GOVERNMENT RESPONSE AND THE BOURNE GROUP

47. The Krebs report was made to the new Labour Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Dr Jack Cunningham MP, whose response was published simultaneously. The Government welcomed the report as representing "the best available scientific advice across this area" and declared itself "disposed to accept their recommendations in principle, subject to further consideration of the public expenditure, legal and practical implications".[120] The response addressed individual recommendations in detail, and added to them its own comments on the possibility of linking compensation for farmers to husbandry practices. Recognising that "policy in this area has to be proceed through a partnership of Government, farmers and conservation interests", the Government set a consultation period of two months (until the end of February 1998) for interested parties to comment on the implementation of the report.

48. Some steps were taken immediately. All culling of badgers was stopped in areas outside the culling trial (in effect, the whole of Great Britain until the trial started), except that badger removal operations which had already started were to be concluded. It is this move which many blame for the continued rise in the incidence of bovine TB, given the long delay since the publication of Krebs. Secondly, the Government undertook that "discussions with contractors will begin urgently" to determine how research projects for 1998-1999 could take into account the findings of the Krebs report. It was also announced that MAFF would publish a 'Research Requirements Document' in Spring 1998 in response to Krebs' recommendation that research should be commissioned from those with best expertise from throughout the research community. Finally, the Government accepted the proposal that an Expert Group should be formed immediately to oversee the culling trial. In doing so, it also officially abolished the Badger Panel which had not met since Krebs began his work and for which there was no obvious role under the new arrangements. Given the evident inability of the Panel to find a solution and the frustration felt by its members at "the creeping failure of the various strategies" tried,[121] this was a sensible move.

49. The Independent Scientific Group on Cattle TB was appointed on 5 February 1998 under the chairmanship of Professor John Bourne. Known variously as the Bourne or the Expert Group, its terms of reference are:

"To advise Ministers on implementation of the Krebs Report on bovine TB in cattle and badgers by:

• overseeing the design and analysis of the randomised trial to test the effectiveness of badger culling as a means of controlling bovine TB;
• regularly monitoring the progress of, and outputs from, the trial and assessing any important differences in results between treatments;
• monitoring the data on the Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis) situation in areas and species outside the trial;
• reporting to Ministers on progress; and
• advising, as requested, on related issues."

It is significant, as we discuss below, that Bourne's own version of the terms of reference uses the word 'trial' where MAFF's website refers to an 'experiment'. Otherwise, the most interesting fact about this remit is that it was immediately perceived as being too narrow. While the Bourne Group accepted that "our key task has been to advise on the design of the randomised trial ... to ensure it is capable of giving robust results", they were "conscious from the outset that a key role of the Group is to recommend a combination of measures which, taken together, will provide information essential for the establishment of future policy", i.e. the other research recommended by Krebs.[122] This wider remit was endorsed by Ministers but the need for it reflects some of the concerns expressed to us that the trial was being prioritised at the expense of other measures. Bourne's sensitivities on this point can be judged by the title chosen for his report: Towards a Sustainable Policy to Control TB in Cattle: A Scientific Initiative.

50. The Bourne report presented to Ministers in July 1998 "critically reviewed the recommendations in the Krebs report" and "align[ed]" itself with Krebs' major findings.[123] It set out key questions which it affirmed could "only be addressed with the necessary rigour by a randomised scientific approach" and defined the "core aim of the trial" to be "to present Ministers with a range of scientifically-based policy options which will be technically, environmentally, socially and economically acceptable".[124] As to the design of the trial itself, the Group endorsed the need for three treatments of badgers - proactive culling, reactive culling and survey only - to be carried out in ten triplets, with random allocation of areas to treatments. However, they advised that these areas should be circles rather than squares "to minimise boundary effects".[125] Dr Christl Donnelly, the Group's statistician, explained to us that "using circles rather than squares ... eliminates the issue of: if a square was turned 45 degrees, you would then be excluding some areas, and including some areas you had not intended before. It also meant that if you used a square, as opposed to a circle, then some areas were being included that were further away from other areas which had been excluded".[126] The circles are not in practice perfect circles since their outer margins follow existing farm boundaries. The Group also introduced 1km inner and outer buffer zones between treatment areas, as shown in figure 2, which separated each area within a triplet and each triplet by a minimum of 3km.

51. The Bourne Group made other changes to the Krebs report and announced further practical decisions on its implementation. They recommended that "the most recent confirmed incidence data should be used to identify treatment areas",[127] using the last three years as the basis, as opposed to Krebs' five, and updating in each case as the triplets were identified on a rolling basis. This was intended to address the problem that TB had been found in new areas since the Krebs report. On the other hand, the Group also tried to answer some of the objections of the welfare lobby. Krebs had taken a firm line on issues such as capture methods and the culling of lactating sows, the latter a particularly emotive issue as the maintenance of the experimental power dictates that such animals where caught should be killed both to prevent their returning to the setts carrying disease and to ensure that as many badgers as possible are cleared from the area. However, the consequence of such action would be that badger cubs were left to starve underground, a situation abhorrent to many within and beyond the animal lobby. The Government had indicated in its response to Krebs that it would "seek as far as possible to undertake culling at times of year when the number of lactating sow badgers is minimised".[128] There is general disagreement on what this might mean. As Professor Bourne told us: "Recommendations ... extended from no closed period to a 12-month closed period, so no cull at all".[129] The Group came down in favour of a three-month closed season from 1 February to 30 April, a position at odds with the recommendation from the Government's own scientific advisers, English Nature, for a closed period of six months. We discuss the consequences of and reaction to this decision below. On capture methods, there was less disagreement. The Group recommended cage-trapping as a more humane method than snaring, while urging MAFF to investigate other possibilities, such as leg cuffs. Again, we return to the effect of this upon the power of the experiment later in this report. Finally, the Group addressed issues of how other research projects related to the trial and identified four areas of priority outside the trial - risk analysis, molecular epidemiology, cattle immunology and vaccine development, and methods to estimate badger populations.[130]

52. A month passed between the presentation of the Bourne report to MAFF and the announcement that the Government was prepared to go ahead with the trial. Mr Rooker attributed this to the Cabinet reshuffle which saw Dr Jack Cunningham MP replaced by Nick Brown MP as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: "it took 17 days, following the reshuffle, to get the clearance through Whitehall, because ... Nick Brown walked in, he had to feel comfortable with the decisions".[131] He also told us that MAFF did not move earlier because "until we received [the Bourne report], we were not committed to a policy one way or the other, we did not put issues in preparation and recruiting staff, and all that kind of thing, we were not prepared to do that until we had got an announcement, and then, of course, this was a major issue of Government policy and expenditure as well".[132] However, during this time, the concern of both farmers and conservationists was growing, as was the incidence of bovine TB; and the silence from the Government on when they were going to implement a report they had accepted in principle did not offer any reassurance to those affected. In any case, the Ministry had already changed its spending plans to allow an additional £13.4 million over the next three years following the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), specifically for implementing the Krebs report, additional TB testing and on farm surveillance work related to foodborne zoonosis.[133] We accept that this "is an incredibly complex issue ... probably the most complicated issue" dealt with by the Minister on a day-to-day basis[134] and one requiring much consideration, but we regret the delay between the publication of the Krebs report in December 1997 and the Government's announcement of 17 August 1998, two years after the start of the Krebs inquiry, especially given that no policy to control bovine TB was in place at all during that period.

Source: Bourne Report, page 10.