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Mr. Williams: I take the point that the situation is more complicated than that.
I shall have to gallop through the remainder of my speech if other Members are going to contribute. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives raised the subject of foot and mouth and Mr. Dring's report in the House on 11 March, and he wrote to the Secretary of State on 17 March. My party is no longer calling for a full public inquiry into foot and mouth because we believe that the time for such an inquiry has passed, and the expense and various organisational problems involved in having one are not justified. Things have moved on, the reports have been produced and vaccination is obviously going to play a bigger part in combating any future outbreak. However, Mr. Dring's comments do bear further investigation. We need to look into what happened at the Waugh farm, and why the problems were not dealt with sooner, and perhaps the licence revoked.
BSE is a classic case of our not addressing the fundamental science. We still do not understand the nature of the infective agent. We do not understand entirely how it spreads from bovine to bovine or whether it is also found in ovine animals. Equally, we do not know with any certainty how it spreads from cattle to human. That has resulted in huge problems of expense. No one who has had a blood transfusion since, I think, 1980 can donate blood, because we did not understand then and we do not understand now. Investment in fundamental science is always cost-effective for the nation, because it allows us to make decisions with certainty rather than guessing.
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Has the Minister fully investigated the problems of developing an effective vaccine for tuberculosis? Is it being held up by financial considerations, or by the fact that it takes a number of generation times to do the development work—or are we simply not putting enough pressure on the research establishment? Very difficult decisions will shortly have to be taken.
Professor Godfray's report said that Professor Bourne's recommendation not to continue with active culling was implemented too soon. That is a classic example of two different interpretations of the same evidence.
Mr. Bradshaw: There has been a lot of misunderstanding and misrepresentation of what Professor Godfray said about the abandoning of the reactive cull. Neither he nor John Bourne said, contrary to some press reports, that it was the wrong thing to do. They both said that, in terms of science, it would have been preferable for the cull to have continued, but given the fact that the independent scientific group found—Professor Godfray did not challenge this—that the reactive cull had increased the incidence of TB in cattle by 27 per cent. in the affected areas, both gentlemen understood why, politically, the Government could not possibly have continued with the cull.
Mr. Williams: If we consider the whole process of the Krebs trials, we see that several issues need clarification, either from the Minister or from his officials.
We are very pleased that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee is conducting another investigation of TB. I do not see the Chairman here today, but I urge the Committee to visit Ireland. There is a lot of discussion about whether the work being done there has the imprimatur of the peer review that is so essential to science, but the Committee should go there and scrutinise it, just to see whether it has any implications for the British situation, because there are a lot of similarities in relation to the countryside and the nature of our agriculture.
The outbreak of ring rot in potatoes was in my constituency. There was disagreement in the House about who was responsible for controlling it—the politicians or the officials. We should all have enough good grace to say that the person really responsible for ensuring that the disease did not spread was the farmer. We talk about biosecurity, and he had excellent records and could trace the path of every single potato that had left or entered his farm. I do not want to make the point again in great detail today, but Ministers refused my invitation to meet the farmer, John Morgan, who could explain the position to them. There is a man suffering huge financial losses, for which no blame has been apportioned. I believe that his position should be examined: it is a one-off, and if it had not been for his immaculate work in maintaining records and doing his job, the problem could have been a lot worse than it is.
I finish with a brief review of the veterinary service in Britain. The state veterinary service has been centralised and reduced: it is no longer as reactive as it was to local developments. The British Veterinary Association made contact with me today and asked me to ask the Minister how many times vets go out on livestock farms nowadays to examine the livestock itself. Not only is the
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state veterinary service much reduced, but because the livestock industry has gone through difficult financial times, large animal practices are not as thick on the ground as they were. More and more of vets' work is connected with pets and small animals. Vets seldom go out to look at the stock on farms. Indeed, even during emergencies, few vets are available to treat large animals. I could provide many examples to back that assertion, if necessary. Will the Minister respond to my points about the state veterinary service and private veterinary practice? I reiterate my point about the importance of reflecting on what is happening in Ireland.
The Minister provided some evidence to show that the Government were spending more money on research, but we say that it is very well spent indeed, and if there is any more investment is to be made, it should be in the fundamental sciences, because in the long run, they will prove most effective in dealing with the problems that we are debating this afternoon.
4.37 pm
Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle) (Lab): I shall start by attacking the Opposition's logic in claiming that the Government's record does not bear looking at. I shall then gently criticise my Government for some of the things that they have not yet done.
It seems to be my lot to speak about agriculture. Over the years, I have tried to get away from it, but the reality is that I am in my place to talk about it again. In 1986, I was working for one of the largest dairies in the country when the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl took place, nearly closing the factory. To be honest, biosecurity would have had no effect on that particular incident.
It may be asked why I am bringing up events that happened in 1986. First, I remember that in 1986 the then Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food—now the noble Lord Jopling—said that the matter was under control and that the problem would be solved in six months. However, farms—many in Wales and, I understand, some in my county of Cumbria—are still affected by radiation from Chernobyl. So nearly two decades on, we are still suffering from problems stemming from Chernobyl. The Government of 1986 allowed lamb contaminated with radiation to enter the food chain. When I became a Member of Parliament, I sat on the Agriculture Select Committee, which conducted an inquiry into that matter.
Shortly after that, I recall the problem of salmonella. It was a major issue because the responsible Minister and former MP, Edwina Currie, said that most British eggs were contaminated with it. That created panic in the country and meant the destruction of millions of hens. It took the industry years to recover and brought an end to a ministerial career. I recall debating the issues in the House and quoting Peter Rabbit—the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food at the time was John MacGregor, and it seemed appropriate.
Some people say that the problems caused by foot and mouth disease are of the same magnitude as those caused by BSE. They are not. The difference is that BSE has killed 140 people, including an 18-year-old constituent of mine.
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Moreover, BSE was not imported, and did not come to Britain in someone's suitcase. It was manufactured in the UK, by the previous Conservative Government, who allowed a reduction in the rendering temperatures used on material going into food. I do not say that they manufactured BSE deliberately, but the problem arose directly out of that decision.
Today, the Opposition's criticism of the Government does not amount to very much, as an inspection of the motion makes clear. Some Opposition Members attending this debate were in the House at the time of the BSE scare, and some were even Ministers. In fact, I accept some responsibility too, as I was a member of the Select Committee that investigated the matter. We concluded that it was safe to eat beef, but we were wrong. It was not safe to eat beef at that time, but we did not know the science involved. Later, I was in a car on the way back from a by-election when I heard the then Secretary of State for Health admit to the House that BSE could be transmitted from animals to human beings. We must not think that BSE and foot and mouth are of equivalent seriousness, as the foot and mouth outbreak did not lead directly to any human deaths.
I want to say, by way of a gentle word to the Minister, that it is not a good idea to keep on saying that the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak was the largest in Europe, or the world. I do not think that this Government, or any other, could have tackled it any better, but the truth is that they did not tackle it very well. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) is not present, as the foot and mouth outbreak was tackled well across the border in Scotland. The problems there were far smaller than in England.
I represent Carlisle, so I was at the epicentre of the outbreak. It was not very pleasant, and I accept that the problem went far beyond the loss of animals. A whole way of life was lost, and many people lost their life's work. That was very distressing.
My constituency is mainly urban, and I live in the centre of it. However, I could smell the meat singeing on the pyres all around. I vowed that we should never have to go through that again—in my constituency or anywhere else.
Part of the problem in tackling the outbreak stemmed from the fact that the previous Conservative Government had reduced the number of veterinary surgeons. If another outbreak occurred today, we would not have enough vets to deal with it. I suggested, during the 2001 outbreak, that we should establish the veterinary equivalent of the Territorial Army. Under that plan, we would have vets in reserve who could be called on in emergency. I am not sure that we have done that.
My biggest criticism of the farming industry and the Government—and the Opposition too—is that, both during the outbreak and since, everyone has avoided tackling the question of vaccination. I do not believe that we can make the country's borders secure. In 2001, the foot and mouth epidemic caused the general election to be delayed. If people wanted to create panic in this country, all they have to do is import the foot and mouth virus. That would be bioterrorism, and it could happen.
In such circumstances, it would not matter how many sniffer dogs we had at our ports. I remember asking my hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment, the hon.
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Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who in 2001 was Minister for Fisheries and the Countryside, if he knew the names of the only two dogs that we had. For the first time in my experience, he was not able to answer the question. In reality, our borders will never be secure. Although I agree that we should try our best to make them so, there will always be the chance of disease coming into the country. That is why I believe that we should make sure we never have foot and mouth again by introducing routine vaccination. It is sad that this country—under the previous Government, though I do not blame them for that—persuaded the rest of Europe away from vaccination. Unless we introduce that as policy, we will, sooner or later, have another outbreak of foot and mouth.
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