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9.21 pm

Dr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East): We have had a very useful debate. All hon. Members have expressed the concerns held by people in the industry across the length and breadth of the country--Scotland, Wales and England. It is fair to say that there has been a particular focus on Northern Ireland, and that hon. Members who represent it have made very powerful speeches. I think that the whole House understands why that has been so. I shall comment on Northern Ireland at greater length later.

It is valuable to remind ourselves that the underlying, fundamental concern in the debate on BSE is, of course, one of public health. There is a new variant of CJD, and 14 cases of it have occurred. We do not know whether that new variant has been caused by BSE, or how many more cases of it there will be. Obviously, we desperately hope that there will be very few. We know that, in the 1980s, when it became clear that BSE was a major issue, the Government acted too slowly and quite inadequately. We should remember that it was always understood from the very beginning that there was a possibility--albeit, as it was argued at times, a remote one--of a link between BSE in cattle and CJD in humans.

There were delays in implementing the regulations to protect human health, and when they were put in place, they were badly enforced. The Government have admitted that under-compensation in the 18 months between August 1988 and February 1990 for the slaughter of suspect cases of BSE will have deterred farmers from keeping out of the human food chain cattle that they suspected of having BSE. The Minister admitted that that under-compensation was contributory.

We also know that it took two years and seven months after BSE was officially identified before it was announced that steps would be taken to keep bovine specified material out of our food. Three years after BSE was identified--November 1989--the regulations were put in place in England and Wales. In January 1990, they came into force in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Concern was expressed at the time about the effectiveness with which the regulations were implemented.

Particular attention has rightly been focused on the fact that the ruminant feed ban put in place in 1988 was clearly not enforced. It is generally accepted that the sole cause--or at least the main cause--of BSE in our cattle was the eating of feed contaminated with ruminant protein. It has been admitted that the animals in this country continued to get contaminated feed. Indeed, the report of the Agra Europe meat conference 1996 states that Richard Cowan of the Ministry of Agriculture said on 8 October that lax controls over contaminated feed meant that it was not until 1 August this year--1 August this year--that the

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Government could be 100 per cent. confident that all stocks of contaminated feed and any risk of cross-contamination of feed had been entirely eliminated from our farms.

Over all these years, contaminated feed was continuing to reach our cattle. That is not unrelated to the Government's treatment of the state veterinary service over the years--the way in which it was run down, reorganised and totally demoralised.

Eight years after the ruminant feed ban was introduced, this has to be the overwhelming reason why more than 28,000 cases of BSE have been confirmed in cattle born after the feed ban and why two thirds of all new BSE cases now coming through are in animals born after the introduction of that ban.

On 20 March, the Secretary of State for Health reported to the House that Government scientists had advised Ministers that BSE was thought to be the most likely cause of the new variant of CJD. The Government were clearly unprepared for the impact of their announcement on consumers and thus on the industry. The Minister of Agriculture told the House:

"I do not believe that this information should damage consumer confidence and thus the beef market."--[Official Report, 20 March 1996; Vol. 274, c. 387.]

It was clear, and became clearer as the days, weeks and months passed, that the Government had no strategy to deal with the crisis. Our rural communities are still paying the price for that terrible misjudgment. The same confusion characterised the Government's handling of the issue with our European Union partners.

On 3 April the Government announced that all cattle over the age of 30 months were to be banned from human food. The Ministry of Agriculture press release of 16 April said that the slaughter programme would start on 29 April. By the end of May, the Government's 30-month slaughter programme had hardly started. Information from the Government to farmers was poor, confused and late and the slaughtering capacity was insufficient and poorly distributed. Widespread reports came through of dealers and abattoirs profiteering on the compulsory scheme, buying cattle from desperate farmers at knock-down prices. Abattoirs have been paid too much for too long.

Five months into the scheme, on 12 September, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster announced that the Government did not know how many cattle were in the backlog to be slaughtered under the 30-month scheme. Only then did they embark on a survey to assess the size of the backlog. It was estimated at 400,000 animals. That figure has now been reduced. The Minister has confirmed today that the Government expect the backlog to be completed by mid-December.

Let us not forget--several hon. Members have focused attention on this--that a number of farmers have kept the animals on their farms since the over-30-month scheme came into operation in April. They now find their rate of compensation cut. The cost to those farmers of keeping the animals has been much greater than the cost to farmers who got their animals away early on in the scheme.

Hon. Members will recall that the Agriculture Council decided on 2 April that the United Kingdom should bring forward proposals for a selective slaughter scheme for the cattle most at risk of BSE.

First, the Minister proposed slaughtering around 42,000 cattle; that was in April. In May, the figure was increased to 80,000 cattle. It was then reduced again to 42,000, and

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finally, in June, at the Florence summit, the Prime Minister agreed that there would be a selective slaughter programme involving probably around 147,000 cattle.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) pointed out earlier this afternoon, the Prime Minister was keen to present the Florence agreement as a great victory--a great achievement for the British Government. The agreement is at the heart of the debate, and I will remind the House what the Prime Minister said. On 24 June, he said:

"We aim 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--that is, certified herds and animals born after a specified date and their meat. That is subject in particular to clearance of the backlog of animals awaiting slaughter in the 30-month-plus scheme, and a start to the accelerated slaughter of cattle particularly at risk of developing BSE."

He went on to explain that removal of the ban would, in the first instance, enable us to allow the export of meat up to the value of £100 million. He then said:

"Also by October, I expect a Commission proposal on a third stage--embryos--subject to the scientists giving them a clean bill of health."

The whole point was that the exports would build up,

"increasing rapidly thereafter as the certified herds scheme gains momentum."--[Official Report, 24 June 1996; Vol. 280, c. 21.]

Indeed, on the very last day before the House broke up for the summer recess, the Minister of Agriculture stated, referring to the Florence agreement:

"The agreement was a great success, and provides a solid way forward. The framework also provides for the introduction by the United Kingdom of a programme for accelerating the decline of bovine spongiform encephalopathy."--[Official Report, 24 July 1996; Vol. 282, c. 369.]

So what happened after the House went into recess at the end of July? First, we had the partial results of the experiment on maternal transmission; then we had the publication of the paper by Professor Roy Anderson and his colleagues at Oxford. Those developments made a case for redirecting the selective slaughter programme, and the Commission accepted that. The response to those developments should have been to maintain the momentum behind the Florence agreement by redirecting the selective slaughter programme, which, on the basis of the new information, could be more effective.

Let us be clear that the experiment has shown that there is no, or only slight, maternal transmission--that we can rule out maternal transmission on a major scale. The importance of the Roy Anderson paper was that it enabled the Government to redirect their selective slaughter programme more effectively. The Government were given good advice, on the basis of statistical analysis, on how, with a given kill rate, they could reduce the number of BSE cases by even more than was envisaged at the time of the Florence agreement.

I cannot accept that those developments justify what has happened since. The Government used those scientific developments to walk away from the Florence agreement. Let us be clear that the scientific developments meant that the agreement reached at Florence could be more effective. This afternoon, the Minister of Agriculture made great play of the fact that we would still be left with about two thirds of the BSE cases. If we implemented the selective slaughter programme, between now and 2001--

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when, we hope, very few BSE cases will be left--we could reduce the number of cases by about a third. Surely that is worth achieving.

The Commission always made it clear that it would judge the selective slaughter programme not on the number of cows killed, but on the likely reduction in the number of BSE cases. I put it fairly and squarely to the Minister: if it was right to agree in Florence in June to that selective slaughter programme, it cannot have been right to walk away from it in September, because the only developments that had taken place since were ones that were likely to make the programme more rather than less effective.

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