Foot and Mouth/Bluetongue

We are clearly discussing a matter of enormous concern to rural Britain, but it should also be of enormous concern to the whole country. Those of us who lived in the parts of the country that were so badly hit by the 2001 outbreak will recall the graphic and visible scenes that have been described—the burning pyres, the piles of dead bodies, the pictures of Prime Ministers in their biological suits and the closed footpaths. Thank God, we are not seeing those again. The problem is that, whereas in 2001 the highly visible nature of the outbreak meant that urban Britain—the 95 per cent. of the population that does not live in the countryside—was aware that there was a crisis, which resulted in sympathy, political support and pressure on the Government, in 2007 the consequences of foot and mouth are less than highly visible to most of the country. All of us know that that second phase of outbreaks in September came about at the worst possible time. It was on the eve of both the Westmorland show, which is obviously highly important to us in Westmorland and Lonsdale, and the back-end sales. One farmer put it to me that one way of getting urban folks to understand the nature of the problem and the extent of the crisis is by saying that what happened to the livestock markets is the equivalent of a virus breaking out in the high streets of Britain in the last week of November and the retail sector being put out of business for six weeks over Christmas and new year. That is the gravity of the situation. I make no party political point, but merely observe that the overwhelming majority of Government Members of Parliament do not represent rural areas and thus are not being pestered by their constituents because this is not a visible problem to them. As a consequence, Ministers are perhaps quick to take visible action to deal with the outbreak of foot and mouth, but are not so quick to deal with the economic realities. Last Monday, the Secretary of State made a statement in the House on the compensation package. In the end, the package, containing an £8.5 million uplift in hill farming allowance and an extra £4 million in additional support, was staggeringly inadequate. Given that many of my hill farmers have lost well in excess of £10,000 each and that, in export sales alone, the farming industry is losing £2 million a day, that compensation, although welcome in so far as it goes, is massively inadequate.