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Mr. Baldry: I am conscious of Madam Speaker's ruling that after 6 pm speeches are limited to 10 minutes, and I feel that I should make some progress.
Mr. Baldry: I am going to make some progress with my speech.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: For the avoidance of doubt, let me inform the Minister that the 10-minute rule takes effect at 7 pm.
Mr. Tyler: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Baldry: Let me make some progress; then, given the liberal attitude of the Chair, I shall give way.
The accelerated slaughter scheme is obviously at an early stage. This week ministerial colleagues and I have met representatives of the farming industry from throughout the United Kingdom to discuss the details. Officials will meet them again this week with a view to putting together a package in the next few days--particularly on compensation, which I suspect is of real concern to farmers--so that we can go out to formal consultation as speedily as possible. I have also been meeting and talking to farmers up and down the country about the scheme, and fully appreciate that many of them are worried about its possible impact on their herds. I am determined that we will introduce it in a way that maximises the impact in cutting BSE cases, and minimises the problems for farmers.
I estimate that the selective cull will affect about 5 per cent. of the national dairy herd. Many dairy farmers will have just one or two cattle involved, if any, but some, sadly, will have many more. I am determined that the compensation for all farmers will be fair, and that no effort will be spared in ensuring the minimum disruption to farm holdings.
We have already tightened up on the removal of specified bovine offal, and provided the Meat Hygiene Service with an extra £39 million to recruit 300 extra staff, many of whom are already in post and undergoing training. The next step in the process is the staged removal of the export ban. The Commission document identifies five such stages.
Mr. Matthew Taylor:
The Minister was kind enough to meet me earlier today to discuss some of the problems involved in the 30-month scheme in Cornwall. Those problems continue. Owing to the geography of the county, farmers find it difficult to go far to sell their cattle, and they can go in only one direction. I understand that last week as few as 200 to 300 cattle from the county may have gone for slaughter, because some were being brought in from outside and it was not possible to get them out. Will the Minister consider that problem?
Mr. Baldry:
Thirty thousand cattle are being slaughtered every week under the scheme. They are being drawn from all over the country, and there are abattoirs all over the country. Indeed, one of the abattoirs involved in the scheme is in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, and has a sizeable allocation. If there is a particular problem with the cattle being sent to that abattoir, I shall of course look into it, but clearly the maximum throughput is being achieved day by day and week by week, and the backlog is being eroded steadily. As I have said, we expect it to be eliminated by the end of September or early October. Clearly, however, we cannot slaughter every cow--including beef cattle--today and tomorrow. It will take some weeks, but the maximum slaughter is going ahead.
Mr. Tyler:
I appreciate the difficulty of forecasting developments, and I accept that the Minister expects the backlog to be eroded by the end of September. Will he confirm, however, that last week his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture acknowledged to the Select Committee that the total extra selective cull could involve some 150,000 cattle? Given the figure of 30,000 a week, that is quite a long process to add to the existing cull. When does the Minister expect the full cull to be completed?
Mr. Baldry:
The hon. Gentleman has missed an essential point. Because we are introducing cold storage and other facilities, we are increasing the slaughter rate considerably. By the time the backlog on the over-30-month scheme has been eliminated, we shall have more than sufficient capacity to deal with that scheme in addition to the selective cull. I hope that we shall be able to deal with the selective cull, from the time we start slaughtering under the accelerated and selective cull until the time we finish, in between six and nine months.
Mr. Lord:
May I ask my hon. Friend not to overlook Suffolk? I am not sure whether he included it in the list
Mr. Baldry:
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) made an extremely good point, saying that he hoped that the Government would do all that they could to publicise the steps that they were taking. I sometimes wish that the farming industry would take some steps to advise its members of some of the agreements that it has reached with Government. One of the agreements that the NFU and the CLA reached with Government was that priority for the over-30-month scheme should be given to clean beef. They agreed a ratio of at least three clean beef cattle to every cull cow. That inevitably meant that, in the earlier parts of the scheme, priority would be given to clean beef in the slaughterhouses. Of course, those such as my hon. Friend's constituents who primarily have cull cows that they want to be slaughtered must take their turn, which is extremely frustrating. In a moment I shall go into the details of intervention, and the help needed by producers of beef cattle aged over 30 months.
Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow):
Further to the answer that my hon. Friend just gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk (Mr. Lord), will he give careful consideration to the marketers of clean heifers, who are now finding it very hard to get them into abattoirs because of the difficulty of proving their age? Abattoirs prefer to take steers, whose cattle identification documents give proof of age.
Mr. Baldry:
There is clearly a problem. We have given clear advice to abattoirs about how they should approach the issue of heifers coming into the scheme, and, as I have made clear to the industry, we are keen for as few heifers as possible to be rejected after slaughter. Rejection would mean that the farmer concerned would receive no compensation, which strikes me as very hard. If any hon. Member has details of an abattoir where there have been particular problems with heifers, I should like to know about it. We have given abattoirs detailed guidance, and I thought that we had resolved the issue.
The next step is the removal of the export ban, and the Commission document identifies five stages to achieve that. They relate to embryos, on which we expect the Scientific Veterinary Committee to make recommendations by October; animals born after a specific date and their meat; animals and meat from certified herds without a history of BSE or exposure to meat and bonemeal; meat from other animals under 30 months of age; and in the longer term, meat from all older animals.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made it clear yesterday that we would expect to be in a position to tell the Commission by October that we have met the necessary conditions for decisions to lift the ban on two of the five stages--certified herds, and animals born after a specified date and their meat. Removal of the ban on those two categories will reopen to our industry an export
market worth initially about £100 million a year, and its value will increase rapidly thereafter as the certified herd scheme gains momentum. By October, we also expect a Commission proposal on a third stage--embryos--subject to the scientists giving them a clean bill of health. We should have met the conditions necessary for a decision to lift the ban on the fourth stage--meat from all animals under 30 months--by November.
Securing agreement on those steps will restore the position of beef exports to that before 27 March, except in the areas where we have prohibited sale in the UK. In other words, we would be in a position of being able to sell for export to the European Union young animals and all the beef that could then be sold in the UK. That would open the way for exports worth some £530 million per year.
To achieve that, we must first present a working paper to the Commission, setting out the specific criteria and indicators for each stage. The Commission will submit that paper to its Scientific Veterinary Committee for advice and to the newly created multi-disciplinary scientific committee and, where appropriate, to other relevant scientific committees. At the same time, the paper will be discussed by the Standing Veterinary Committee. In the light of those discussions, the Commission will take a decision in accordance with the established procedure, by presenting a draft decision to the Standing Veterinary Committee. The Commission will subsequently fix the date when exports can effectively resume, following a successful outcome of a Community inspection. That approach follows the model of the decision already adopted for resuming exports of gelatin and tallow, for which we are already drawing up the arrangements to allow trade to restart.
The timetable is ambitious and will clearly require Government and the industry to work hard together to achieve the early lifting of the ban, but the timetable is in our hands. When we have met the conditions, the normal procedures for such decisions, involving the Standing Veterinary Committee in particular, will apply--but we have the firm commitment from all Heads of Government in Florence that those decisions will be taken only on the basis of scientific and objective criteria.
I fully recognise the fact that despite the measures that have been taken, the beef market here and elsewhere in the EU remains depressed. Beef producers have lost and are losing substantial sums of money on cattle marketed under those conditions. We must give continual attention to what we can do to assist farmers with under 30-month-old beef who are selling into the retail market, but at prices markedly lower than this time last year. In recognition of that, the European Commission has proposed that £527 million should be made available for support measures in the beef sector. Part of that sum would fund increases of the suckler cow premium and beef special premium, on the basis of claims made in 1995. The proposed increases are £21.41 per head for suckler cows and £17.98 per head for male cattle. It is proposed also that the remainder of the sum available should be used to fund national aid measures to support the beef sector.
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