Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I agree with that, but I shall not be distracted from my main point. There is a problem—the Secretary of State may say that it is a problem with perception—about how DEFRA is felt to act and operate in rural areas such as mine. I suspect that other hon. Members' constituents have told them of similar experiences. I have asked myself why that should be. The Secretary of State made a brave defence of those who work under him, and its warmth was a credit to him—one would have expected that. The fact remains that whether it is because of how DEFRA was conceived or because of some institutional failure of leadership, DEFRA is regarded as a standing joke in the communities that I represent—often the joke is a grim and sardonic one, but it is a joke none the less. There is a complete want of trust and a constant feeling that DEFRA is not standing by the side of those rural communities. They feel that it is standing on their shoulders and driving them down. I ask the Secretary of State to accept that it is not impossible to understand why that should be. Brave though his defence of his Department was, the fact is that it has made a pathetic litany of error and incompetence, almost since the moment that it was brought into being. The Secretary of State must recognise that it is unusual for a Select Committee in which his own side has a preponderance—I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) is not in his place—actually to call for the resignation of the then Secretary of State when dealing with a report. By then she had become Foreign Secretary, but that recommendation was not lightly made. It was made after careful and due deliberation. The Committee said—I hope that the Secretary of State has read the report—that there had been a clear failure of political leadership, not only in the initial decision to introduce a complex hybrid scheme, but in the subsequent follow-through. Indeed, the Minister of State said in evidence to the Committee that the Department did not follow it through. The decision was criticised on all sides as the wrong decision—it was not only the fault of the civil servants, and Ministers should not hide behind the human shield of civil servants who cannot answer for themselves—and it was a failure of political leadership. It was a criminal act of neglect. What should the people of the countryside think when they hear the Secretary of State say to the House today that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with his Department, even though the Select Committee—with a preponderance of Labour Members—told the then Secretary of State that she should consider her position and that there had been a failure of political leadership? Let us consider other decisions, such as the Department's decision on bovine tuberculosis. In 2005, the strategic review of bovine TB called for a partnership between the farming community and DEFRA and everybody welcomed that. In 2005, I was told in the House by one of the Secretary of State's predecessors that the time for a decision on bovine TB was very near, but nothing has been done. On 2006, the Minister of State told me that the time was nigh and that, after a three-month consultation, the decision would soon be taken. He said that it was necessary to see whether the statistics, which seemed to suggest a fall in numbers in 2006, were borne out. Since 2006-07, of course, the incidence of bovine TB has risen by 22 per cent. There have been some 2,617 herd incidents. Nothing has been done. It is not right or credible to say to the farming community that the Government want a partnership with it while they continue to load the cost of the disease through the introduction of tabular valuations, and fail to take the brave decision that is plainly needed to use culling as an instrument of policy. It should not be the sole instrument of policy, or even the main instrument of policy, but it must be an instrument available in the hotspot areas of dense infection, where the balance of risk favours it. But no decision has been taken. The Secretary of State asks for time. He said as much to the Committee recently. But every Secretary of State before him has asked for the same thing. They have all said that the time for a decision was near, come to the very brink of that decision, and then pulled back. How can the country people whom I represent have confidence that this Secretary of State will listen and take a decision when the two previous Secretaries of State have failed to take that decision although they, too, said that the time was nigh? I shall give an example. Mr. David Grigg in my constituency has a pedigree herd of the most beautiful and valuable Holstein cows. It has recently been placed under bovine TB restrictions and several of his prize breeding animals have been condemned. They have already been slaughtered. I ask the Secretary of State to look into this case. One animal, a prize-winning cow worth £20,000, is still alive. Her half sister sold for 16,000 guineas just the other day, and she is a most superb example of this country's breeding stock. If DEFRA slaughters that animal, even though she is not even a conclusive reactor, Mr. Grigg will receive just £1,400 in compensation. Farmers have been told that they must be in partnership with the Government, but how would the Secretary of State feel if he owned an animal like that and then discovered that she was to be taken from him and slaughtered? That is neither fair nor equitable, and it is no wonder that people in the countryside consider DEFRA to be a sardonic joke. The Pirbright saga is another example, and the Secretary of State and I have already had an exchange about it. To do him credit, he did not seriously deny that it was a clear failure in the system, although I believe that it was, in part at least, a failure of his Department. The drains at the Pirbright facility were known to be dilapidated and due for replacement, but even so the foot and mouth virus escaped. No one inquired as to whether the drains were able to cope with having live virus flushed down them, or whether the virus would leech into the outside environment. That was an act of negligence, but the Secretary of State has come to the Dispatch Box to tell the country, and country people, that DEFRA has been acting well, even though at least part of the cost, stress and distress of the latest foot and mouth outbreak can be traced unerringly back to it. He should not feel surprised, therefore, by the suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) that farmers have a grim and sardonic view of the Department. However, what happened was not a failure by civil servants, for whom he so warmly and creditably stood up. The failure was caused by the political leadership of two successive Secretaries of State and, unless the right hon. Gentleman listens to what is being said in this debate, there is a danger that he will be the third one to be held responsible. The financial management of the Department has led to £50 million already being overdue—