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The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Turner of Camden): My Lords, I must tell your Lordships that if Amendment No. 12 is carried, I cannot call Amendment No. 13 because of pre-emption.

Baroness Byford moved Amendment No. 12:



"( ) No order may be made under subsection (4) unless a draft of the order has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament."

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 40. Disease of any kind is costly and emotionally racking. In the normal course of events, it is dealt with case by case in an atmosphere

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of practised care. When disease assumes epidemic proportions, regular routines are superseded. Regional and national priorities take precedence and obviously the Government take the lead. Whatever happens, Parliament should be required to examine the proposed actions and do its best to ensure that they are timely, proportionate, well managed and even-handed.

The Bill uses the positive resolution procedure for orders authorising slaughter to prevent the spread of disease, orders instigating vaccination against foot and mouth and orders for testing samples from animals possibly affected by diseases other than foot and mouth. Why, then, have the Government chosen to water down the effectiveness of Parliament's scrutiny on three issues: compensation for the slaughtered or vaccinated animals; orders under the scrapie provisions; and the additional diseases on the list in the schedule?

Will the Minister clarify the situation? I do not see why some issues require positive resolutions and others fall under the negative resolution procedure. The aim of the amendments is to tease out the Government's thinking. I beg to move.

7.15 p.m.

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, obviously, during the drafting of a Bill there has to be discussion about which parliamentary procedure is most appropriate for individual provisions. We felt that the negative resolution procedure was the most appropriate level of scrutiny for both the issues highlighted by the noble Baroness.

The noble Baroness referred to the need for matters to be dealt with in a timely way. That is one factor. However, some parliamentary scrutiny is retained. It is a matter of judgment.

The House has the benefit of the considerations of the delegated powers scrutiny committee. The fact that the committee did not object to the provision shows that it understood, on balance, the judgment that was taken.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her response. I have to ask again whether the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has examined the Bill since it was altered in Committee, or are we assuming that it considered only the Bill as originally designed?

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, my understanding is that the provisions to which the noble Baroness refers are not new and therefore the delegated powers scrutiny committee has already had an opportunity to consider them.

Baroness Byford: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

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Lord Whitty moved Amendment No. 13:


    Page 3, line 4, leave out "(4)" and insert "(4B)"

On Question, amendment agreed to.

[Amendment No. 14 not moved.]

Earl Peel had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 15:


    After Clause 3, insert the following new clause—


"COMPENSATION FOR VACCINATED ANIMALS WHICH ARE NOT SLAUGHTERED
In the 1981 Act the following section is inserted after section 16A (as inserted by section 3 above)—
"16B Compensation for vaccinated animals which are not slaughtered
(1) This section applies to any animal which has been treated with vaccine for the purpose of preventing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease or such other disease as the Secretary of State may by order specify under section 16A of this Act, and which the Secretary of State has not caused to be slaughtered.
(2) For any animal to which this section applies the Secretary of State must pay compensation in respect of any diminution in the value of the animal which is attributable to the treatment of the animal with vaccine.""

The noble Earl said: My Lords, I have spoken to the amendment and I moved it earlier, but I should like to take this opportunity to reply to what the Minister said. I was a little disappointed—

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I believe that the noble Earl has to move his amendment in order to have it before the House. He may not speak to it unless it has been moved.

Earl Peel: My Lords, I moved the amendment earlier.

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, the noble Earl spoke to the amendment, but he did not move it.

Earl Peel: My Lords, in that case, I am sure that the noble Baroness is absolutely right. In proposing the amendment, I shall respond to the comments made by the Minister.

I was a little disappointed by what the Minister said; he did not appear to recognise what I believe to be the possibility of a two-tier market. I was extremely interested to hear the noble Countess, Lady Mar, say that it was up to farmers to persuade the supermarkets. Farmers have been trying to persuade supermarkets for a long time, without a great deal of success. I hope that we shall be able to ensure that the difficulty of a possible two-tier market will not manifest itself.

I was simply seeking an unequivocal assurance from the Minister that if such a difficulty arose, his department would make every effort with the consumer councils, the Food Standards Agency and all the various bodies concerned to ensure that the farmers with vaccinated animals received an amount equivalent to that received by farmers selling non-vaccinated animals or their produce. I hope that the Minister will do that, but I cannot see much point in pursuing the issue now.

[Amendment No. 15 not moved.]

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Clause 4 [Scrapie]:

The Countess of Mar moved Amendment No. 16:


    Page 3, line 11, at end insert—


"(2) The Schedule shall not come into force until either—
(a) transmissible bovine spongiform encephalopathy is found to occur naturally in sheep, or
(b) there is a reliable biochemical test that differentiates fully between scrapie and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or
(c) the route of transmission of scrapie becomes known."

The noble Countess said: My Lords, in moving this amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 17, tabled in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Greaves and Lord Livsey, and to Amendment No. 18, which stands in my name. In addition, I propose to speak to Amendment No. 48. Although it has not been included in this group of amendments on the groupings list, this amendment refers to "genetically susceptible sheep" and, therefore, applies to this grouping. I apologise to the House for not picking up that omission before this point.

I am deeply unhappy about this part of the Bill. We are being asked to legislate on the basis of incomplete knowledge. The science of genetics is new, fascinating and exciting. However, it is in its infancy. This part of the Bill seems to be based upon the obsessive supposition that sheep are the hidden repository for BSE, which, in turn, is the cause of variant CJD in humans.

We know that scrapie has been endemic in the UK national flock for more than 250 years. I am reliably informed that it was mentioned in the Bible. Humans have eaten almost every part of the animal for all of that time; indeed, one of my childhood treats was poached sheeps' brains on toast. Scientists have repeatedly tried to infect sheep with BSE by natural means and have failed. They are now saying that perhaps their susceptibility to scrapie is masking a susceptibility to BSE. How long is a piece of string? What exactly is the risk? Are we not more in danger of obliterating a part of the genetic pool of our sheep flock—a pool that has been built up over many centuries to provide us with wool and meat of excellent quality from sheep that are hardy and good mothers and well adapted to our regional variabilities?

Among others, the noble Lord, Lord May, advised us in Committee to exercise caution. We have only to look at the DEFRA website. After a brief description of the work being done on the Cheviot flock at the Institute for Animal Health in Edinburgh, the author of the website acknowledges:


    "Cheviots' coating for alanine at [codon] 136 (with glutamine at 171) are still susceptible to certain different strains of scrapie (often called 'C-type scrapie') as well as BSE ... Thus, because it seems as if resistance is not absolute, breeding policies that aim to produce one particular genotype may produce a population that is resistant to one strain of scrapie, but render the flock more susceptible to other strains".

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I am very concerned about this situation. The website continues:


    "Breeding sheep that are homozygous for arginine at codon 171 may therefore prove to be beneficial in an effort to increase scrapie resistance, but gene frequencies in some breeds will inevitably render some breeding programmes difficult if other desirable characteristics are not to be lost in selecting for scrapie resistance".

I have in mind resistance to foot rot, which is a horrible disease in sheep. It is extremely painful for the animal, and very prevalent. The website also points out that that there are sheep in Australia and in New Zealand that are genetically susceptible to scrapie, and yet both those countries are considered to be scrapie free.

The website directs us to the Scientific Opinion of the Scientific Steering Committee of the European Commission, entitled The Policy of Breeding and Genotyping of Sheep—that is to say, the issue of whether sheep should be bred to be resistant to scrapie. This opinion was adopted by the committee in July 1999. I shall resist the temptation to precis the whole paper, interesting though it is. In its conclusions, the working group concludes that,


    "the possibility that sheep may harbour a latent scrapie infection exists"—

at this stage, a possibility, not a certainty. The paper continues to say:


    "If BSE would have infected sheep, which is not certain today, and if BSE transmits and behaves in sheep in a manner similar to scrapie, for which there are some experimental indications, then a similar strategy for BSE and scrapie should be adopted"—

there are many "ifs".

The working group recommends that the European Union should analyse and evaluate the breeding programmes current in a number of European countries, including the United Kingdom; and that individual EU countries should start to genotype large numbers of animals in order to acquire a view on the distribution of the genotypes in their national flocks. I know that this is already being done in the UK: we know which breeds of sheep are more susceptible to scrapie than others.

The working group further recommends that strong consideration should be given to the use of appropriate resistant strains of sheep, coupled with the development of, and extensive use of, validated diagnostic tests. I know that that is beginning to be done under the National Scrapie Plan. However, there is a "but", which I consider to be rather a big but. The group says:


    "Before embarking on large scale breeding of sheep towards maximal resistant genotypes, according to the different breeds involved, consideration should be given to the phenotypic characteristics".

I am sorry that the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, is not able to be with us this evening. However, I gather that he is making a good recovery from his operation. I wonder whether noble Lords recall him telling us about the Scottish Blackface sheep. There has not been a case of scrapie in Scottish Blackface sheep, yet, according to current knowledge, they are very genetically susceptible. Are we going to wipe out 95 per cent of the Scottish Blackface sheep in order to fulfil the requirements of this part of the Bill?

22 Oct 2002 : Column 1289

For many years MAFF, and now DEFRA, monitored flocks of sheep and herds of goats—I had to bring goats into my remarks—under a voluntary scrapie scheme. We have never belonged to this scheme. I have to tell the Minister that we have now withdrawn from the National Scrapie Plan. My husband became very unhappy about the way that the plan was going, and about the requirement that we should kill nearly one-third of our sheep because they were susceptible. Therefore, as participation was voluntary, we have now withdrawn.

Sheep from designated "scrapie monitored" flocks have been regarded as scrapie free. For breeding purposes, scrapie-free sheep command a premium. Many of these sheep fall into the "susceptible" category, and I have mentioned the Scottish Blackface breed. We still have a good deal to learn about TSEs and genetics. I fear that we are about to run before we can walk. Our successors will never forgive us if we wipe out a whole chunk of biodiversity, especially our rare breeds, for reasons about which we are presently unsure; in other words, does scrapie cause BSE and does BSE cause CJD? I beg to move.


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