Foot and Mouth/Bluetongue

The hon. Gentleman has got that quite wrong. Where did that filthy food come from in the first place? Foot and mouth did not suddenly spring up at Heddon-on-the-Wall or Catterick Army base. It had to come into this country from a foreign source. This is my second point: the Government did nothing to protect our borders and then failed to detect foot and mouth at Heddon-on-the-Wall—the farm had been inspected. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food—later DEFRA—was obsessed by controlling farmers and markets and covered up the fact that it had not taken the necessary preventive action to stop foot and mouth in this country. Of course, DEFRA is still obsessed by controls on markets and farmers. Thirdly, based on these self-delusions, repairing Pirbright was not a priority. After the discovery that the drains were clapped out, clearly part of the thought process was, ““Well, that's not too important because it doesn't really cause foot and mouth. Foot and mouth is caused by farmers moving animals around the country.”” The Secretary of State says that no one actually said that the drains were leaking, but surely it stands to reason that if one gets a report saying that drains are ancient and clapped out, one automatically thinks that they are probably leaking as well. The Government cannot escape from their responsibility by saying that no one told them about the leaking drains. The guilty man is not the Secretary of State, but the former Chancellor of the Exchequer who did not put up the necessary funds to fix those drains. That man is now the Prime Minister. My fourth charge against the Government is that once foot and mouth started, they initially made frantic efforts to blame Merial and to try to exempt the Institute for Animal Health from responsibility. DEFRA's attempt to blame someone else when its laboratory was at fault was despicable. DEFRA was the guilty party and it remains as such. At the end of the day, it will probably have to pay in court. The Government's fifth mistake was moving slaughtered animals around the country. They were horrified by the spectre of more burning pyres, although why they did not go for animal burial I do not know. They added to the risk. Of course, they say that the lorries were sealed and that vets drove behind them looking for any blood and guts dripping out, but the very fact that dead foot and mouth animals were being moved from infected premises to incineration plants along highways in clear zones added unnecessary risk. I assume that that happened because, for purposes of media handling, it looked better on the telly than burning cows. A sixth charge of incompetence against the Government is that farmers outside the protection and surveillance zones—perhaps inside as well, but certainly outside, in Cumbria—were left utterly in the dark about what to do. No one told them anything. If farmers had been watching the telly or listening to the radio, they would have discovered that animal movements had been banned, but many were not doing so. They also were not linked, like computer geeks, to the DEFRA website every minute of the day. However, the only information for farmers was on that website. The Government must consider how they communicate with farmers outside the zone during a catastrophe such as foot and mouth. They should not assume that everything can be done through the website. It is expensive to send letters by post, but that is probably the only way in which farmers can be given adequate warning. The seventh charge is that the Government did not seem to have carried out forward planning on the licensing of animal movements. It took DEFRA days and days to issue licences and guidance on whether farmers could move their cows across the road for milking and on casualty animals going to slaughter or abattoirs. That should not have happened. Surely, after 2001, a manual was sitting on a shelf that said, ““If foot and mouth happens again, this is what we do on the licensing regime.”” All the local and county council inspectorates should have had that manual so that those responsible for issuing licences could have turned to the relevant page and processed the licences on the morning after the outbreak occurred. Instead, they seemed to be making things up as they went along. The eighth mistake was the false all clear. The Government said, ““We've eradicated foot and mouth from Surrey. It won't happen again chaps. Carry on!”” However, that was negligent and should not have happened. The ninth mistake was the failure to start markets expeditiously outside the protection and surveillance zones when it became clear that foot and mouth was being contained in Surrey and Berkshire. Yes, the markets were started eventually, but it probably would have been utterly safe to start them 10 days earlier and that would have saved an awful lot of the desperate costs that have been faced in Cumbria, the north of England, Scotland and Wales. The 10th charge is that the 20-day standstill period negated the point of starting the markets. The Government said, ““Well, we've got the markets started,”” but then imposed a 20-day standstill period. What on earth was the point? Yes, the standstill is now down to six days, so a farmer who was operating under a 20-day standstill and is on the fifth day has only one more day to go. For all new farmers the period is only six days. However, again, this is part of DEFRA thinking, ““Farmers cause foot and mouth and farmers moving animals are the guilty party, not us, guv.”” The 11th charge is that the compensation package announced by Ministers is grossly insulting, given that farmers are losing £10 million a day through no fault of their own. If farmers had caused this through dirty farm practices or bad welfare standards, there would be a certain culpability, but farmers are utterly innocent and have a grossly inadequate compensation package. My 12th charge against the Government, although I congratulate the Secretary of State on standing firm, relates to the Scottish cull. Let hon. Members from north of the border come clean. This is not a welfare cull in Scotland, but an economic cull. There might be merits in an economic cull to compensate farmers, but if there are merits in such a cull in Scotland, there could be merits in an economic cull in England.