House of Commons Hansard Debates for 13 Nov 1996 (pt 30)

Mr. Hogg: Policies of disruption are--and should always be--policies of last resort. We never thought that we had a timetable in the Florence agreement. We established a process. At the time of Florence we believed, and had every reason to do so, that if we fulfilled our commitments there would be a rapid and substantial lifting of the ban. It has become plain over the summer, for the reasons that I have given, that, at least at the moment, member states are unable to deliver the rapid and substantial lifting that we all expected. I think that that is due to the internal pressures in their own countries.

Mr. Paul Tyler (North Cornwall): Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Hogg: I should like to proceed and explain the support that we have given to the beef industry.

Mr. Tyler: Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Hogg: No, I am going to make some progress.

Since June we have committed something like £263 million in support, both direct and indirect, to beef producers. That includes the July package of £109 million. I announced in September an increase of £60 million in the hill livestock compensatory allowance cattle rates. Last October, the Agriculture Council agreed aid worth £50 million in the United Kingdom, which we intend to spend in ways that will be of particular benefit to suckler producers. I announced in Bournemouth further aid worth £29 million. Today, I am pleased to announce that we shall be spending that £29 million on a second beef marketing payment scheme, covering the period between July and September.

The measures that I have described demonstrate two things: first, the absolute commitment of this Conservative Government to the needs of the rural economy and the future of British agriculture and, secondly, that the Labour motion, one not even moved by the Labour agriculture spokesman, is a fraud and a sham and should be rejected with contempt.

4.42 pm

Mr. John Home Robertson (East Lothian): I must, as ever, declare an interest since I have a personal position in a family farming business. I also have a constituency interest, since I represent many hill farmers in the Lammermuir hills. The Minister talked about fraud and a sham. I am afraid that farmers and people working in ancillary industries to the beef industry regard him as the fraud and the sham. We have just heard an awful speech from him, which was based on the unsustainable premise that our European partners are as untrustworthy as he has demonstrated himself to be over recent months.

After 18 years, I have learned to expect the worst from the Government. The problem that we are facing today meets all three dictionary definitions of the word "shambles": a mess or muddle; a butcher's slaughterhouse; a scene of carnage. That is what the industry is facing.

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Since the crisis erupted in March, we have had a succession of schemes, debates, statements and palliatives, but we are still in a multiple crisis. The word "crisis" is overworked in the House, but it is for real on this occasion. There is a crisis of animal health, which now appears to be connected with a new form of CJD that has killed 14 people, possibly because some infected cattle got into the food chain in the late 1980s. There is also a crisis of consumer confidence around the world--tragically, with a consequent economic crisis that has engulfed an industry employing 600,000 people in the United Kingdom, mainly in fragile rural areas.

Even leaving aside the point that the disease should not have been allowed to develop in the first place, the Government must stand condemned for letting things progress from bad to worse and on towards unmitigated disaster during 10 years of prevarication and ineptitude.

The priorities must surely be to eradicate the disease and to restore consumer confidence in beef. Both require the fullest co-operation with our European Union partners, but the Government's political agenda requires confrontation with them whenever possible, so we started off with the infantile beef war earlier in the year.

There is a consensus almost everywhere, except in the Government, that a selective, targeted cull of the cattle most likely to be infected with BSE is desirable to speed up the decline of the disease and to help to restore consumer confidence. The whole House has accepted that in previous debates and I made the point in a debate as early as 28 March. Since then, the Government have been all over the place. They had a self-destructive confrontation with the European Union. Then they decided to implement a selective cull as the basis of the Florence settlement of 22 June. Then they decided to renege on that settlement.

Meanwhile, the beef industry and associated industries, employing a total of 600,000 people, are on the rack. Butchers, hauliers, farmers and many others are facing ruin. We now have a serious consequential animal welfare problem because large numbers of unmarketable cattle are stuck on farms. It will be difficult to find feed and housing for them during the winter. Problems will certainly arise from that.

The Minister mentioned the over-30-month slaughter scheme which is working, after a fashion, better in Scotland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. However, there are serious delays in some areas. In September, the Government cut the compensation payable to farmers under the scheme by 10 per cent., to add grief to the businesses caught up in the queue. The scheme is, by definition, not targeted. It is a pretty crude measure to take stock off the market. We have the scheme, but there is no sign of progress towards reassuring consumers in export markets, let alone a lifting of the ban.

The Prime Minister announced the Florence agreement proudly to the House at the end of June.

Mr. William McKelvey (Kilmarnock and Loudoun): The triumph.

Mr. Home Robertson: The triumph, as my hon. Friend calls it. The framework referred to in the agreement stipulated the action that the United Kingdom is committed to taking to accelerate the disappearance of the disease. When in place, that action will bring about a step-by-step relaxation of the export ban.

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The terms could not have been clearer. Without action on a selective cull of cattle likely to be infected with BSE, there will be no end to the export ban. That was accepted by the industry, by the European Union, by the House and, ostensibly, by the Government but, eight months on, nothing has happened.

The Minister mentioned his doubts about the willingness of the European Union to keep to the time scale suggested. Why have the Government made no move to keep their part of the bargain on the time scale? As far as I can make out, the Minister of Agriculture has done damn all in England and Wales.

There has been some posturing by the Scottish Office, but it seems that only Northern Ireland will be able to fulfil the Florence criteria. I had the privilege of visiting the Northern Ireland Agriculture Department a couple of weeks ago with colleagues on the committee of the British-Irish parliamentary body and I was impressed by what I saw there. The Department has developed an elaborate computerised record system for all cattle in the Province to help to promote quality assurance and to eradicate other diseases. Happily and coincidentally, that development should make it possible to make rapid progress with a selective cull in Northern Ireland because the Department can identify the relevant cattle.

Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan): Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, rather more than two years ago, Aberdeen and Northern Marts which, as he knows, is one of the chief marketing and slaughter companies in Scotland, commissioned a feasibility study into a traceability system for Scotland? According to Brian Pack, the chief executive of Aberdeen and Northern Marts, such a system could be implemented in a matter of months. However, the Government expressed no interest in it. Does the hon. Gentleman have any comment to make on the fact that, at no time during the BSE crisis, have the Government shown any interest in introducing a traceability scheme in Scotland?

Mr. Home Robertson: I doubt whether the scheme could be implemented in a matter of months, but I believe that it is deplorable that the Government have not even begun to look for the cattle concerned and have not put together anything like the quality record system that exists in Northern Ireland. I agree with the thrust of the point made by the hon. Gentleman.

It will probably be necessary for the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture to locate about 2,000 cattle which will need to be slaughtered under a selective programme. The Northern Irish could probably do that immediately, which is to the credit of the Northern Ireland Office. I deplore the fact that neither the Scottish Office nor the Ministry of Agriculture is moving in the same direction.

Mr. Mallon: I take the hon. Gentleman's point about the north of Ireland. He said that the north of Ireland fulfilled the Florence criteria. In reality, there are 1,700 cattle, instantly traceable, which, I am told by the authorities, could be dealt with in one day if the Government asked the EU Commission to make such an

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arrangement for the north of Ireland. That is what is standing between the beef industry in the north of Ireland and its potential demise.

Mr. Home Robertson: The point is clearly made. The preparatory work has been done in Northern Ireland and it should be done in Scotland, in Wales and in England.

Characteristically, the Scottish Office has been blowing hot and cold on the issue. The Secretary of State suggested that he would achieve great things when he attended last month's Agriculture Council meeting. Interestingly, he wrote to hon. Members on 23 September to report on progress. He said:

"my officials are working closely with those in the SNFU to ensure that we can progress preparations as far as possible in advance, so that we are in a position to start culling in Scotland if circumstances permit."

We understand that that would have involved about 4,000 cattle.

Presumably, such a cull would have been carried out with a view to getting an early lifting of the export ban for the whole of Scotland or at least for clean specialist beef herds, mostly in the hills and uplands of Scotland. The letter was good news. It seemed that the intention was to start the process of selective culling to fulfil the Florence conditions and thus to make it possible to restart beef exports from Scotland, which are vital for the Scottish economy.

However, I am a naturally suspicious soul, especially where the Scottish Office is concerned, so I tabled a parliamentary question last week to the Secretary of State just to find out how the Scottish Office was getting on with finding the cattle in the cohorts that were likely to be infected with BSE and that would need to be culled to fulfil the Florence criteria.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Robertson), replied:

"Data on all herds with confirmed cases of BSE are held at the Central Veterinary Laboratory. This data can be used to identify the herd of birth of BSE cases--and hence animals subject to the same feeding regimes; that is, the birth cohorts. To identify all these at-risk animals, it is necessary to visit the herds of origin, to identify the cohort animals remaining in such herds and finally to determine the present location of cohort animals which have moved to other herds. This involves detailed inspection of records. In May of this year, the CVL made an estimate that a maximum of 127,000 cohort animals were present on farms in Britain, of which some 4,300 were in Scotland. Given the need for on-farm visits and reference to on-farm records, it is impossible to give a reliable estimate of how long it would take to identify all these animals."--[Official Report, 11 November 1996; Vol. 285, c. 55.]

The agreement was made in June and now, five months later, the Department has not even started to set up the record system, never mind identifying the cattle that would need to be culled in order to fulfil the Florence criteria. It has not even started to look for the cohorts and individual cattle that are likely to be infected in preparation for fulfilment of the agreement that was reached in June.

There may be a problem with confidentiality at the Central Veterinary Laboratory. The CVL is either unable or unwilling to disclose or disseminate information about infected animals and the farms where they originated. For goodness sake, surely the Government should be able to address administrative points of that nature.

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In England and Wales, the Department has not even pretended to start preparatory work for the cull. I appreciate the reluctance in the dairy industry to lose milking cows, but the disease is largely rooted in the dairy herd, so that is probably the main sector where it will have to be eradicated. The Florence agreement is all we have. Why are the British Government sabotaging the agreement that they trumpeted in June?

The Department should address another practicality--the discrepancy in the EU rules whereby in other nations in the European Union, including the Republic of Ireland, individual herds are deemed to be infected, whereas in the United Kingdom it is the farms that are deemed to be infected. Therefore, farms in France, the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere where cases of BSE have been identified can take the straightforward step of slaughtering cattle to wipe the slate clean and start afresh, but the current rules make that impossible in any part of the United Kingdom where the land of the farm is flagged up as being infected. That will have to be addressed and I should be grateful if the Minister could do so in his reply to the debate or in writing.