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Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for giving way. I do not have much recollection of the case, but I do recollect that the state was not a party to those proceedings.
Lord Goldsmith: My Lords, indeed it was not, but that does not detract one jot from the argument which is that it is not a criminal proceeding and neither is it a conviction or holding somebody guilty of an offence when in the course of civil proceedings these matters are dealt with.
What is the standard of proof by which those issues are determined? As I said on a previous occasion—I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, may find it helpful—as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls, said in the case of In re: H, and as I have repeatedly noted, when the courts are faced with a question of serious misconduct or criminal misconduct, while they apply what is still termed "the balance of probabilities", they apply it in a way which recognises that the stronger and more serious the allegation, the less likely it is that the event occurred and hence—I quote the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls,
- "the stronger should be the evidence before the court concludes that the allegation is established on the balance of probability".
The first argument that is put forward is that this is a conviction and that there ought to be a trial by jury. It is impractical and divisive. It produces an extraordinary differential result between people who are more guilty who get away with it and those who are less guilty and do not.
The second argument that the noble and learned Lord puts forward, which he and I discussed, is his reliance on the case of Welch. Article 7 of the European Convention prohibits someone being guilty of a criminal offence on account of an act or omission which did not constitute a criminal offence when it was committed. It continues by saying that it also prohibits a heavier penalty following a criminal conviction for a criminal offence than the one applicable at the time. The Welch case makes it plain that Article 7 applies only in circumstances where one is looking at a penalty following a criminal conviction for a criminal offence. I do not say that it is distinguishable, but that it does not have anything to do with this issue. It is not following a criminal conviction, but in the course of a civil procedure. That is the very important difference between them.
Mr Welch was charged with a number of counts of conspiracy to supply Class A drugs. He was convicted on five counts and sentenced to 22 years' imprisonment. In addition to that, the penalty of a confiscation order was imposed. The court said that
that was a penalty following his conviction and so it was. That is not the same situation as when, in the course of civil proceedings, a question is raised as to whether or not recoverable property is the proceeds of crime and whether the person guilty of the crime or someone else ought to be allowed to keep it.In that case the court in Strasbourg also identified five features which it said made it a penalty. I do not want to weary your Lordships about some of them, but there is no room for argument about three of them. First, the penalty in the Welch case led to imprisonment in itself if the confiscation order was not paid. That does not happen under this part of the Bill. If the civil proceeds that the court adjudges should be paid are not paid, it is a civil debt like any other. It does not lead to imprisonment.
Secondly, in that case there were statutory assumptions to which the court referred. There are no such assumptions in Part 5 of the Bill. Thirdly, the court noted that there was a discretion in the court to adjust the order depending on its view of the culpability of the person involved. That does not arise under Part 5. The only question is whether the High Court judge is satisfied that the property is the proceeds of crime, but it is recoverable property. If it is, it goes back because the person has no right to keep it. The key point is that in Welch that was post the conviction. It was part of the process of sentencing, but that is not what is happening under Part 5 of the Bill.
For those reasons I respectfully say that the noble and learned Lord is wrong in the amendment which has been put forward. It is an unworkable, impractical and a nonsensical amendment to draw the distinction between the person who is suspected of serious conduct but who gets away with things and the person who is accepted to be lower down the food chain and who does not.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, on the Benches opposite that if the Government were forced to an amendment which accepted that it would not be possible—that would be the effect of this amendment—to pursue by the civil recovery route people who were suspected themselves of criminal misconduct, that would blow a huge hole in this Bill. It would be the exact opposite of the assurance given by the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, at Second Reading that it was the intention of the Benches opposite to make this legislation work.
I have spoken directly in relation to this amendment. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will accept the spirit in which I did so. However, the Government cannot accept the amendment and I invite him to withdraw it.
Lord Kingsland: My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord made a reference to the Opposition Front Bench, I would point out that it wants this Bill to work. That is precisely why we have made the speeches we have about Part 5 of the Bill.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, I am grateful to those noble Lords who have given me support. The
noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General is perfectly right to point out that in this amendment I have abandoned my preferred position. I believe he knows what that is. The amendment was put forward in a spirit of compromise in the hope that the Government might be able to accept it as an improvement to the Bill. That has not proved to be the case so I leave it there for the moment. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, I beg to move that consideration on Report be now adjourned. In moving this Motion, I propose that the House be re-convened not before 8.30 p.m.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
Foot and Mouth Disease
7.30 p.m.
Lord Willoughby de Broke rose to ask Her Majesty's Government on what basis they believe that the contiguous cull policy carried out during last year's foot and mouth epidemic was legal.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, my reason for introducing this Unstarred Question is that while the legality of the contiguous cull has often been questioned in the House in our debates on the Animal Health Bill and the livestock industry, as well as in the debate on a Starred Question brought forward by my noble friend the Duke of Montrose, we have not yet had a satisfactory answer to the questions put forward.
When challenged as to the legality of the cull, the Minister has given two answers. His most recent answer was in a reply to a Written Question from my noble friend Lady Byford, where he stated:
- "The Animal Health Act 1981 provides for the slaughter of animals which are infected with foot and mouth disease (FMD) or suspected of being so infected and of animals which have been in contact with affected animals or which appear to the Minister to have been in any way exposed to the infection of foot and mouth disease. This is the legal basis of the contiguous cull".—[Official Report, 20/5/02; col. WA80.]
The Minister has accurately summarised the provisions of the Act but his conclusion is quite wrong. The Act deals very specifically with animals that have been "exposed" to foot and mouth disease, not with the possibility of animals being exposed at some remote time in the future. On the best available scientific evidence, much of it from the Pirbright Institute, which is part-funded by MAFF—or DEFRA now—the vast majority of animals slaughtered under the contiguous cull policy could not have been so exposed. That is the clear result of the evidence.
Of course, that is precisely why the Minister introduced the Animal Health Bill, the amendment to the Animal Health Act, to give him the power, which was not given under the Animal Health Act, to slaughter any animal the Minister thinks should be
slaughtered, whether or not the animal had been exposed to foot and mouth disease. In other words, the power to carry out the contiguous cull.The Minister also based his assertion that the contiguous cull was legal on two court cases. In his response to a debate on the livestock industry in April, the noble Lord said:
- "Various issues were raised in the debate, the most acute of which was the legality of the cull. I shall cite just two cases: MAFF v Winslade, which we won in the English courts; and Westerhall Farms v Scottish Ministers, which we won in the Scottish courts . . . The legality of the cull is not in doubt".—[Official Report, 17/4/02; col. 983.]
The real problem with the Winslade case—and the problem that goes to the heart of the Minister's assertion that the contiguous cull has been tested in the courts—is that, for whatever reason, not all the relevant scientific evidence was made available. The most persuasive evidence, which was later to blow the Government's case completely out of the water in MAFF v Upton, was two articles written by Dr Donaldson of the Institute of Animal Health at Pirbright. The institute is one of the foremost establishments in the world dealing with foot and mouth research, and Dr Donaldson is an acknowledged expert on the subject.
Dr Donaldson's papers concerned the risk of airborne spread, which was central to the Winslade case. The Donaldson papers confirmed, first, that infected sheep could not spread infection more than 100 metres, even downwind; and, secondly, that intensified clinical surveillance would be an appropriate alternative to immediate culling. It is highly likely that had this evidence been presented to the court, the judge in the Winslade case would have come to a very different decision.
Why was this evidence not available to the court? MAFF was seeking an emergency injunction, and thus counsel for Mr Winslade had only a few hours notice to prepare her case, and Mr Winslade was virtually a prisoner on his farm because he had been served with a movement restriction notice. In cases where applications for injunctions are made and inadequate notice is given to the defendant—I understand that the relevant time period is three days—the applicant for such an injunction is obliged under the rules of civil procedure to make full and frank disclosure of all relevant facts, even if they are unfavourable to the applicant's case.
The Donaldson papers were published in the British Veterinary Record on 12th May, but had been seen by senior MAFF officials in late April. The Winslade case was heard on 22nd May, so there was plenty of time for the ministry to have put that scientific evidence to the court. Why was this crucial evidence not made available to the court? Was it because of simple incompetence, or was it deliberate? Why was I told in a Written Answer from the Minister that the ministry had complied with the civil procedure rules when submitting evidence in the Winslade case?
The critical importance of this scientific evidence was shown in the Upton case in June last year—the case of Grunty the pig, as it is known—when it led to the judge finding against MAFF, refusing it the right to appeal and awarding costs to the defendant. The Minister shakes his head, but all he has to do is to read the transcript of the trial to see that that is what swayed the judge, Mr Justice Harrison, in that case. Thus, in the absence of that scientific evidence, the Winslade decision cannot possibly be viewed as authoritative and certainly cannot be taken as the bedrock case which legalises, once and for all, the contiguous cull.
The Westerhall case, the second of the cases referred to by the Minister, gives even less support to his contention that it legitimises the contiguous cull. That decision was given on 25th April, before Dr Donaldson's papers had been published—although, again, it is likely that senior MAFF officials had seen that evidence. Dr Donaldson's research is, after all, part-funded by MAFF so they would certainly have seen drafts. In any case, the Westerhall case was dealt with as a three-kilometre cull case. Without the benefit of the Donaldson scientific evidence, again it is extremely doubtful whether the Westerhall case can be cited as justifying the contiguous cull policy.
The real bedrock case—if the Minister is looking for a bedrock case for or against the contiguous cull—was the Upton case, where Dr Donaldson's scientific evidence was produced by the defending solicitors. This won the day for the defendants and, as I said, costs were awarded against the ministry with no right of appeal. The proof of that pudding is that following the decision in the Upton case—the first case based on correct science—the ministry, when faced with a legal challenge on the contiguous cull, almost invariably backed down, confining itself to blackguarding the farmers and lawyers concerned.
The contiguous cull was a vastly expensive and unnecessary disaster. As Dr Donaldson said last week when giving evidence to the EU inquiry:
- "There was no justification for the 3Km or the CC policy, which were both novel and untested".
- "the barbaric conduct in Britain last year was a disgrace to humanity".
I conclude by asking the Minister to answer the following simple questions. First, whether he accepts that relevant scientific evidence was not put before the court in the Winslade case, even though that evidence was available to and read by the ministry. Secondly, why that evidence was not put before the court in the Winslade case. Thirdly, whether that evidence had been received before the decision in the Westerhall case. Fourthly, whether he now accepts that those
decisions would not have gone the ministry's way had that evidence not been suppressed. Fifthly, and finally, can the noble Lord say why the ministry never fought a case for an injunction to enable a contiguous cull to proceed after the decision in the Upton case?If the Minister is unable to answer these questions today, perhaps he will at least undertake to write to me and put a copy of his answers in the Library of the House.
7.40 p.m.
Lord Monro of Langholm: My Lords, I am glad that my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke has given us this opportunity to raise yet again the problems of foot and mouth. Farming is still in crisis. The price of milk is going through the floor, and the price of lamb, beef and grain is at rock bottom. Generally, farmers have a great lack of confidence in the future, with a Secretary of State who is so keen to adjust the CAP—which inevitably means that there will be less for farming but more for the environment. No one understands how we shall get the same amount of money out of the environment as we do out of production.
One cannot condense into the seven minutes allowed all the recent reports on foot and mouth: the results of the European Union inquiry, the report of the Royal Society which is to be published next month, and particularly the National Audit Office report which is so damaging to the Government. The NAO report is critical of the Government for not having made sufficient contingency plans for a major outbreak such as we had to put up with last year.
I farm in Scotland, at the very heart of the area in the Borders where foot and mouth broke out. I lost my sheep flock under the three-kilometre cull. Like all my neighbours, we practised isolation—biosecurity, as it is termed. We locked the gates, the children did not go to school, and we hoped that we should all survive. But on Easter Saturday last year, the ministry vet telephoned, in the afternoon my own vet came to inspect the sheep and the valuer arrived. On Easter Sunday, the sheep were all killed—the ewes, the tups and the lambs. It was sympathetically and humanely done, but it was a great personal disaster for the farm.
All this happened too quickly for us to protest. Indeed, none of us would have protested—we believed that this was being done on ministry advice in order to help to stop the spread of foot and mouth as quickly as possible. However, it is important to note the difference between the contiguous cull—a cull that takes place next door to an infected farm: just over the farm dyke, the fence or the hedge—and the three-kilometre cull, where the farm could be two to three kilometres away from an outbreak of the disease.
The National Audit Office has described both decisions—on the contiguous cull and on the three-kilometre cull—as "highly controversial". I hope that in replying the Minister will expand on how he treated the differences between the two categories.
Under the Animal Health Act 1981, the Minister has a power to slaughter under four headings. The first three are: infected animals—of course, I agree; animals suspected of being infected—I agree; and animals in contact with infected animals—I accept that all those would have to be slaughtered. But the fourth ground—which the Minister set out in a letter, for which I am grateful—is if animals,
- "appear to the Minister to have in any way been exposed to infection".
This is an important point. Of the 650,000 head slaughtered in Scotland, 77 per cent were slaughtered under the terms of the three-kilometre cull; 20 per cent under the terms of the contiguous cull—animals right next door to the infection; and 3 per cent on a suspicion. So the vast majority of the stock killed in Scotland were killed as a result of a decision under the Animal Health Act and were not, in fact, next door to farms that had foot and mouth.
My noble friend mentioned the Westerhall case. The farm was very near to my home, and the case involved a hefted flock on a hill farm. As the Minister knows, hefted flocks stay put on their area of land on a hill farm. They do not wander over the march fence or the march boundaries. They know where they live and they stay there. Westerhall was on the opposite side of the hill to a farm where there was a contiguous cull. In the view of all the local farmers there was only the remotest chance of that hill flock having been in contact with another flock. The decision of the Court of Session in Scotland was that they had to be culled. That is the kind of case that we need to examine carefully to see whether we got it right. The majority of practical farmers thought that in that case we got it wrong.
In all of this, the State Veterinary Service is desperately important. It is unbelievable to me that the Government are cutting back on this UK issue. The Minister is responsible. According to the National Audit Office report, the Animal Health Act is devolved to Scotland—except, according to Appendix 5 of the report, the State Veterinary Service, which is on a UK basis as animal disease is no respecter of national boundaries. So the Minister at DEFRA is responsible for the National Veterinary Service. I want to know what the position is in Scotland and in England relative to the reduction in the National Veterinary Service as reported widely in the press a week or so ago.
It is important that the United Kingdom co-operates and co-ordinates throughout on the issue of foot and mouth. At present, there is something of a split between Scotland and England. Last week, Scotland produced a consultation document which all farmers in Scotland feel is far too complacent. For instance, the Army is to be called in only as a last resort. Yet if the Army had not been called in belatedly by the Government during the last outbreak, heaven knows where the outbreak would have ended up. The
Army saved the Government, and saved farming, from a real crisis last year. That should be recorded. The Scottish Executive is very wrong if it tries to make the Army merely a backstop in relation to foot and mouth.I hope that the Government will think closely about the distribution of information during a foot and mouth outbreak. Last time, there were a number of holes in the information that people received. That must never happen again. Lastly, I hope that the Minister will say something about exports to this country. The Government continue to say that they are doing something, but, so far as we know, nothing is happening at ports and airports. So let us have a response on that point and let us never have foot and mouth in this country again.
7.47 p.m.
The Duke of Montrose: My Lords, coming from north of the Border, my approach is perhaps slightly different from that of my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke, but many of our questions focus on the same kind of issues. First, I declare an interest as someone who has a livestock farm and who spent only 18 hours under the terms of a Notice A form when my farm was a suspected infected place. We were very relieved to have that restriction lifted. When it came to establishing the view of the courts in the latest outbreak, the Scots may not have been the first to go to law, but they did so quite early on—on 25th April. My noble friend Lord Monro referred to the Westerhall case. It turns out to be important, because much of that judgment was relied on in the further case used by the Government; namely, the Winslade case.
My noble friend Lord Monro described the situation on Westerhall farm: the fact that the boundary it shared with the infected farm at Bush of Ewes was a 400-metre high piece of boggy ground known as Meg's Shank. The owner was very nearly certain that there was no chance that any sheep were likely to have been in that area given the time of year and the management of sheep at that time. Furthermore, at the time in question the infected farm was to the north east of the farm and the wind was blowing from the south west, away from Westerhall.
This case, as my noble friend Lord Willoughby de Broke pointed out, pre-dated the publication by Professor Donaldson on 12th May in the Veterinary Record concerning wind-borne infection. But, on the evidence produced, the judge came to the view that the Secretary of State "had grounds to believe" that infection could have occurred and that was why he gave the judgment that he did.
The important point about the Westerhall case was that the judge did attempt to sort out some of the other issues raised. One was that European Directive 85/511 laid down control measures which were not,
- "intended to be comprehensive and exhaustive".
The other critical point made in that judgment was that, however rigorously enforced the policy was, it should not be so rigid as to be incapable of delivering
a proportionate response in a particular case. The fact that the petitioners had been given the opportunity to argue for an exception was regarded as sufficient proof that there was flexibility. The judgment also ruled out any infringement of the European Convention on Human Rights in the implementation of the cull if, as the judge considered at that point, it was carried out legally. Of course, if it turned out that the cull was carried out illegally, the human rights question would be thrown open again. However, there was no examination in that case of whether the Minister's judgment on whether there was a risk should be subject to inquiry by the courts. That may need to be looked at a bit more carefully.While referring extensively to Lord Carloway's judgment, the Winslade case seems much more particular, centred around whether the Minister had grounds to suspect infection in certain named circumstances, so it does not produce a great deal of precedent for other cases.
The Grunty the pig case came back to the position that contiguous cull cases must be considered on their own merits, particularly if the farmer questions the position. It does not seem to me that the whole cull was illegal and that every farmer had the right to go to law in his own case. With the powers that these cases regard as legitimate, I find it difficult to see why the Government do not find that they have sufficient powers at present for executing a proper control of foot and mouth disease.
I have a question for the Minister arising out our debate on 8th May. It is very similar to a point made by my noble friend Lord Monro. Is it the Government's view that the contiguous cull was somehow under different rules from what was described as "slaughter within a 3-kilometre radius", which was used in the Westerhall case—the 3 km cull, in shortened form—or are the two terms interchangeable?
The Animal Health Bill, which we considered recently, contained a vast extension of the Minister's powers, as if that was where the fault lay. The fault was much more that the rules for the cull were badly judged. The policy was too widely and unthinkingly drawn up and was bound to lead to irrational and over-vigorous application by field operatives, even those of a fairly high level of authority. History can now tell what it was like when let loose by those charged with implementing it at each farm.
The Minister has argued recently in this House that many of the powers envisaged in the Animal Health Bill were necessary for carrying out the Government's responsibilities on the control of TSEs. Foot and mouth disease is very different, in particular as, with TSEs, the Government seem to see no practical difference between an EU regulation concerning suspect animals and a UK one concerning susceptible ones.
Having got that element out of the way, why does the Minister still think that additional powers are necessary for controlling foot and mouth disease?
7.54 p.m.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I have little to add to the three erudite speeches that have cast such doubt on the legality of the so-called contiguous cull—or mass slaughter, as it obviously was—so I shall go a little further and ask what would have been the point of the slaughter even if it had been legal. It is surely not right to do something incredibly cruel and ruinously expensive just because one believes—wrongly, as it appears in this case—that one has the legal power to do it.
As I understand it, there are two official answers to my question. I should like to check them with the Minister. The first is that we are in the European Union, so we must obey its common agricultural policy and all its rules about meat exports and imports and we must respect its dislike of vaccination. Will the noble Lord confirm that that is the legal position?
The second official answer is that our meat exports are so valuable to our farming industry and to the national economy that they must be protected at almost any cost.
We now know from the National Audit Office that these two policies cost the British taxpayer £8,000 million in last year's foot and mouth epidemic—£3,000 million to our farming industry and £5,000 million to our tourism industry. Are our meat exports so valuable? Not according to Written Answers that I received from the Minister on 24th April and 25th March this year. They reveal that the total value of our exports of meat and meat preparations, including poultry meat, amounted to a mere £615 million in 2000, which was before the foot and mouth epidemic started. The Minister also revealed that the value of our corresponding meat imports for 2000 was almost four times greater than our exports, at £2,417 million. The answer that the Government refused to vaccinate and embarked on such costly and cruel mass slaughter to protect our meat export trade does not appear to stand up. I repeat, in a normal year we spend roughly four times as much on meat imports as we get from our meat exports—about £1,800 million more. Rather than going through all that misery and expense again, would it matter if we vaccinated, even at the cost of some of our exports, which we could presumably eat here and import correspondingly less?
What about the other official answer, to the effect that we had to avoid vaccination and inflict all that immense damage on our farming industry and economy because we have to obey EU law in this as in every other way? What is the legal position? Here again, the Government's figures make our continued adherence to the common agricultural policy look crazy. Your Lordships are aware that the burden of the CAP falls on our consumers through higher food prices and on our taxpayers through tax-financed support. The net annual cost of the CAP is therefore the difference between the sum of those two costs and what our farmers get back from the CAP. On that basis, the Government's Answers in another place—for instance, on 25th November 1999 and 8th January 2001—indicate a minimum net annual cost to the
British taxpayer of the CAP in 1998 of £6,600 million. The OECD put it rather higher, at £9,400 million. Even those figures include a credit from the EU of £2,400 million, which was part of the £5 billion-odd repaid by the EU from the £10 billion-odd gross that the UK paid to the EU.Let us settle for the minimum figure of £6,600 million per annum, as calculated by the Government. Let us even concede—although I have no reason to do so—that the cost of the CAP may have come down since 1998 and may now be, shall we say, a mere £5,000 million per annum. That is still a colossal figure. To get it into perspective, £5,000 million would pay for about eight new district hospitals—the land bought and the hospitals built, equipped and staffed to run indefinitely. That is the sort of money that we are throwing away every year on the CAP alone. If we did not do so, surely we could use at least some of the resulting saving to look after our farmers and our environment, with several thousand million pounds per annum to spare.
Against such figures, why is the meat export trade held to be so valuable? Why do the Government think it is worth staying in the common agricultural policy? In short, why do we not get out of the CAP and why do we not vaccinate?
7.59 p.m.
Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, I shall not follow the noble Lord's remarks about the CAP. If we boil down the debate, it is about whether the contiguous cull was legal. The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, has given a forensic analysis of the court cases. I cannot argue because I do not have the detailed information. However, it seems that the interpretation of words such as "infected" and "affected" is a part of the maze of information surrounding the regulations made possible originally by the Animal Health Act 1981.
The fact is that 6.5 million animals were destroyed, about 1.25 million as a direct result of the contiguous cull. Depending on how one interprets the figures, it is possible to claim that a larger number of animals were destroyed. We lost a large proportion of our ewe flock and a massive number of animals, the cost running into many billions of pounds. In my part of Powys we lost 155,000 animals; 66,000 were contiguously culled. The interesting question is how those animals will be replaced. Much more dependence will be placed on meat imports as we no longer have our own animals. Although I am a firm supporter of the EU, I am very alarmed by its proposals to increase, for example, the quotas of Argentinean beef. As we know, foot and mouth is endemic in many parts of Argentina. I do not believe that those proposals should be given effect. Surely, we must maintain precautionary measures in relation to any country where foot and mouth is endemic.
The 2001 foot and mouth outbreak was a very traumatic time. The outbreak was UK wide, but the worst hit areas were probably Cumbria, Devon and Dumfriesshire, with my own area of Powys fairly close
behind. A massive number of sheep were culled in our hills, many of them in contiguous culls. I shall give but one example of my worries about the contiguous cull.One cull was conducted primarily at the Royal Welsh Showground, but subsequently the sheep proved not to be infected. The suspicion arose that they had the disease because of a visual assessment by a 25-year-old South African veterinarian. I can just about accept that. What I cannot accept is that the animals of two neighbours on the other side of the river were consequently contiguously culled. The cull spread to Mynydd Eppynt, which was then declared an infected area. It was then decided to establish a mass burial site at Mynydd Eppynt. We fought that plan for a fortnight and were eventually successful. The fact, however, is that the area had no foot and mouth. The case shows how a contiguous cull can move sideways until a much more serious situation develops.
We shall have to consider not only the powers in the Animal Health Act 1981, but the recent outbreak and what other powers are needed. In their new Bill, the Government are requesting increased powers of entry which could be quite traumatic for farmers. As has been said, animals which appear to have been exposed to foot and mouth disease are subject to culling. The Minister has said that the contiguous cull was "necessary to contain" the disease and that "apparently" healthy animals were culled on neighbouring farms to prevent the disease spreading. In an outbreak as large as that in 2001, such a policy becomes a very emotive issue. I say that as one who lived through the 1967 outbreak in the north of England. In the legislation proposed this year, the Government are asking for the power to slaughter and for increased powers of entry and enforcement. However, the 1981 Act already allows the Government to slaughter any animals appearing to have been exposed to foot and mouth.
In June 2001, the policy was to slaughter infected animals within 24 hours of confirmation and contiguously culled animals within 48 hours. Animals on holdings that had close contact with infected holdings were slaughtered as dangerous contacts. There were 69 appeals against slaughter, most of which were on the basis of misdiagnosis. Although the main slaughter criteria were based on controlling the disease among animals at risk, I believe that that is a subjective interpretation of the law. The legislation provides that such action can be taken "if he"—the Minister—"thinks fit".
The new Bill seeks to address the issue of whether the action in 2001 was taken on a satisfactory legal basis—namely the previous Act. As we have heard, the point was tested in the courts, although I shall not address that issue now. The Government say that they require greater enforcement powers in relation to future foot and mouth outbreaks. That suggests to me that they were already sailing very close to the wind in the 2001 crisis.
According to the criteria, vaccinated animals can in future be slaughtered. The Government also require the ability to take fast-track action. The main objective
is to eliminate disease. However, the culling of apparently healthy animals as a firebreak is very difficult for farmers and their families. There are some very important points to consider. Why do we not have a method to test instantly? Although it would be a technological breakthrough, why cannot we ask Pirbright to devise a way of determining within an hour whether an animal is positive? If we could do that, we should certainly be able to slaughter infected animals well before the 24-hour limit. Things got out of control in 2001.
Surely, we also need a major contingency plan that includes a sufficient number of vets. However, I do not blame the Government for the shortage. In 1980, there were about 623 vets, whereas, as we know, there were just under 300 in 2000-01. Most of those vets were lost in the 1980s and early 1990s. We need to return that number to 620 to 700 to be able to tackle foot and mouth. About six years ago, I said that we would not be able to cope with a foot and mouth epidemic. Unfortunately, that turned out to be true.
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