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Lords amendment No. 41B agreed to.
Committee appointed to draw up a Reason to be assigned to the Lords for insisting on disagreeing to their amendment No. 3; Paul Clark, Matthew Green, Mr. John Hayes, Keith Hill and Linda Gilroy to be members of the Committee; Keith Hill to be the Chairman of the Committee; Three to be the quorum of the Committee.—[Paul Clark.]
To withdraw immediately.
Reasons for disagreeing to certain Lords amendments reported, and agreed to; to be communicated to the Lords.
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Opposition Day
Animal and Plant Diseases
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Mr. Speaker has selected the amendment standing in the name of the Prime Minister.
3.13 pm
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con): I beg to move,
That this House recognises the potential risk posed to British agriculture and to the environment of the UK by the importation of animal and plant diseases; acknowledges the crucial importance of preventing diseases from entering the country; notes with concern the increase in the number of diseases in Britain emanating from abroad and the spread of virulent epidemics across the world; recognises the implications for biosecurity of the enlargement of the European Union; condemns the Government for failing to learn the lessons from the recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease; regrets the failure of the Government to address these problems and to instil confidence in the farming community; and calls on the Government to take urgent action to put in place the stringent measures necessary to prevent animal and plant disease from entering the UK.
This morning I received a letter from the Minister for Rural Affairs and Local Environment Quality explaining that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was not available to respond to this debate because she was attending a meeting of the Commission on Sustainable Development in the United States. He also told me that the Minister of State was at the same conference—two Ministers and staff in America at taxpayers' expense—and that he himself would be unable to respond to the debate because he was speaking at a rural affairs conference at the invitation of the Irish Government.
The Government have had a week's notice of this debate. It is perhaps understandable for one Minister to be unavailable, but for three Ministers to fail to respond to a debate on a subject that threatens the livelihood of British farmers is not only to treat the House with contempt, but sends a clear message to farmers that the Government are not interested in them or their future. Once again, the Government are letting British farmers down. I look forward to hearing the contribution of the Under-Secretary. I doubt whether the House will want to hear from him twice in the same debate, but we will see how it unfolds.
The year 2001 was possibly the blackest period in modern history for British agriculture. Our green and pleasant land became the scene of death and destruction. Our television screens were filled with images of funeral pyres, rotting carcases and smoke-filled air. The pain and suffering caused to Britain's rural communities was etched on the faces of those farmers who saw their lifetime's work destroyed by a contiguous cull on a massive scale. As a result of foot and mouth disease, 10 million animals were slaughtered, our countryside put up closed signs and some were forced not just to the point of bankruptcy but of suicide. For our farmers, it seemed like the end of the world as they knew it: for many, it was.
The subsequent report from the National Audit Office said that the outbreak cost Britain £8 billion—a £3 billion cost to the public sector and hence the taxpayer,
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and more than a £5 billion cost to the private sector. The Institute of Directors put the cost higher at £20 billion. We all understand that outbreaks of diseases such as foot and mouth affect not just our farmers, but the wider economy, the service industry and tourism. We owe it to all of them to ensure that it can never happen again. It is our duty, and the duty of any Government, to ensure that it can never happen again. Yet my colleagues and I have yet to meet a farmer who believes that we are better prepared for a future outbreak. The fact remains that the Government have lost the confidence of our farming industry in respect of their ability to prevent disease from entering Britain.
Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD): What did the farming community tell the hon. Lady about the £4 billion loss and the destruction of the livestock sector caused by the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy?
Mrs. May: There is no doubt that British farming has suffered a number of difficult periods in recent years. That is why it is all the more important that the Government put in place the action necessary to ensure that we never see such devastation happening again.
The farming community's lack of confidence in the Government is in no small part due to their decision to deny a full and independent public inquiry into foot and mouth. Of course, we have seen a number of commissions and reports into the outbreak, but Government have steadfastly refused to conduct a transparent inquiry into the events and circumstances leading up to and during the course of the outbreak. The only public inquiry into the foot and mouth outbreak was the result of pressure by Conservative Members of the European Parliament and was opposed tooth and nail by Labour MEPs.
Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle) (Lab): Is the hon. Lady aware that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), carried out an investigation into foot and mouth disease in this country?
Mrs. May: I am grateful for that intervention, but I doubt whether the hon. Gentleman is talking about the full and independent public inquiry that the British farming industry wants the Government to call in order to get answers about why the outbreak happened.
Since it became public knowledge that we were holding this debate, my staff have fielded a stream of telephone calls, e-mails and messages from people throughout the country. Those people feel strongly about the issue: each has something to say, and is able to uncover another piece of the jigsaw in respect of what happened in the outbreak. That shows that the Government, far from reassuring people and answering their questions and concerns, have simply chosen to ignore them. However, those questions and concerns will not go away.
We have had the inquiry into lessons learned headed by Dr. Anderson, but have we really learned any lessons? Following the 1967 outbreak, we knew not only how the disease came into the country, but the very yard where the outbreak happened. However, despite all the
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improvements in science and forensics, and the leaps forward in DNA testing, we still do not know how the virus responsible for the 2001 outbreak came into the country, or why. The public's obvious concerns will not be allayed by the recent revelations concerning Jim Dring, the vet responsible for inspecting the premises in Heddon-on-the-Wall where the outbreak is suspected to have started.
Mr. Dring is an honourable and conscientious man. He concluded that the foot and mouth crisis would never have happened if his inspection of Bobby Waugh's Northumberland pig farm in the weeks leading up to the outbreak had been more rigorous. However, he said that he had been hamstrung by a lack of veterinary resources.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): Oh no he did not.
Mrs. May: The Minister, from a sedentary position, says that Mr. Dring did not say that. However, in his report, Mr. Dring said, in relation to his inspection to review the Waughs' article 26 licence:
"Had this inspection been more rigorous than it was, had the licence not been renewed, or renewed only subject to radical revision of the Waughs' patently deficient feeding technique, then this awful 2001 FMD epidemic would never have come about."
Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): My hon. Friend will recall that we discussed the Dring report in Westminster Hall on 16 March. I raised with the Minister the fact that that report was not available in full at the time of the Anderson inquiry. He declined to comment on that, but merely said that he would put the papers in the Library. Does my hon. Friend agree that we deserve an answer as to why the Government withheld that information from the Anderson inquiry?
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