Foot and Mouth/Bluetongue

My hon. Friend makes a good point, but I need to move on. As I said, farmers are not irresponsible. They appreciate that it is hard for the Government to keep up with what is going on, but they should not have to fight to get accurate information and to get the necessary authorisations when they are only trying to obey the law. They should not be feeling that the Government have lost control. Like much of East Anglia, Essex has been caught once again, now in a double whammy from foot and mouth and bluetongue. Forty years ago almost to the day, the first cases of foot and mouth were confirmed in Oswestry, marking the beginning of the 1967 outbreak. The culprit for the August outbreak was quickly established as the strain of virus from the 1967 outbreak, which was stored at Pirbright and released through broken drains. It seems that short-sightedness is not the only guilty bequest that the Government have inherited from the era of Harold Wilson. Responding to the inquiry into the 2001 epidemic, the right hon. Member for Derby, South (Margaret Beckett) said:"““The House will want to know what else would be different in any future outbreak of foot and mouth disease.””—[Official Report, 6 November 2002; Vol. 392, c. 286.]" Well, although farmers have again been left to pick up the pieces, the difference is that the Government caused this outbreak directly. Why do I say that? As the Secretary of State himself announced last Monday, no money had been invested in the drains because they were not believed to be problematic. He was adamant about the sincerity of that belief, but how far was it reasonable and who is to be held accountable for it, given that it proved so disastrously incorrect? The Secretary of State told the House that"““nobody thought that they were in such a condition.””—[Official Report, 8 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 39.]" But did anybody think to check—and if not, why not? If, in similar circumstances, there had been an outbreak of a disease that was infectious to people, resignations would have followed and, presumably, charges would have been brought against those responsible.