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Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, will the Minister initiate a scheme to eradicate bovine TB county by county and to ensure that deer, badgers and cattle are treated with equality and culled appropriately, so that we can clear bovine TB from the entire United Kingdom systematically over a period of years?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, whether a county by county approach is exactly the right strategy, clearly we must take account of the outcome of the trials, and if it involves culling badgers we must operate that selectively, aiming at the areas where there is the greatest problem. We do not yet have the outcome of that research, and it is important that the developing TB strategy, which we announced in November, should be given a chance to operate.
Lord Walton of Detchant: My Lords, as a young house doctor in paediatrics in the 1940s, I saw the ravages of bovine tuberculosis in children, which commonly caused paralysis due to affecting the spinal bones and other long bones. Does the Minister agree that following the pasteurisation of milk, bovine tuberculosis as a human infection has almost disappeared from the UK? I admit that the risks of human infection arising from the infected badger population are limited, but nevertheless it is surely right that that reservoir ought as far as possible to be eliminated.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the human risk from this is pretty limited, and in so far as it exists, it is from contact with cattle. The badger population, and other wildlife populations—deer in particular—carry this disease. Clearly, we must limit the effect on livestock. We must also try to develop ways to ensure that by vaccination, or by other means, the reservoir in wildlife is limited and minimised.
Viscount Bledisloe: My Lords, will the Minister explain why in the Government's relative moral scale the badger rates so much higher than the cow? To preserve a few badgers we are imperilling an enormous number of cows, and having their slaughter merely on the basis that so far there has not been conclusive proof of the degree of connection between badgers and bovine tuberculosis. I cannot believe that the Minister would imperil his children to risk of something from badgers merely because there was some doubt as to the extent of the connection. Why are badgers so much more important than cows?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, badgers are not more important than cows. Cows have a direct connection
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with the human population, and therefore the control of TB in cattle is absolutely essential. That has been a fixed point of agricultural policy and disease control for decades.
The research is not so much directed at the degree of connection—clearly there is some degree of connection—but it is also true that much bovine TB is spread by cattle to cattle contact. By and large, badgers do not travel from Somerset to Cheshire; and yet we get disease as a result of cattle movements. The research is directed to see whether culling, of itself, would cause the disease incidents to be more limited. Currently, that is unproven. I referred to the reactive trials. In those areas where there have been reactive trials culling the badgers where it was known there was disease, the effect of the mass culling has been an increase in the disease, largely because unhealthy badgers moved into areas where healthy badgers were being slaughtered.
Lord Lewis of Newnham: My Lords, when does the Minister anticipate that there will be an answer to this problem? When is there to be a report, and can he set out the timing of the report?
Lord Whitty: My Lords, the likely outcome of the Krebs trials will now be 2006.
Lord Dixon-Smith: My Lords, I know that the Government are not complacent on the subject. However, the reality has to be that the longer the situation goes on with tuberculosis increasing, the greater the risk becomes that the disease will overcome the barrier that we have put in its spread to human beings through pasteurisation. In realistic terms, allowing for Krebs—which may in any event be inconclusive—when can we expect to see inoculation against tuberculosis in cattle, so that the disease comes under control? Either we do that or we take absolute steps to ensure that the disease can be eliminated. If that means slaughtering all forms of tuberculosis-carrying livestock, it has to be done.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I have already described the time scale of the outcome of the Krebs trials. At that point, we will have to take a decision on where the strategy goes. In the mean time, we have introduced a number of restrictions and controls. The noble Lord still speaks as though the problem was inevitably growing, whereas there are fewer herds under restriction from TB and fewer incidents of TB at the moment than there were last year. That is not an indication of complacency, but an indication that there is some slowing down and reversing of the impact of TB under the present policy. If we need to change the policy, particularly in relation to badgers, we will do so in the light of the evidence.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I will not take as long as the previous question. The Minister said that, in the areas largely clear of badgers, there was an
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increase in TB thereafter due to the influx of badgers from other areas. Surely the answer is to extend the areas under control.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I was referring to a particular subset of the trials in which reactive action to cull the badgers where there was an incidence of disease led to a counterintuitive outcome, probably because other badgers had moved in. The logical conclusion of the noble Lord's position would simply be to destroy all badgers everywhere, which is not an acceptable policy either. There are arguments on the other side, such as those put to me today, and longstanding legislative restrictions on what we can do in relation to badgers. If we need to look at that in the light of the evidence, we will do so. However, it is important to recognise that badgers are different from deer and other livestock because of the legislative position.
Iraq: Oil for Food Programme Inquiry
Lord Howell of Guildford asked Her Majesty's Government:
When they expect the Independent Inquiry Committee into the Iraq Oil for Food programme, chaired by Mr Paul Volcker, to complete its report; and whether the report and conclusions will be published.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean): My Lords, the Independent Inquiry Committee published an interim report on 9 August and a briefing paper on 21 October outlining its progress. We expect a further report addressing the management of the programme and the role of the UN contractors in January. In May, Mr Volcker said that he did not expect the inquiry to conclude its findings into the broader allegations of corruption by individuals and entities that did business with Iraq for at least a year. We expect the final report to be published.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. However, even if Mr Kofi Annan has been unfairly pilloried and criticised, does she not agree that it is immensely important that the shadow be lifted from over the UN, and that both the report and the KPMG report authorised by the Iraqi Government should be made absolutely open and clear to the public? Does she agree that, unless we can do that, we will find ourselves constantly frustrated in pushing ahead with the necessary reforms of the United Nations of the sort that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and other distinguished internationalists have put forward and that we all support?
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: I agree, my Lords. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for what
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he said about the unfair criticism of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. The noble Lord is right. A second report is being undertaken by Ernst & Young into what has gone on at the Iraq end of this unhappy tale. Let me give him an undertaking from the press release put out on 16 November. It said:
"In the interests of transparency and credibility, full disclosure of evidence (including the UN documents available to it) relevant to its findings will be made when those findings are reported. At the end of the day, there will be disclosures and transparency without, to the best of the committee's knowledge, precedent for the United Nations or any international organisation".
I hope that that gives the noble Lord the unqualified assurance that he sought.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, although it is clear that the allegations need to be thoroughly investigated as they raise some worrying problems, does the Minister agree that the issue has been and is being used in the United States as a way of denigrating the United Nations as a whole? Indeed, it was striking that, the day that the high-level panel report was published, there were articles precisely about the alleged involvement of Kofi Annan's son in the Oil For Food scandal all over the Right-wing American press. One imagines that the Government will do their best to ensure that the scandal does not cloud the important debate on the high-level panel report and the need to strengthen and reform the United Nations system.
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