Continuing on the same note as the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), in my speech I will encourage the Government to do as they say they will do, which is consider and keep available to them all the tools in the box, including vaccination. I, like the hon. Lady, believe that vaccination offers the most effective means of getting on top of this disease.
It is worth reminding ourselves of the impact that bovine tuberculosis has on farming communities. To see how it has affected farmers in west Cornwall over the past 30 years, people need to talk to farmers and understand the impact of getting TB reactors in their herds. The impact is not only financial, but emotional: there is an effect on confidence in the farming community, because many farmers live in fear whenever vets come round to undertake the tests. It is vital that people fully appreciate that.
We would all claim that we support a process of evidence-based policy making, but today’s debate demonstrates the constant risk among politicians of using policy-based evidence making, whatever one’s perspective. Having looked at the balance of evidence provided by the best informed scientific expertise on this question, especially from those involved in the RBCT and others, it is clear to me that the Government are running a high risk of making the situation worse in those areas where they proceed with the cull. I simply point that out.
I strongly supported, as did all parties at the time, the previous Government’s approach and the randomised badger culling trial. In my area, I faced down strong opposition from animal rights activists and others to the proactive cull in particular, so I have been there, done that and run the gauntlet of strong and extremely vociferous protests. As I say, there is a high risk that we could end up making the situation worse.
The Ireland study has been referred to on several occasions. It is worth saying that the four areas selected were among the most isolated in the country, and had badger populations that were extremely small and disparate. The nature of those populations is quite different from the nature of the badger population in Great Britain; the likelihood of migration and perturbation was bound to be significantly lower in the Ireland populations. We cannot say that the situation in Ireland is representative of what we have in the UK.
On vaccination, Professor Rosie Woodroffe and I are working on a proposal. We have been to see the Minister with responsibility for farming, my hon. Friend the
Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who has been supportive of us developing our proposal to roll out, using volunteers, a five-year vaccination programme across the whole Penwith peninsula—200 sq km—which clearly has the hard edges of the Atlantic around it. The Government’s estimated cost of about £2,200 per square kilometre would be significantly reduced by about 50% through the use of volunteers. We already have a large team of 50 or more volunteers who have come forward. We suspect that we can offer vaccination and wildlife holidays in the area for people who get involved in the programme. Clearly, only a very people who are trained and licensed to undertake the actual injection of the vaccine are needed.