I, too, pay tribute to the outgoing Minister with responsibility for farming, my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice). I had the immense privilege and honour of being his Parliamentary Private Secretary for a year and a half. With his experience and expertise, he was one of the best farming Ministers this country has ever had. His departure is a great loss to the Government.
I set up the all-party group on dairy farmers in 2006, in the previous Parliament, because of the terrible crisis my Shropshire dairy farmers were going through. An important statistic to remember is that in 1997, 47 cows were slaughtered in Shropshire as a result of bovine tuberculosis; last year, that figure was more than 2,000. I repeat those figures: from 47 to more than 2,000. The misery that that disease has caused many of my constituents is appalling. When I set up the all-party group, 170 MPs joined it. Uniquely, the then Leader of the Opposition, now the Prime Minister, joined the group. I believe that that was the only all-party group he joined in the previous Parliament.
Our group produced a report in which the two recommendations were that we needed a limited cull of badgers and a supermarket regulator. At the time, we were told that it would be impossible to get either. We pleaded with the Labour Government to introduce a regulator and to take action on bovine tuberculosis. Our pleas fell on deaf ears. I am therefore slightly bemused to hear Labour MPs calling for us to support their actions on an adjudicator, because we pleaded on bended knee for years and no action was taken. One reason why the situation is so perilous at the moment is the inactivity of the previous Labour Government.