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7.51 pm
Sir Jim Spicer (West Dorset): I open with a brief remark to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler). On these occasions, he is very much the lone ranger. He holds up the Liberal cause to the best of his ability. I ask him to go out, be the lone ranger and deal with the leaders of councils, in the west country in particular, who imposed a ban on beef long before there was a European ban. He needs to crack a whip or use a pistol on them. Will he start with the leader of Dorset county council? That would be extremely helpful.
One remark by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd) tonight found an echo with many hon. Members. He said what a pity it was that we did not have co-operation, and that, rather than opposing, the Opposition had not come forward at a time of crisis with an offer of working together to find a solution. That has been done before. During the foot and mouth outbreak in the 1960s, the Conservative Opposition went to the then Minister of Agriculture and said, "How can we help? Let's go together on this."
If the Opposition had come to my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister at the start of this dreadful crisis and said that they wanted to work with him, he would have welcomed them on board, and they would have been part of the crisis committee that has done so much over the past 11 or 12 months to get the crisis under control. It is now under control. The way in which the Labour party has brought the issue forward tonight is obscene.
I have been proud to represent West Dorset for the past 23 years. This past year has been the proudest, because I have seen the fortitude of my farmers at a time of great crisis for them and their industry. Dorset was, and still is, the county hardest hit by BSE, and West Dorset has been in the eye of the storm throughout. We have all known about BSE for many years, but the reality is that farmers have had to live with the problem, waking up to confront it every morning. When it finally burst open in March, what happened? It was leaked by the Daily Mirror and played up by the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms Harman). The precipitate problem need not have been built up into a crisis.
The European member states reacted in the same way as the Labour party, going for short-term political gain. They have inflicted a wound on themselves, just as the Labour party will tonight.
Last Thursday, we saw the start of the new Labour weekend spin. The Leader of the Opposition got up and focused on BSE, saying that spending £3 billion on BSE was a disgraceful waste of money. I have one or two questions for him and others in his team. They are important questions to which farmers in my constituency would like answers. Would he have initiated the 30-month cull and slaughtered more than 1 million animals? That task was carried out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister and all those in his team. They carried out that crisis operation to the best of their ability, with the support of the farming community and everyone else.
Would Labour have given such positive support to our farming community? Would they have completed that 30-month cull successfully in the first week of December, and then, at the behest of the NFU--I have said this several times to the hon. Member for North Cornwall--embarked on the accelerated cull, as the Government have done? That would not have been authorised if the farming community had not been fully behind it.
Does the Labour team understand that my farmers in West Dorset welcome the Government's measured approach and the way in which they are dealing with the selective cull? There will be full discussion between farmers and officials before the cull. Even after that, farmers will have some say in when their cattle will be disposed of, so that it can fit in with their proper business plan.
Those on the Labour Front Bench do not understand any of that. They do not understand the countryside--Labour is not a countryside party.
Sir Jim Spicer:
I have only 10 minutes, and I have already used six.
In total contrast is the approach of our team. I remember with great pride 8 October last year in Bournemouth, when nine members of the NFU, led by Sir David Naish, with the support of Ben Gill, my county chairman John Hoskin and representatives from Wales--sadly, there were no representatives from Scotland and Ulster--came to see the Prime Minister. We had a full and frank exchange of views. We know that of course mistakes are made in a crisis of this sort. I am the first to admit that, and so is my right hon. and learned Friend. We are not all paragons, like Opposition Members.
I remember the summing-up by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at the end of that two-hour meeting. He said:
Mr. Martyn Jones (Clwyd, South-West):
This debate has been called not long after the annual conference of the National Farmers Union, where the bungling record of the Minister of Agriculture yet again received its annual drubbing. To farmers in my constituency and elsewhere, after nearly two years as Agriculture Minister, Mr. Hogg has been an unquestioned failure. As we have heard, Government bungling has cost the taxpayer £3.5 billion, which is equivalent to 2p on income tax. To be completely fair to the Minister, he inherited the catalogue of errors that have been made since 1986. If there was ever anything worthy of a motion of censure, this issue is it.
It pains me that, after years of waiting for the Government to sort out the beef mess, we are still waiting. It seems that all along, as I have said before, Mr. Hogg's only method for solving the beef mess has been to recruit Old Father Time and take the best scientific advice--where the definition of "best" is what is best for the Government at the time. I am angry that Welsh, Irish, Scottish and English farmers still have no idea when things will change. No wonder Mr. Hogg was voted the 1996 loser of the year in The Guardian, beating off strong competition from his colleagues. Incompetence has been raised to the level of an art by his Government.
Farmers and consumers alike have been given little indication of Government policy and when to expect things to change for the better. It is a sad joke that is getting sadder. The recent edition of New Ground, the journal of the Socialist, Environment and Resources Association made the observation:
Admittedly, the matter has not been helped by the Prime Minister's ludicrous antics to pacify his Euro-sceptics, but I fear that even my pet cat could have done a better and more competent job--and still could, unless he came down with feline spongiform encephalopathy and was no longer able to travel. That point may be sarcastic, but I made it because in my anger I am reminded that people have died as a result of the Government's bungling.
Why did the Government not introduce random testing? Why did they not introduce tagging sooner? Why did not Mr. Hogg listen when the Opposition and farmers called for immediate action to certify herds? The Opposition have constantly suggested the certification of herds since the late 1980s, yet the Ministry of Agriculture is only just looking at it now. If it had acted when we asked, there would have been no need for the extra cull of the selective slaughter scheme.
Apart from the Tory-inflicted environmental and economic disaster, I see from the selective slaughter programme that the Government cannot even organise the clear-up operation of their own mess. My farmers tell me
that there are still inconsistencies and problems with the scheme all over the place, including compensation, the definition of a herd, and the additional chaos of the inconsistency of figures on exactly how many cattle are to be slaughtered. It seems that the yo-yo-ing of the figure is dependent on how Mr. Hogg is feeling that morning, which is pathetic and deeply damaging to farmers' businesses.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman keeps quoting the name of the Minister. If he is, that is all right, but if he is referring to him, I am sure that he knows that he should not use the Minister's name.
Mr. Jones:
I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I apologise.
Refusal to admit mistake after mistake has caused the Government to make even more errors--wasting billions of pounds and leaving farmers in ruin.
Conservative Members have accused the Opposition of using hindsight. Seven years ago, I demanded in the House that certain measures be taken. I demanded that the Government make Creutzfeld-Jakob disease notifiable; ensure that abattoir practice be examined; ensure that cattle brains be used for no purposes, and be burned and destroyed; stop offal such as brain, spleen and lymph glands being used in any animal foods; stop offal feeding to all animals immediately; create a genuinely independent food standards agency; instigate random testing at abattoirs; prevent the possibility of vertical transmission in cattle by culling calves and infected cattle with full compensation; and increase research on transmission.
That is on the record, in Hansard, in 1990. There is no use of hindsight. Years have passed, and despite denial and resistance, one by one many of those demands have, to the Government's embarrassment, been introduced--some too late, others half-heartedly. Amazingly, some are yet to be acted on.
The Opposition, of all political shades, have been proven consistently and entirely correct on BSE. Now, beef is safe, as we have acknowledged several times on the Opposition Benches. We are not trying to create another scare. Many people were, however, exposed to the agent in the 1980s, before the Government made beef safe. They could have made it safe earlier.
In my recent speech on BSE in November, I regaled the House with a joke that farmers tell in north Wales. The only safe meat is hog--but it is spelt H-O-G-G--as it is spineless, brainless, and gutless, and therefore contains no specified offal. There was a time when I thought that that was perhaps a little unkind, but that time has passed. In a previous debate on BSE, the Minister inspired me to coin the phrase, "to MAFF it up". For this debate, I had considered coining the phrase, "to make a Hogg of it", but in view of your reminding me of the conventions of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall not do so. "To make a pig's ear" is an acceptable alternative.
In referring to north Wales farmers and their cutting humour, I used the word "spineless". I fear that that may now be said of hon. Members on the Government Benches, especially those who represent farmers but are not likely to vote for the motion. They must know that their farmers have no confidence in the ability of the
Minister. Tory Members know too well that their farmers are correct in that assumption, yet they do not have the guts to stand up for what is right, vote down the Minister's performance or speak for their constituents. Their constituents will undoubtedly speak for themselves at the election.
I realise that hon. Members from Northern Ireland, who have in the past backed the Tory line, will not want to feel pushed into voting with the Opposition, but I fail to understand how they can be continuously pushed--or possibly bribed--by the Conservatives into voting with the Government or abstaining, against the wishes of their farmers. Additionally, I doubt very much that any Tory deals that they might squeeze out of them have the backing of reality.
"I will do all in my power to see that this iniquitous ban is lifted, but whatever happens in that respect, my main aim and that of my Government will be to ensure that when BSE is finally eradicated, British agriculture will be in good heart and in a position to take on all comers."
That pledge carries us through the life of the next Conservative Government.
"The Tory leadership seems to think that if it closes its eyes and hides in bed, the world and its problems will disappear.
That recent critical assessment is sadly even more true of the Minister's miserable performance, which has been abysmal.
Unfortunately for the Prime Minister, the world is standing around looking at a pathetic lump crouching under the blankets of political incompetence."
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