Bovine Tuberculosis

I concur. I hope that the Minister will reply to that important point. I agree that culling badgers is not a panacea. However, I would have liked the opportunity to discover whether a small, limited cull could have an impact on the disease. Despite being devastated and disappointed by the Secretary of State's announcement, I hope that the Minister will be able to give me and the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire a crumb of comfort on a subject that was raised by Barney Holbeche, the chief parliamentary adviser for the NFU. He wrote to me this week, saying that"““the NFU has won a High Court judgment against Defra on valuation of high value cattle slaughtered under the bovine TB scheme…Although welcome, Defra have 21 days in which to appeal (we think they will) and even if the judgment is upheld there seem likely to be some losers as well as winners in a revamped scheme””." I hope that the Minister will assure us that the NFU's important victory will not be challenged, and that farmers with high-value cattle will receive proper compensation, a matter that I have raised on numerous occasions in Westminster Hall. On 8 July, we held a demonstration outside Parliament. I brought together hundreds of farmers from all over the country. We planned the demonstration months in advance, but by sheer chance it took place the day after the announcement that there would be no culling of badgers. We were all outside demonstrating, and we brought cows with us. There were also cows outside Nobel house, DEFRA's headquarters. We were very English in our demonstration. We were reserved and polite, and we did not cause too much of a fuss, but we wanted to show the level of feeling that exists. The demonstration was followed by a question and answer session in the House, where Labour and Conservative Members were able to interact with farmers. I congratulate my constituent, Andrew Bebb, of the Shropshire Farmers for Action group, Stuart Jones, Mr. Jonathan Lovegrove-Fielden and the NFU on helping to organise the demonstration. We need more intensive and radical action. We must not be too English. We should be more like the French, and ramp up our demonstrations and activities. We should make the Government sit up and listen to what we have to say about the state of affairs in the agricultural dairy sector. They must take more specific and proper action. I am convinced that the all-party group will have to find a part-time assistant to lobby the media and the Government. Although we have 170 members, I decided after the Secretary of State's announcement that we needed someone to work for us, to ramp up our activities and to get more articles in the media, such as the one in the Shropshire Star under the headline ““Goodbye to UK cattle industry””. An assistant would help the group to lobby the Government. The NFU will need to step up its legal challenges to the Government. The union does a good job, but I am frustrated because it is sometimes too polite and deferential to the Government. It does not want to rock the boat, in case the Government make life even more difficult. Those days are now over. In the dying days of the Labour Administration and in the run-up to the next Conservative Government, the NFU has to be extremely forceful. It must demand that action is taken, and not be too deferential. We need to appeal to the European Union over Government action. I have written to Mr. Barroso, even though it was galling to me as an arch-Eurosceptic. I asked his opinion of Government action over bovine TB. It was a difficult thing to do, but the only thing left in our armoury was to check the EU's stance on the Government's handling of bovine TB. In an era when human rights are so important to the European Union and the European Court of Justice, I wanted to ask Mr. Barroso and legal experts what are the human rights implications of not dealing with the disease in the UK. What about the human rights of Shropshire dairy farmers who are on their knees and going out of business? This week, I have also written to the ambassadors of Belgium and Holland. I hope that the Minister will share my concern about the current unofficial boycott of British cattle imports by Belgium and the Netherlands because some imports have tested positive for bovine TB. The two countries account for more than 40 per cent. of all British cattle exports, and I am concerned that they are acting against the spirit of the EU. I would be grateful if the Minister could give some assurances that pressure is being brought to bear on those two countries to ensure that they stop the unofficial boycott of British meat imports. I have some brief comments about Shropshire Wildlife Trust. It is the largest organisation in my constituency, with more than 5,000 members throughout Shropshire. Of course, its symbol is a badger. I have attended many meetings at which I have been grilled on my views on badgers, which I shall come to. My wife and I were invited by the trust to watch a badger sett. We went to Whitchurch in Shropshire and spent four hours with the trust watching the sett. The badgers were indeed cute and cuddly, and I thought they were very sweet. We were even given a cuddly toy badger for my baby daughter. Perhaps the trust wanted to convince me just how sweet the animals are and not to call for them to be culled. I appreciate that badgers need to be protected, but we need to engage with the trust and show its members the devastation that wildlife is facing as a result of the spread of bovine TB. We need to explain that many badgers die a slow, lingering death as a result of the disease. I have addressed the Shropshire Wildlife Trust in the past and I have been challenged on my views by members of the organisation. I will be writing to all 5,000 of them during recess to say why I think it is important to have a limited cull of badgers. That is a way in which to communicate with them, engage them, and start the debate. I have had private discussions with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and I have spoken to all his predecessors on the matter. I made most progress with the right hon. Member for South Shields, the current Foreign Secretary, because he was more prepared than any of the others to meet me and to listen to my views on the issue. I am worried that the Administration have realised the strength of feeling among members of wildlife trusts against the culling of badgers, and in turn the importance of people who live in key marginal seats and in city areas. The Government do not want to offend such people in the run-up to a general election and have therefore taken the easier option of making announcements about extra investment in vaccination and other things. They did not want to grasp the nettle and adopt the most controversial in a plethora of proposals—the one that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee recommended, as the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire said. They are not prepared to grapple with the issue because of the ferocity with which any such measure would be met by members of the wildlife trusts. I appeal to the Minister to give us greater authority and responsibility in our regions to make some of those decisions, because not all areas are the same. Will he please give me a commitment that the victory in the High Court over high-value cattle will not be challenged? Will he please give me some crumbs of comfort to take back to Shropshire farmers, many of whom are on their knees, facing oblivion as a result of this appalling disease?