, therefore, can the hon. Gentleman have the effrontery to stand up and say what he has said when his party--the self-confessed federast party--would give away our remaining veto?

Mr. Tyler: I am sorry that I gave way; that was a ludicrous waste of the House's time. My point was simply the same as the Minister's: the cattle disposal scheme does not depend on the export ban being removed or vice versa. It is a separate issue that must be dealt with properly by Ministers. I know that they will attempt to do that during this evening's debate.

Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy): I met the Minister on Thursday. The best that he could offer Wales was marrying up some renderers with one abattoir in north Wales and one in south Wales--for the whole country. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the scheme just is not a starter in Wales at this stage?

Mr. Tyler: I do agree--I shall come to that very issue. I return to my point that Ministers have frankly accepted responsibility for the scheme. Indeed, they can do no other because everyone knows that they are responsible for what has gone wrong. A poll in The Guardian on Friday showed that only 18 per cent. of the public blame the European Union for the beef crisis, while 45 per cent. blame the Government.

The scheme was dreamt up, designed and built in Whitehall. Anyone who suggests that it has been imported from the continent is trying to distract attention, to pass the buck, or to fight private battles.

13 May 1996 : Column 690

Mr. Paul Marland (West Gloucestershire) rose--

Mr. Tyler: I shall give way later to the hon. Gentleman if he will be patient.

The House will know--I expect the hon. Gentleman knows--that there is now a shrewd suspicion among some of the victims of this calamity that some Conservative Members--only a minority, I am glad to say--are engaged in a fierce civil war over Europe in their party and want the ban to continue for as long as possible so that they can say that it is the fault of the Europeans. The Minister gave vent to frustration at their antics after the talks in Italy last week, and he was quite right. The president of the National Farmers Union was similarly scathing, warning that extra delays might occur as a result of their antics.

After nearly eight weeks, the disposal scheme is still characterised by dither and delay. If any hon. Member has not been briefed by his or her constituents over the weekend, let me read a brief extract from the editorial in this week's Farmers Weekly. Under the headline

"Chaos Reigns as MAFF Makes a Hash of its BSE Slaughter Scheme",

the editorial reads:

"Producers with cattle over 30 months old must be wondering what on earth the Government is playing at. Only a scriptwriter for a Whitehall farce could derive any satisfaction from its handling of the scheme to remove older cattle from the food chain."

[Interruption.] It continues:

"According to the NFU, it could take a year before the back-log is cleared. Many of the 100,000 cattle stuck on farms will be prime animals in late-maturing, grass-fed herds, caught up in this fiasco because, like cull cows, they are deemed unfit for human consumption . . . Beef producers are left waiting for compensation. So far, almost two months into this crisis, they have received nothing."

[Interruption.] It says:

"The calf slaughter scheme does not apply to them and intervention has proved almost worthless. Those with cattle on farms are left wondering how to minimise their losses. They must know soon whether top-up compensation is to be paid after the first four weeks and at what rate. Their state of confusion is inexcusable".

Mr. Alex Carlile (Montgomery): Given some of the sedentary interventions suggesting that my hon. Friend is out of date, would he agree with Mr. John Jones of Welshpool Livestock Auctioneers who has commented from today's livestock mart that the situation remains utterly chaotic because MAFF and the Welsh Office have licensed so few abattoirs?

Is my hon. Friend further aware that marts such as the huge and important Welshpool mart cannot place the beasts which they need to place in abattoirs? Mr. John Jones tells me that he has managed to find space for35 of 2,000 candidates for slaughter from his mart alone. Will my hon. Friend join me in begging Ministers to increase the number of abattoirs licensed for the cull?

Mr. Tyler: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for making that point, to which I shall come directly. If any Conservative Member has not been listening to abattoir managers and farmers during the past few days, he should get on the telephone this evening and find out what they are saying. I have talked to farmers as far apart as Lewes in Sussex, Dartmouth in Devon, Boston in Lincolnshire and Widnes in Cheshire. They describe the

13 May 1996 : Column 691

situation as a shambles--precisely what the Welsh Farmers Union said. The renderers are saying that the scheme will grind to a halt almost immediately; and the Scots are so desperate that they have turned to the Prime Minister and asked him to intervene--as if that were going to help.

With the help of the NFU and discussions with many others, I have been able to identify six principal concerns. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) rightly said, the reduction in the number of collection centres is a disaster. Last Tuesday, the Minister told me:

"Some 104 livestock markets and some 72 abattoirs have been approved as collection centres."

He wanted, he said,

"to ensure a proper geographical coverage of collection centres--both slaughterhouses and livestock markets."--[Official Report, 7 May 1996; Vol. 277, c.20.]

He said that about 200 had applied to join the scheme. There followed pressure from both sides of the House to the effect that that was not enough. I recall the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) making that very point.

Later in the week, we heard that the Minister was prepared to be flexible. More centres would be added--perhaps as many as 100. At the weekend, however, the renderers appeared to have the Government over a barrel, despite the Minister's promises last week that he had them under control. As a result, only 21 in the whole of England and Wales are to be licensed for the foreseeable future. Although MAFF has approved96 abattoirs and 186 livestock markets to operate the scheme, the renderers are refusing to play ball. As the NFU said:

"The Government have consistently refused to establish a proper administrative framework for the scheme in England and Wales. In the absence of such a framework, renderers have indicated that, in England and Wales, they will deal with 21 abattoirs. These will meet their current maximum throughput of 18,000 carcases a week. This figure will rise to some 25,000 carcases a week only after several weeks. If these were the only cattle to be entered into the scheme, it would take up to a year to eliminate the backlog on farms which, across the United Kingdom as a whole, is estimated to be over 300,000. Each week a further 12,000 cull cows will join this backlog."

In the meantime, businesses are being ruined. I want to quote one specific case from one of the many letters that I have received. This one comes from Skegness and District Meat Traders Ltd. The group was on the Minister's schedule, sent to every Member of the House on 2 May--a designated and approved collection centre. The traders write:

"We applied and were passed and accepted by the Intervention Board as suitable to take part in the scheme. All arrangements with the Meat Hygiene Service, the Meat and Livestock Commission, local rendering plant, local hide collection had been confirmed. 100 cattle from local farms were booked in to come to us from 7 am on Saturday.

We had agreed to slaughter on 3 days per week to try and take the pressure off local farmers in our area, many with severe cash flow problems due to delays in the whole situation . . . We understand from information given to us in the last hour that the nearest abattoir is at Shrewsbury, only two in the whole Midlands area . . . We at this moment are destroyed, we don't know what to do, please, please help us!"

---