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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. It is quite clear that the onus of allowing interventions rests with the hon. Member who has the Floor.
Mr. Hurd: I think that, over quite a number of years in the House, I have been generous in giving way--[Interruption.] I feel that, in the twilight of my political life, I might be allowed to make a short speech, which I am concluding, in my own way. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) is using the oldest trick in the game, to try to spoil the final seconds of a speech.
Mr. Sheerman: No, that is not true.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is also true that seated interventions are not acceptable. I expect the right hon. Gentleman to be heard quietly.
Mr. Hurd: I am just drawing to a close, very quietly, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): I am glad to follow the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd), because his speech contained at least some thoughtful substance. I wish the Minister had taken more note of that possibility in this debate. As this may be the last opportunity to do so, I should also like to say that I am delighted that the right hon. Member for Witney will move into such a very useful occupation after he leaves the House--in contrast to many other hon. Members when they retire from the Government Front Bench.
I am lucky to represent a livestock area; it is a great privilege and a great responsibility. I spent this morning in a Cornish livestock market, and much of the weekend on the telephone speaking to farmers across the country. Unlike the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang), I am in close contact with the people most concerned and affected by the BSE experience. They say--with good reason--that they are deeply sceptical about the timing of this debate. In the dying days of this Parliament, the debate looks like a typical Westminster party game rather than a serious attempt to deal with the problems facing the industry.
Let us contrast the situation today with that on 25 June 1996, when a similar motion was debated in the House. The Prime Minister had just returned from his surrender in Florence. The previous day, he had announced, first, that the over-30-months cull would be completed by October; secondly, that the selective accelerated slaughter programme would begin immediately afterwards; and, thirdly, that from November the export ban would begin to be lifted. He told us the following:
By last June, every farmer in the country knew that the management of the over-30-months cull was going gravely awry and causing great damage to much of livestock farming. So much damage was being done that, on the very afternoon on which the Prime Minister announced the outbreak of hostilities in his "beef war", he took responsibility for the slaughter programme away from the Agriculture Minister and handed it over to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
After four weeks in charge, and after having met many farmers across the country and shown that he was rather more responsive to their concerns and anxieties than the
Agriculture Minister, the Chancellor met furious farmers whose cattle were not being taken for slaughter, as promised. He told them that he would stamp out mismanagement, profiteering and dodgy dealing--but the backlog continued to grow.
Simultaneously, the Agriculture Minister's ham-fisted diplomacy in Europe exacerbated the ill feeling already caused by the ludicrously counterproductive beef war, so even the export ban on derivatives was still in place. It still is. He showed no signs of preparing the detailed, factual, scientifically based working documentation that the Commission needed to help in our case for the resumption of exports. Not for nothing were foreign commentators referring to his antics as being like those of a
Would not one have expected the Labour party to support that motion? Some Labour Members did, but some, particularly among the Labour leadership, who had shamefully acquiesced in the xenophobic beef war in the previous few weeks, sat on their hands, stayed away and ignored the lessons of history.
We all know that when a Government are having trouble at home, an overseas diversion--preferably a little war--can be extremely convenient. Dictators have done that throughout history. The Labour party swallowed that one, too, but once it was seen that that little war was unpopular, Labour Members came round to our view that it was damaging British interests. I pay tribute to the 33 Labour Members who joined us in the Lobby, but where was their deputy leader then? He was propping up the Government.
The clue to the Labour party's current tactic is the precise timing of the announcement last Wednesday. On that day, the House was debating the police bugging Bill and we were treated to the nauseating spectacle of the shadow Home Secretary cosying up to the Home Secretary--a case of "man of Straw" adopts "Howard's way". A brave band of 20 Labour Members nevertheless stuck to their principles and voted for our reasoned amendment. Their deputy leader, however, suddenly became an expert in agriculture, despite the fact that he seemed to think that there was a Secretary of State in that Department.
I shall keep fond memories of the spectacle of the Labour deputy leader suddenly faced by Mr. Jeremy Paxman on "Newsnight" with a question about maternal transmission. His face was a picture. He obviously thought that maternal transmission had something to do with ambulances for mothers-to-be.
I am sad about the timing of this debate, but I want to follow the example of the right hon. Member for Witney and concentrate on what could be done now to mitigate the appalling problems that have arisen.
Naturally, there are continuing concerns about the over-30-months cull. The cut in compensation rates and then the change in the value of the green currency have
meant a drop of some 13 or 14 per cent. The farmers who were caught with cattle on their holdings as a result of delays in the cull have had to feed and house them at extra expense, all because of the mismanagement of the cull.
However, I want to turn my attention to the selective, or accelerated, cull. There are five main areas of concern, the first of which is the detailed way in which it has been introduced--not the principle, but the practice. For example, in our brief debate on statutory instruments on 21 January, not one hon. Member from any party was prepared to defend the unprecedented definition of a herd which the Minister introduced. He was the only person to support that definition. It was a clear fix to reduce compensation sums, and it has huge financial consequences, particularly for closed herds, which are exactly what we want to encourage.
The South West National Farmers Union summed up that debate by saying:
When the Ministry vets visited that farmer last week, he could give them all the information they needed. Their first reaction was to estimate that more than 60 cows would have to go. Naturally, he was horrified; when they looked at the cohort calculations again, they reduced the figure to 46. That is still 38 per cent., yet that herd had only minimal BSE incidents.
Yesterday, I talked to another farmer who has had a rather higher incidence. He calculates that, according to the cohort calculations that the vets have given him, more than 50 per cent. of his dairy herd will have to go.
It will take years for those herds to gain their former strength. How can those farmers, with their careful breeding and replacement policies, expect to maintain the standard and quality that they have had in the past? Even if they wanted to, how could they get the stock at a price that they could afford? If every dairy herd is cut to pieces in that way, the effect will be devastating. What will happen to the price of good quality milkers? As I pointed out when the crisis first broke last March, importing replacement stock from countries with less effective controls than we have in Britain would be sheer lunacy. So where will they come from?
This is a far cry from the Conservative central office brief, which says:
"The targets we have set are ambitious. It is now up to us in this country--the farming and ancillary industries and the Government--to ensure that we meet them. The point is that this timetable is essentially in our hands."--[Official Report, 24 June 1996; Vol. 280, c. 22.]
There was no mention of those targets from the Minister today. Indeed, if any Conservative Members are thinking of using the Conservative research department brief in this debate, I advise them against it, because the omission of that statement is one of many omissions and mistakes made by the teenage scribes in central office. The Minister said earlier that the removal of the export ban is "not in our gift". That is what he says now, but it is not what he or the Prime Minister said last June.
"Hogg in a China Shop."
That was the situation on Tuesday 25 June 1996. All those suffering from the BSE catastrophe were in despair at the Government's failure to accept their share of the blame and take a grip on the problem. For the farmers, the crisis was at its height, so that day we initiated a debate, similar to today's debate but with one important difference: we could have made a major change to what happened thereafter.
"MPs raised all of the NFU's concerns on compensation, flexibility, timing and the definition of the herd. The Minister, in his summing up, ignored it all."
Secondly, Ministers have been reluctant to give precise estimates of the number of cattle that will be compulsorily selected for slaughter under the cohort scheme. This weekend, the experience of a farmer in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) was indicative and alarming. He has a closed herd of some 120 British Friesians with followers, and all his replacements have been home bred and reared for some 20 to 30 years. No suspect foodstuffs were used at any time and he uses only the minimum of bought-in feed. His calving is spread out throughout the year and he has no peaks or troughs. He has had only two BSE cases during the whole period.
"Even using the highest estimate for the voluntary part of the scheme, less than five per cent. of the national herd will be affected. For the vast majority of farmers, only a very small number of their animals (if any) will be involved."
17 Feb 1997 : Column 646
As we all know, even farmers with a closed herd can find themselves in difficulty, but those who bought in at any time will have much more difficulty.
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