Food Industry Competitiveness

Conservative policy is to attack this disease with a comprehensive strategy using all available measures and, yes, that does include recognition that will require selective culling in certain hotspots, but not across the whole of England, as the hon. Gentleman implies. We will continue to study the science as it develops over the next few weeks and months. A vaccine that is of any use—an oral vaccine, in other words—will not be available until 2014 and, at the current rate of expansion anything between 80,000 and 100,000 head of cattle could be slaughtered each year by then. I suggest that we cannot wait until 2014 for any improvement. With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish to ask the Minister about another animal health issue not directly related to food—at least not in this country. It relates to the outbreak this week in Wiltshire of equine infectious anaemia in two horses imported from Romania. My understanding is that EU law has, since 2007, required testing prior to export. I hope that the Minister can tell us what has gone wrong, whether those animals were tested and how they got to Wiltshire before being detected. The Minister also referred to energy and waste reduction. He may not be aware that over the past few weeks I have tabled questions to every Department about food waste and only the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been able to give me any figures. Almost every other Department has said that it does not collect those statistics. I suggest that the Government start leading by example and collecting those statistics. The Government talk about spending £10 million on anaerobic digesters as demonstration plants, but that ignores the fact that many are already in place and running, based on renewable obligations certificates. We now find that the Department of Energy and Climate Change proposes to renege on those certificates and there will be no grandfather rights for existing plants. However, DEFRA proposes more regulations on the size of store that will need a licence—another difficulty for anybody who wants to set up an anaerobic digestion plant, even though this country is already way behind in that area and needs to improve. When it comes to the Government's document, rarely can there have been so much hype over so little substance. The Government seek credit for admitting that they have got this issue completely wrong for the past 12 years, because domestic food production does matter. That is in the face of the fact that the farming and food industries have been saying for years that the Government's policy was wrong. The Conservative party has consistently called for food security, but the Government rubbished it. The Conservative party called for honest labelling and country-of-origin information, and the Government blocked that. The Conservative party is committed to public procurement, but we have a pale imitation of that from this Government. We are committed to an ombudsman, and all we have from the Government is a consultation. For years, the real interests of the countryside, farming and the food industry have been pursued by the Conservatives, not by the Government. For years we have been setting the agenda that the Government are belatedly beginning to follow—