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17 Oct 2007 : Column 882
3.44 pm

Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) (PC): I follow the hon. Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones), whose constituency borders mine, and I agree with much of what he said.

Wales is quite far from the site of the foot and mouth outbreak, but as the hon. Gentleman said, it has brought the livestock industry in Wales to a standstill. From 3 August to 10 October, nothing has been able to be moved or sold and it has hit Wales particularly badly. Abattoirs such as Welsh Country Foods are saying that they do not intend to send meat for export as the conditions imposed are so onerous. As the hon. Gentleman said, 80 per cent. of Welsh ewes are classed as hill and upland breeds. Of course, they produce lighter animals. Those are normally for export and not for consumption in the UK; they are normally about 2 kg lighter than the average weight in England and Scotland. Therefore, there is little domestic demand for those light lambs. It is a crucial time: exports should be going on apace and we should be reaping the harvest, as it were.

In 2006, 1.1 million lambs were exported from Wales, with a £30 million value. That is 35 per cent. of the total Welsh lamb production. NFU Cymru has written a memorandum saying that it is essential that, following the meeting of the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health,

There was some good news in what the Secretary of State said about the six-day standstills. That is welcome, but some 200,000 store sheep are traded in Wales annually, with almost 70 per cent. of that trade occurring between August and December. In that period, 900,000 sheep, including breeding ewes, are also normally traded.

The Welsh Assembly Government have tried to put in place a light lamb scheme to go some way towards alleviating those huge problems, and they are welfare problems, regardless of what the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (David Maclean) said earlier. They are genuine welfare problems in the uplands of Wales and in Scotland—there is no getting away from it—and they are getting worse by the minute.

With regard to bluetongue, we are aware that the BTV8 vaccine is available and ready to go. I urge the Secretary of State to look at that situation because we can all see that bluetongue disease will not go away overnight. It might be stalled during a cold winter. I need not say that there is a great fear that it will be back with us in the spring. The last thing we want is to be unprepared for it. I hope that contingency plans will be put in place to deal with that. It is bound to come back.

Before I deal with the question of compensation, I make this other general point. In 2001, the previous Prime Minister, Mr. Blair, told the supermarkets that he wanted them to support the meat industry in the UK. It is now 2007. Precious little support is being offered. This is an opportunity for them to get involved properly in supporting this most important of industries. Although the Government cannot force their hand, they undoubtedly have a role in persuading
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them gently, and not so gently if necessary, to come into this void and to start to help out at what is the most important time in recent history for the agriculture industry in Wales and throughout the UK.

The agriculture industry has seen a lot of troubles in the past 10 years. I am sure that we will come through this eventually, but times are very hard and we need support. I ask the Secretary of State again to look at the question of compensation. I do not want to dwell on the statements that we have had, but it is interesting that in both statements the Secretary of State has said that the outbreak has arisen from an unusual set of circumstances and that, to reflect that, the Chief Secretary has made funds available. I take it that the unusual set of circumstances means that there could be culpability on the part of Government in due course. I happen to agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) and the hon. Member for Clwyd, West. The case has been made. We have talked in legalistic terms. It must be a strict liability issue. If someone undertakes a dangerous occupation on their land and any toxin or other danger emanates out to the public, they are liable under Rylands v. Fletcher and the rule of strict liability.

I do not condemn the Government, but I ask them to think carefully. The Secretary of State said that he has lawyers who will advise him. There are lawyers in this House as well, and the opinion has been made. [Interruption.] Is the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) laughing? Perhaps this is a laughing matter to him, but some of us care passionately about it. I respectfully advise the Secretary of State that this is a strict liability issue, and that it is therefore now time for the Government to apply pressure for compensation—on the Treasury, if that is where the money is to come from.

I spoke yesterday and the day before with the Minister in the National Assembly for Wales who has responsibility for agriculture. It is not acceptable for us in Wales to have to look for contingency funds for something that occurred due to a strict liability issue over the border. We are far away from the seat of this infection, but we are suffering as much as anybody else—perhaps more so. In the area I represent, there are many communities of hill farmers so we are suffering greatly. Diversification is not a relevant term there; it is not possible to diversify in high upland areas. We are utterly dependent on the trade in question, which has been brought to a standstill.

I ask the Secretary of State to liaise further with his opposite number in Cardiff, Elin Jones AM, Minister for Rural Affairs, and to use his good offices to try to ensure that the Treasury is receptive to an application for reasonable compensation at this stage. There are clear welfare and economic issues; there are huge issues for all of rural Wales that could, in part, be addressed.

I do not accuse the Secretary of State of cynicism; I have been careful not to do so. I believe him to be an honourable man, and I urge him to assist us in this most important of matters for both Wales and Scotland.


17 Oct 2007 : Column 884
3.52 pm

Anne Milton (Guildford) (Con): I wish to raise two main issues—why this happened and who is responsible, and the individual concerns of my farmers—but I shall start by paying tribute to Government Ministers. When the news broke on that Friday, they went to some lengths to be in touch with me. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins) received the same treatment, as did many other Surrey MPs. Ministers were vigilant about keeping in touch with all of us throughout that weekend, the following week and when the second outbreak occurred.

I also wish to state that it was a pleasure to welcome the Secretary of State to Guildford to meet some of the staff working at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs site in my constituency. I have no doubt that the Government learned a great deal from the 2001 outbreak, and their swift action on animal movements certainly had a significant impact on this outbreak.

However, I am sorry to have to say that most of my praise ends there. There has been a lot of comment about why the outbreak occurred. I wish to highlight a few remarks made in both the Health and Safety Executive report and the Spratt report. First, let me quote from the HSE report:

It is astounding that the Secretary of State cannot accept that there had been long-term leakage.

What that report goes on to say is even more shattering:

That is astonishing. It sounds a bit like a council arguing about a piece of land and who should cut the grass, with the housing department saying it is highways land and the highways department saying it is housing land. It is incredible that, in a facility that was dealing with such a dangerous virus, people were squabbling madly over who was responsible for a pipe.

Mr. Letwin: Does my hon. Friend agree that another troubling aspect of this is the suspicion, at the very least, that the reason why the two organisations were under such financial pressure was that DEFRA was very short of cash because it had been fined by the Commission as a result of the Rural Payments Agency episode?

Anne Milton: My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. It has emerged during today’s debate—I welcome it for that reason—that this was crisis management and catch-up management that, in the end, had disastrous consequences. In fact, it was a failure of management.

The Spratt report refers to an


17 Oct 2007 : Column 885

the foot and mouth disease virus—

It continues:

The reports are damning, and it is disingenuous of the Secretary of State to deny that this problem was known, and to deny that there was a failure to take action to do anything about it.

I turn to some of the points that individual farmers have raised with me. Although farmers in my constituency felt that they were dealt with quite well by DEFRA, certainly at the beginning, latterly, communication did falter. They talk about an issue of trust between DEFRA and vets and farmers, and express concern that DEFRA would not allow movement for welfare purposes unless it was backed up by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. DEFRA asked them for statistics that they had already supplied. There is a feeling that nobody is listening to them, and they get very irritated at having to supply all those statistics anyway, only to be asked for them again when the outbreak happened. They also talk about the compensation—some £12.5 million to help farmers affected by foot and mouth disease, yet the cost to the industry is estimated at £100 million.

A farmer in my constituency who deals in specialist breeds talks about the problems that such farmers face. Their cattle take much longer to fatten—they are taken right up to the 30-month mark prior to slaughter. However, foot and mouth has prevented them from slaughtering their cattle at the 30-month mark, as they are over the limit that abattoirs will take. As a result, the farmers do not get the market rate and are left out of pocket.

There is an even more damning indictment, from a farmer who has written directly to the Secretary of State. At the end of his letter, he says:

DEFRA staff—

He describes a catalogue of concerns, including poor blood-taking techniques, distress to his cattle, the inability to communicate well with DEFRA, blood test delays and, in particular, the huge delays that he encountered in getting answers on milk movements.

Although DEFRA staff—including the staff whom I and the Secretary of State met—were clearly working very hard, they were not necessarily working with the farmers or understanding their very real concerns. My farmers’ frustration at the lack of information, the poor information provided, and the sense that nobody understood their problems or was working with them, is profound. There are many lessons that need to be learned, but as has been pointed out, there needs to be further work, particularly on the airborne transmission of foot and mouth disease.


17 Oct 2007 : Column 886

Another issue to raise, which has not been touched on this afternoon, is the huge loss to charities in and around Surrey. Charities rely on a lot of this land for the holding of events to raise funds, thus they have lost a huge income over the summer.

The Secretary of State is well known to many of us in this House as a man of integrity and honour, and I am extremely grateful to him for staying in the Chamber for the duration of this debate. However, he does not realise that foot and mouth affected both Surrey and Berkshire, and his comments during his opening remarks are unbecoming of his reputation. He sounds just like a typical Minister wriggling on a hook. I am sorry to say it in these terms, but it disappoints me that he did not show more integrity during his opening remarks. I hope that he will specifically answer some of the questions that have been raised. The farmers and the many businesses associated with farming, which we must never forget, will pay a very high price for this situation. The very least that they deserve is for the Secretary of State to admit the failings of his Department.

4.1 pm

Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD): We are clearly discussing a matter of enormous concern to rural Britain, but it should also be of enormous concern to the whole country. Those of us who lived in the parts of the country that were so badly hit by the 2001 outbreak will recall the graphic and visible scenes that have been described—the burning pyres, the piles of dead bodies, the pictures of Prime Ministers in their biological suits and the closed footpaths. Thank God, we are not seeing those again. The problem is that, whereas in 2001 the highly visible nature of the outbreak meant that urban Britain—the 95 per cent. of the population that does not live in the countryside—was aware that there was a crisis, which resulted in sympathy, political support and pressure on the Government, in 2007 the consequences of foot and mouth are less than highly visible to most of the country.

All of us know that that second phase of outbreaks in September came about at the worst possible time. It was on the eve of both the Westmorland show, which is obviously highly important to us in Westmorland and Lonsdale, and the back-end sales. One farmer put it to me that one way of getting urban folks to understand the nature of the problem and the extent of the crisis is by saying that what happened to the livestock markets is the equivalent of a virus breaking out in the high streets of Britain in the last week of November and the retail sector being put out of business for six weeks over Christmas and new year. That is the gravity of the situation. I make no party political point, but merely observe that the overwhelming majority of Government Members of Parliament do not represent rural areas and thus are not being pestered by their constituents because this is not a visible problem to them. As a consequence, Ministers are perhaps quick to take visible action to deal with the outbreak of foot and mouth, but are not so quick to deal with the economic realities.

Last Monday, the Secretary of State made a statement in the House on the compensation package. In the end, the package, containing an £8.5 million uplift in hill farming allowance and an extra £4 million in additional support, was staggeringly inadequate.
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Given that many of my hill farmers have lost well in excess of £10,000 each and that, in export sales alone, the farming industry is losing £2 million a day, that compensation, although welcome in so far as it goes, is massively inadequate.

Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD): The important message for those not in a rural area is that this is not just about the jobs on the farms or about seeing the farms through one season. It is about getting the industry through the crisis and back on a sustainable footing for the whole food manufacturing industry that depends on its existence throughout the year.

Tim Farron: I thank my hon. Friend for his observation, and I agree with him. I shall give one graphic illustration of the problem. This morning, I talked to a farmer in Longsleddale in my constituency. He had been to market this morning, and for a finished fat lamb he received £28. Earlier in the year, he would have expected to have received £42, and even that would have been an inadequate sum. Prices are now at early 1980s levels, yet this is 2007.

Mr. Alan Reid: Does my hon. Friend agree that throughout the whole of Britain we need a welfare disposal scheme for light lambs and older ewes and for dairy bull calves, all with compensation? We also need a headage payment for breeding ewes to compensate for the market losses, as well as additional funding for farmers and crofters in hill farming areas.

Tim Farron: I agree with my hon. Friend that the Government should be pursuing all those measures. It would be a small price to pay, given the benefits that farming delivers for this country.

I referred to the ridiculously low prices that farmers are being offered as a consequence of the dreadful situation they are in, but we all will have observed that prices remain the same on the shelves in the supermarkets. The problem is an excess of supply over demand, and therefore disproportionate power in the hands of the buyers, who know that they have farmers in a vice. I want to take this opportunity to condemn—I hope on behalf of the whole House—the role played by many buyers and supermarkets in deliberately exploiting the weaknesses of farmers in the markets. That is a demonstration that the free market does not work. There is no invisible hand in the marketplace making things fair. We need to demonstrate our visible hand to ensure fair trade for farmers. If I may be forgiven the plug, it is a clear demonstration of the need for a market regulator in that area.

Most of the farmers in my constituency are tenants and they have tiny incomes. Only two weeks ago, I talked to a hill farmer who reminded me that he had not made a profit in the past decade and he is living off what little he has. Over that period, many of the farmers in my area have lived off historical profits and, as tenants, they have no property to fall back on.


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