Cattle Compensation (England) Order 2006

My Lords, I somewhat tentatively put my feet into the area of agriculture, but my noble friend Lord Livsey cannot be here today. However, noble Lords should rest assured that it is his brain that is inspiring my comments. The basic point on this order—that you are taking valuations of a prepared scale and then going down it and saying to the farmer, ““You fit in there””—is, as the noble Baroness pointed out, going to work against the interests of the careful farmer whose husbandry is good. That has to be the case, for the simple reason that, if you take an average scale at any one point, some people will be above it and some below it. The Government may end up paying more money if we go through a period of bad animal husbandry skills for the herds that are affected, predominantly by TB and brucellosis. If this is the scale that we are going to use, we are being unjust to the hard-working and over-compensating those who do not get it right, for whatever reason. Surely this is a fundamental flaw in any scheme. The Government should do better. Basic consideration of some form of appeals procedure really should be in here at some point. That it is not is a major oversight by the Government. An appeal that can take place within six months after the initial valuation would certainly be a step forward. Will the Government give us some indication of how far they are going in thinking about this again? If a person goes in on a flat-rate valuation, looks at the stock and returns to the market conditions that apply at the time, surely that would be a way forward. I am informed that one of the problems is that auctioneers who were getting a percentage of the value of the stock were asked to do the valuation, which apparently led to the over-valuation of much stock. Surely if they are paid a flat fee for doing a job of work—maybe an hourly rate—that would remove many of the problems. Are the Government not taking a blunt instrument to something that just requires a little fine tuning? That might result in them paying out slightly too much and it would certainly lead to farmers not getting compensation. If the Government do not pay attention to these problems, they are really not going to deal with them properly. Will the Minister give us some idea of the thinking behind this? As the noble Baroness also mentioned, this would be an excellent opportunity to let us know what exactly is known about the spread of TB. As someone who is now living in the country after many years, I think that badgers are wonderful, unless they are digging up your garden or you think that they are infecting your cattle. Will the Government tell us what the state of play is and what information there is about the transfer? I am sure badgers are not quite as evil as we are told by dairy herdsmen from the west of England. That is my gut reaction and hope. If the situation is the other way around, surely we could hear from a scientist.