Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
WEDNESDAY 20 JUNE 2007
MR MEURIG
RAYMOND, MR
JAN ROWE,
MR MARTIN
HAWORTH, MS
CATHERINE MCLAUGHLIN
AND PROFESSOR
ROSIE WOODROFFE
Q200 Chairman: I appreciate that?
Mr Raymond: It is going to take
some time.
Q201 Chairman: The reason I asked
that question is that our earlier witnesses felt there was merit
for a period of time and reflection on the data. We are aware
of political events which are going to be occurring next week
and, in terms of the time for public and Parliamentary scrutiny,
we have got about a month left; so I suppose what I am looking
for is some steer from the Union as to whether you would be happy
if hard and fast decisions were taken within a month or whether,
in fact, it would be better, given the length of time this problem
has been around, to perhaps reflect for a few months before hard
and fast views were arrived at?
Mr Raymond: Before I ask Martin,
I would suggest from a farming point of view that the farming
community would want decisions sooner rather than later. They
really had been led to believe that this was going to be a report
that was going to deliver a change in strategy that was going
to help to eliminate the disease. From an organisational point
of view (and our professional people have to study this report
from a timetable), Martin, perhaps you could comment.
Mr Haworth: I think the important
thing would be to take a decision in principle to have a comprehensive
strategy to eliminate the disease. Clearly the methodology and
techniques would require a lot of discussion between the industry,
and that certainly could not be done in a month, that would require
perhaps quite a long period of elaboration of a detailed strategy,
but I think the important thing from the farming community's point
of view is that a clear signal is given that we are going to move
forward to a strategy.
Q202 Chairman: I appreciate that,
and I think we have gained some understanding of the very real
human dimension of this, never mind the economic one, which again
you have underscored, for the farming community, but what I am
trying to get clear in my mind is this. The Minister, whoever
that person is, has got a piece of solidly based scientific analysis,
peer group reviewed, which says that culling is not a realistic
alternative. That is the information that the ISG have come up
with. You guys are saying, "Well, we have got to spend time
looking at it." If you are going to be able to produce an
alternative body of evidence argument, there has got to be a bit
more rigour about it than an opinion, because Meurig gave us the
view, quite rightly, from the front-line of what deeply frustrated
farmers feel, and I can understand that. As I said on the radio
today, they must have had steam coming out of their ears when
they read this, because they have to live with it every day of
the week, but a minister has got to have a solid basis to come
to a conclusion once and for all. So, I come back. How are you
going to develop the methodology to give you a firm footing to
argue against this piece of science, this report?
Mr Haworth: First of all, I would
like to come back to the comment I was about to make before, which
was the ISG report has been circulating in Defra in draft for
some time. We have never seen it but the persistent echo that
we got back from those who had was that this report was going
to show that 100 square kilometre culls were not big enough and
that the conclusion is that, if you are going to have a culling
strategy, it needs to be done over a larger area and be done persistently
and over a long period of years. That is what we understood to
be in the report. It seems to us (and this returns directly to
Meurig's first comment) that this report has been slanted at the
last moment to read to give a definite steer against culling.
Q203 Mr Drew: That is not true. Come
on. Let us get real. If you talk to anyone from the ISG, and we
have talked to them on numerous occasions, it was absolutely clear,
besides the fact that they were even more adamant at the end—we
knew where they were going to—they were going to come up
with that rationale. It is not true to say they suddenly changed
their minds.
Mr Haworth: If that were true,
everybody, including me, never having seen a draft of the report,
why was it the case that everybody that we talked to said that
this is likely to be the conclusion?
Q204 Mr Drew: They are all spinning,
that is why, and that has not helped things, has it? Everybody
has been spinning on this report.
Mr Haworth: How is that going
to help? To whose benefit would that have been?
Q205 Mr Drew: It has not helped at
all. In other words, if people had actually waited until the ISG
report had come out, they could have seen this trend. It is absolutely
clear from the reports that we have done, we have our criticism
of the ISG, we have our criticism of some of the ways in which
they have applied the test, but no-one could criticise the direction
in which they were travelling.
Mr Raymond: Can I support Martin
on that, because there was that one weekend where there was the
article in The Sunday Times, there was an article, I believe,
in The Daily Telegraph, there was an article in The
Farming Press.
Q206 Mr Drew: They were wrong, were
they not?.
Mr Raymond: They were categoric
that there was going to be movement, there were going to be decisions
on the back of this report. If you are in the farming community
and you had been led to believe that there was going to be a change
of policy, it did give the industry and the people some hope.
Something happened between those articles and the report. Whether
it was spinning or whether we were sent up a merry avenue, I honestly
do not know.
Q207 Mr Drew: Not if you talk to
the ISG?
Mr Raymond: The impression for
the farming community leading up to the launch of this report
was totally different.
Mr Haworth: If the report had
been presented in that way, which I think would still have been
consistent with the results and the facts, that it would be possible
to consider constructing a cull on a different basis but it would
have to be over a bigger area, et cetera, then you would not have
been asking the question how could a minister now make a decision
on it?
Q208 Mr Williams: I think we are
all wrestling with the report, and the Chairman has already quoted
one sentence out of it. I think, if I had a criticism of the report,
it would be that while the science on the tests that were done
was good, in terms of looking at other culling operations there
was a suggestion, because the edge effect gets less as you get
bigger, that it was worth looking at then; but then they extrapolated
it to say that that was impossible practically because of all
the costs of doing the experimental work that was done. I think
the NFU missed a real trick. The NFU should have stepped up to
the plate and said, "In practical terms this can be achieved
because we can persuade our members to undergo the training, welfare,
ecology and whatever to get that work done, because if it is only
a practical problem, then that can be achieved, if it is a scientific
problem, then that cannot be overcome." Surely the NFU really
missed a trick?
Mr Raymond: Can I pick that up,
because we are moving from the science to the practicalities of
a cull, and I will to return our seven-point plan. Right across
the industry only last August (and I would suggest that we forward
a copy of the seven-point plan to yourselves—I am not going
to read it all out now) we were talking here about sitting down
with Government, forming partnerships in given areas with vets,
with the SVS. Here is a professional group of people, it was talked
upon earlier, the SVS, the vets on the ground, here we have organisations,
highly professional people who are of the same view as us. If
we are going to move this argument forward, they want to be part
of this partnership. So, I would suggest to you, Roger, that we
have put our plan to ministers, we have put our plan to officials
in Government, this has been publicised and we have argued this
all the way through, and that plan is still on the table. We are
prepared to pick this plan up and work with Government and officials
at any time, and the same is said for the veterinary profession
and all other organisations around the farming industry.
Mr Rowe: If I could add to that.
I think part of what we have got to look at thoroughly is the
cost-benefit analysis, which actually probably drew a lot of the
decision-making that John Bourne finally came to, and I think
we would actually dispute that, but the difficulty is having hard
evidence to come up with different figures. If one looks at the
figures that have been put in for the cost of culling, they seem
extremely high. If you had significantly lower culling costs,
which I think, obviously, would be the case if the farming community
got involved in it, and you had much greater benefits in terms
of a more efficient culling, reducing TB levels in cattle, you
could very quickly change that cost-benefit analysis to be very
much more favourable than it appears to be based on the type of
culling they did and the cost of doing it.
Q209 Chairman: I am going to do something
a little bit unusual now. You have made a number of comments about
the ISG. It so happens that Professor Woodroffe of the ISG is
with us, and for the basis of dealing with the factual observations
that you put forward, I am going to ask Professor Woodroffe if
she would not mind coming forward and commenting particularly
on the methodological conclusions. I do not want us to get into
a sort of debate, but there are some questions about the facts,
particularly with reference to the way conclusions were drawn,
which I think might be helpful. I hope the NFU do not mind, but
the ISG have been mentioned. If, Professor Woodroffe, you could
concentrate, and thank you for agreeing to do this, on some of
the facts about methodology and the way that you came to your
conclusions just to put on the record the ISG's response to the
important point which the National Farmers' Union have made. I
am sorry to bounce this on you out of the blue, but, as you are
here, it would be quite useful. The NFU can tell me if I am wrong,
but there was a sort of implication that somehow you had started
out going one way but, towards the end of the game, you had been
leaned on and come to conclusions which were somewhat different
from the impressions as to what your conclusions were that had
been gained by virtue of various public insights. Mr Haworth is
nodding, and it is reassuring that I am not misinterpreting you.
Perhaps you would like to start there. Were you nobbled?
Professor Woodroffe: Allow me
to preface my remarks by saying that I came here purely as a tourist.
Q210 Chairman: Well, this is the
ultimate tourist experience.
Professor Woodroffe: I feel like
the person who has been pulled out of the audience to play Carmen!
In response to your question, "Were we nobbled?", I
would say, no, we certainly were not. Any of you who have met
Professor Bourne and other members of the ISG would understand
what a challenge that would be. I should also add, in my role
here as a tourist, that, of course, the other ISG members are
aware that I am here but I certainly am not here as a representative
on their authority.
Q211 Chairman: Let me make it very
clear that we accept entirely that you may wish to respond in
a personal capacity, that obviously the ISG as a collective may
not have a line, but you do have the benefit of being part of
our panel of four witnesses on Monday, you were part of the whole
exercise and you are better acquainted with how the ISG operated
and came to its conclusions than anybody else. The points that
have been raised are of a technical nature. There is, if you like,
a separate agenda of the politics and the way we go forward, and
I am not asking to you comment in any way, shape or form on that,
but I am anxious that we clear up, from the methodological point
of view, the ISG's response to some very important points that
have been raised by the NFU.
Professor Woodroffe: I certainly
can say that we were not nobbled. I think that perhaps one of
the issues that may have caused, confusion is too strong a word,
but there is a difference between the way that one writes a scientific
paper (and this is something we discussed in our evidence session
on Monday) and the way that one writes a report which is aimed
at a more general readership. So the phrasing that one uses in
writing a scientific paper is very, very cautious. If one says
in a scientific paper, "This raises serious concerns about
the potential role that badger culling can play in future control
of cattle TB in Britain", which is the sort of thing that
we say in the final paragraph of every scientific paper we have
written over the last two years, that in science speak means,
"We do not think this looks promising. We think it is very
unlikely this is going to help", and as our conclusions firmed
up and our data became greater, more numerous, our confidence
intervals reduced, our certainty became greater, so over the course
of those years you will have seen a strengthening of the language,
culminating in what you see here today, but this is certainly
not something we were pressurised to change by any party whatsoever.
This is the unanimous view, and I can say that this is something
that the ISG speak on with one voice.
Q212 Chairman: Can I ask one practical
thing. Refresh my memory, because some comments are being made
about the cost-benefit analysis. What you seem to say is that,
even on a large scale basis, culling is not worth it, but that
couples two different things: (1) the ability to control a disease
by a process of removal of infected animals and (2) an economic
appraisal of the results. I had thought that one of your conclusions
was that, if you made the area big enough, culling would have
a contributory element to controlling the spread of bovine TB.
So, putting aside the cost-benefit analysis, am I right in saying
that, if you make the area big enough, you could see, I think
it was a 23% drop, was it not?
Professor Woodroffe: What I would
say to that is you are absolutely right. In disease control terms,
if you make the area very large, the benefit that you see in the
area that you actually cull begins to dominate the system to the
extent that they offset the detrimental effects outside, and that
includes caveats about having to repeat it over several years.
There is an issue about time as well as space. If I can finish
answering that, I think, yes, we absolutely agree and recognise
that in disease control terms, if done in the way that it was
performed in the trial, if you just expanded that space, that
is what we expect. The important point to bear in mind, though,
is when you do that expansion it depends absolutely on that caveat
about "if it was as it was done in the course of the trial".
The cost that I think really needs to be taken into account, or
that the ISG thinks needs to be taken into account, is the cost
of "if you do not do it as it was done in the trial",
therefore if you do not do it with the level of resource and the
level of focus and attention of a dedicated team.
Q213 Chairman: So, if there is an
area for debate and discussion, it is a methodological one as
well as an economic one.
Professor Woodroffe: Yes.
Q214 Chairman: But in terms of the
focus, in other words if you do what you did in the trial—
Professor Woodroffe: Yes.
Q215 Chairman: —then there
is a potential for reducing the incidence of bovine TB. I am going
to ask another question that follows from that. If you were to
couple that with the kind of rigorous testing and movement controls
to which you also refer, you made an important point (which I
recall) on Monday, which was, in the context of movement controls,
you thought that under certain circumstances you could get on
top of the spread of the disease; in other words you would start
seeing the incidence coming down. I think my question as the layman
is that, if you coupled very rigorous movement controls and testing
with the kind of culling arrangement that we have just discussed
over a big enough area, do you see the graph of incidence really
starting to come down? Can you put the two together and come to
a conclusion?
Professor Woodroffe: I have to
say here I am speaking in my private capacity and with the acknowledgement
that I am a badger ecologist and a wildlife disease expert.
Q216 Chairman: Before you answer,
if you feel uncomfortable about answering, I would say stop, but
if you want to go on we would love to hear you.
Professor Woodroffe: No, no. I
think I can comment. All that I will say is that we have not—.
One issue that has been raised is that, as you will notice, the
level of experimental work done on the badger side at the instigation
of the study was much more extensive than the work done on cattle.
So, it is very clear that the cattle recommendations are deliberately
less specific because the volume of data that we have on the cattle
side is not as great, and Professor Bourne has given on the record
the historical reasons for that. So, we have not explored in any
quantitative way, we have not tried to extrapolate combining cattle
and badger culling approaches.
Chairman: Mr Gray wanted to ask a specific
question.
Mr Gray: I am absolutely delighted to
hear your protestations that you were not nobbled. It would be
quite wrong if you were, because it would be astonishing if you
came along and answered the Chairman's rather rude question, if
I may say so, Chairman, but there is definitely a difference in
tone between what Professor Bourne said in his letter dated January
2006, where he made it perfectly plain that, under certain circumstances,
a mass cull would be beneficial and, indeed, the conversation
we have been having even this afternoon and Monday where you equally
indicated that there are circumstances—a wider area—where
an intensive cull would be beneficial, leaving aside costs and
all that. There is a very great difference between those kinds
of flavours and the actual report itself, where the report makes
no comment at all about there being any benefit in culling. He
was slightly (and was very, very clear) anti-cull. Just before
we move on to the question, even as recently as 3 June when the
letter from the Secretary of State went round saying that co-ordinated
efficient culling over large areas might work, there were indications
that it might, so let ask me this question. I know there have
been quite a large number of drafts of the report over a number
of months. How significantly different is the final printed version
of the report to the first draft that you saw?
Mr Drew: Did Alastair Campbell have anything
to do with that?
Q217 Mr Gray: Alastair Campbell has
left now.
Professor Woodroffe: Nobody even
resembling Alastair Campbell has been anywhere near it.
Q218 Mr Gray: How different is the
final one to the first one? Were there significant changes over
the course of discussions on the report?
Professor Woodroffe: No, there
were not. The way the report was written was that the chapters
were written as freestanding chapters with one ISG member taking
the lead on each one. Obviously, we started with the data ones
and then the interpretation of those were built up once we had
really produced a coherent review of the data that were in place,
having got the final numbers on the impacts of badger culling
on TB incidence in cattle. We finalised those numbers having historically—.
I think this is one thing that is important to note. To date all
we have been talking about was percentages, 23% here and 29% there,
and we were being told actually by Professor McInerney, who is
the economist on the ISG, that 23% is not very useful to deciding
economics and policy.
Q219 Mr Gray: My question is not
so much about the science and the detail, my question is about
the conclusion and the structure of the report. My understanding
was that the first draft was pretty much the same as the printed
one, is that right, in terms of general thrust?
Professor Woodroffe: Certainly.
If you are talking, for example, about chapter ten, the policy
options, which is probably the thing that you are most interested
in, the first draft looks pretty much identical to the final draft.
|
