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Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed): Other marts on the list approved by the Government were unable to
start the scheme because they were under the impression that they had to have a registration number after being inspected by the state veterinary service. When one of the marts in my constituency telephoned the intervention board, it spoke to a 15-year-old schoolchild on work experience who was unable to say whether it could start the scheme without state veterinary inspections.
Mr. Tyler: Such experiences have taken place all over the country in the past few days. I have had abattoirs ringing me today in desperation because they cannot get clear advice from the Ministry, the intervention board, or any other authority.
Mr. Marland: The hon. Gentleman is being very selective and he is out of date. He is not the only one who has been making telephone calls to find out what has been going on, because I have done exactly the same. I spoke to Gloucester market this morning and I was told that the situation is now working very smoothly. Of course, there have been a few hiccups along the way, but that is why I said that the hon. Gentleman is out of date. I stand by that. He quoted from a Farmers Weekly which is a week old and the article he read out must have been written at least 10 days ago. The situation is now moving ahead smoothly and the scheme is working.
Mr. Tyler: The hon. Gentleman is talking through his hat. He clearly does not read Farmers Weekly. I quoted Friday's edition--10 May--and I checked today about the information given. It is absolutely accurate. It may be that there is one place where the scheme is now in operation. If that is in Gloucester, good luck to Gloucester, but all over the country that is not the case.
Another of the statements that I have received today from a vet says:
I will come to the issue of casualty stock in a minute, because the animal welfare implications are causing considerable concern.
Mr. Marland:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Tyler:
I will not give way. If the hon. Gentleman cares to pick up the phone and to talk to the National Farmers Union, he will find that his information is incorrect. [Interruption.]
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. We do not need the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) waving his hands and interfering in the debate from a sedentary position.
Mr. Tyler:
I am sure that you will understand,Mr. Deputy Speaker, the frustration and anger that many of us feel that our constituents have been put into an impossible situation. Mishandling of the crisis is causing real human misery, as well as animal misery.
The issue of the distortion between live weight and dead weight caused concern to many hon. Members from both sides of the House last week and is certainly not resolved. The regulation authorising the scheme, approved by the Beef Management Committee on 12 April,
envisaged that animals would be brought into the scheme only at live weight centres, that is, at auction markets. That would have distorted the normal patterns of trade in older cattle, because some 50 per cent. are normally sold dead weight and it would have caused especial difficulty to those farmers who normally sell dead weight.
It was not until 26 April that the committee allowed dead weight purchase. It rejected the proposal, made by the slaughterers and by the NFU on behalf of farmers, to use an accurate conversion coefficient. Accordingly, the scheme encourages farmers to enter their steers and heifers into the scheme at the abattoirs instead of the normal marketing channels. Naturally, that is making the present blockage in the abattoirs even worse because everyone is trying to clamber in there as fast as possible. Last week, hon. Members warned the Government that that would happen, and nothing has been done to correct the distortion.
On the issue of valuation for compensation, beef farmers are facing huge losses. This morning, one south Devon specialist producer told me that he anticipates that his total loss will be in the region of £100,000 as a result of the crisis and the way that it has been handled.
Steers and heifers are, of course, considerably more valuable than cull cows. The EU-approved compensation rate is adequate to cover most of the losses sustained by the holders of cull cows, but it is far below the costs of production of steers and heifers. Hon. Members from both sides know that and they have been pressing the Government as we have.
The Government attempted to resolve the problem by agreeing to pay a 26p a kilogram live weight top-up. That supplement was first to be paid for the first four weeks, then during May, then until 10 June and finally on all steers and heifers on farms on 20 March whenever they are taken into the scheme. That is slow progress but, as the House will recognise, very confusing.
Meanwhile, a group of producers from the south-west has taken the initiative. The producers went to Brussels, they met the Commission and they sought a more flexible, realistic and fair compensation package. In brief, they wanted a full-price support scheme for suckler cows, with compensation for all cattle known to come from herds that have been hit by BSE, which they said would be essential to solve the problem. The reaction of the Commission is important. It said that the producers' ideas were well worth examining, but it told the farmers that they had to discuss the matter with MAFF. The matter is entirely in the hands of the United Kingdom's Ministers and not in the hands of the Commission. As one of the farmers who helped to put together the submission said to me today,
I will gladly provide details of that statement to the Minister.
The 30-month deadline caused consternation, not only in the House but in all parts of the industry. Who first floated the idea of the 30-month deadline? Strictly speaking, it was not the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee, which merely referred to it as a handy threshold, with some scientific basis, for deciding when deboning and destruction of offal should become compulsory. The idea that 30 months should be an indiscriminate deadline for any meat to prevent it from
entering the human or animal feed chain seems to have come from the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food himself.
I refer the House to an important article in The Daily Telegraph by Christopher Booker and Richard North, who pointed the finger of blame in the Minister's direction. In interviews in the immediate aftermath of the first statement, the Minister referred to the possibility of a 30-month deadline, and to the possibility of culling "millions of cattle". Nobody had raised that issue until the Minister himself did. That overreaction, or overkill, did not start in Brussels, Bonn or Paris. It started in Whitehall, and hon. Members will agree with that.
At long last, after weeks of pressure, from us and from many others, the Government are examining the practicalities of what is called a "mature beef assurance scheme". Good. Exemptions are clearly essential for herds and breeds that can be demonstrated to be at low risk--Dexters is an obvious example, but there are many others. Otherwise, not only will perfectly healthy cattle be slaughtered--that raises legal as well as moral issues--but the scientific rationale for the whole of the Government's scheme will be killed off too.
Why are we still waiting? Why was the issue not addressed six weeks ago, in informal discussions with the Commission and the industry? When I visited Brussels and met Commissioner Fischler's team exactly three weeks ago, I was staggered to find that it had received no proposals, ideas or details at all from MAFF on that vital aspect of the problem. Even though such a scheme might not have achieved a partial relaxation of the export ban immediately, would it not have been wise to consult on exemptions? The Commission seems very receptive to the case for the later-maturing, naturally reared and fed prime beef, including those on organic farms. Why did our Ministers not push open that door and get the Commission's support early on? To come back now with the mature assurance scheme will be much more difficult.
In the meantime, the many delays in progressing the scheme have caused especial difficulty for those farmers who would normally have marketed their 30-month-old cattle in late March, April or early May. Those farmers are facing not only shortfalls in cash flow, but the cost of feeding their animals. I know that the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) has made that point in the House before.
Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale):
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is a serious welfare issue for the cattle that should have been slaughtered in the last week of March. There is no market for them. They are over30 months of age and the market has gone because of the European Union's ban. May I help the hon. Gentleman with where the 30-month ban came from? If he reads today's National Farmers Union briefing, he will find that it came from the farming community.
"animals will have to travel much greater distances into large, factory abattoirs--remember these include some of the weakest and infirm of all cattle, the cow at the end of her working life."
"I solely blame the Minister of Agriculture for his lack of understanding and speed to solve this crisis."
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