I am always happy to condemn violence and intimidation of any kind.
I congratulate the lead petitioner, Simon King, who has not been mentioned so far and who managed to amass the 100,000 signatures needed to secure the debate. That we managed to get over the 100,000 threshold demonstrates the degree of interest in this topic outside the House. At this point, it is important that I declare an interest. I am a member of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, in which the lead petitioner plays a very active part, so I think I ought to put that on the record.
The debate was opened by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who made a very thoughtful contribution. However, I take slight issue with one of his points. For me, this is not about whether farmers get whatever they want from the current Government. I understand that farmers struggle very hard to secure a decent living. Their way of life is often very hard. Currently, many aspects of our agricultural sector are struggling to make ends meet. I want to put that on the record.
I also think that if we are to find a way forward on this issue, it is important in the long term to find consensus and common ground. I applaud those charities, including the Wildlife Trusts and the Save Me Trust, that have tried very hard—and are in many instances succeeding—to establish working relationships with farmers, so that we can start to find a way forward that brings all parties to the table, and so that we have constructive attitudes and dialogue instead of the rather divisive debate that has characterised all the discussions on badger culling so far.
I will not rehearse the whole history of badger culling over the past four to six years. Suffice it to say that at the heart of all the debates, all the questions tabled in the House on badger culling and all the disquiet relating to badger culling is a very deep sense of unease about the Government’s rather cavalier attitude towards the science on this issue.
I will start with the randomised badger culling trial. That 10-year project drew the conclusion, at the end of the period, that no meaningful contribution to cattle TB control in England could be made through the use of badger culling. That was clear, and the Labour Government in 2009-10 determined that culling was not the way forward and invested in vaccination programmes. The incoming Government, as was their right, decided to act otherwise.
In April 2011, a panel of independent experts was convened to set clear parameters for pilot culls. What was really important about that period was that the Government had parameters that reflected the discipline established by the RBCT. I am referring, of course, to the land boundaries for culling, the time period allowed for culling, the percentage of animals to be culled and the need for repeated culling over a period of years. Those were the principal parameters put in place by that panel of experts in April 2011, and it was according to those parameters that the pilots were given the go-ahead. Despite significant opposition from parliamentarians such as myself and from huge numbers of people in the country, the pilots were given the go-ahead, and they were of course located in west Somerset and west Gloucestershire.
For me, the first breach of the science was the decision to go against the conclusions drawn by the experts at the heart of the RBCT. The second breach came when
the first round of culling in the two pilot areas took place in 2013, because the number of badgers killed in the allotted six-week period was nowhere near the target required to make the cull in any way effective and so the time period was extended—I think it was nine weeks in one of the cull areas and 11 weeks in the other. The second breach, therefore, was of one of the key parameters for the pilot culling. The extended time period was the second breach of the science by Government policy.
The science was further breached when the independent experts panel reported on humaneness after the first round of culling. It stated that at least 7% of the badgers killed were killed inhumanely. However, rather than responding constructively to the panel’s findings, Ministers disbanded the panel—got rid of it.
That was followed in 2014 by new culling areas being announced. Let us remember that it was decided, when the parameters for the pilot culls were established, that a four-year culling period would be needed to demonstrate whether the approach would be effective. Despite all that, just two years into the pilot project, the practice of culling was extended. That was despite the data on the numbers at that point not demonstrating success in terms of meeting the criteria set in 2011. That was particularly the case in relation to the numbers that they managed to kill in those first two years in the two pilot areas.
Then, in 2015, the Government formally relaxed the criteria for culling in relation to the land area. The required land area was at least 150 square metres in extent, but that was suddenly reduced to 100 square metres, despite the majority of those responding to the consultation saying that such a change would be wrong. There was relaxation of the criteria in relation to the period of time allowed for any one cull and the minimum land area used for culling; the recommendation was that a minimum of 70% of the land area in the zone would need to be used for the culling, but that criteria was relaxed.
In summary, as time has gone on we have witnessed a blatant refusal by Government to follow the science. They have not only pursued this policy in opposition to the outcomes of the RBCT; they have gradually but significantly moved further and further away from the original scientific parameters established in April 2011. They have moved so far, in fact, that at this stage it is probably now impossible, in relation to the extended culling areas, to determine whether the approach is effective at all. They have moved so far away from the original parameters that culling, as practised in the last four years, has therefore been discredited. It has no basis in science, because the science has been distorted, twisted and, in the end, utterly abandoned.
The very least the Government can do is furnish Parliament with a full evaluation of the impact of culling in the two pilot areas—west Gloucestershire and west Somerset—where four years of culling are now complete. Back in the debate in September 2016, the Minister failed to answer my question about whether an evaluation would be commissioned. It is hard to imagine that this policy can do anything—other than lose the last desperate shreds of its credibility—unless such an evaluation is not only completed but made available to Parliament. The Government have an opportunity to rescue at least some credibility in relation to this issue, if they would only ensure that that is done. Having a pilot
suggests that an evaluation will be made of whether it has worked. The Government need to do that work and present it to Parliament. If, on the basis of that evaluation, it is then concluded that the approach has not been effective, at that point the Government would have to explain why they further relaxed the criteria in 2014 and ’15 and why, in particular, they allowed the culling to be extended to other areas of the country.
In conclusion, we need to see a thorough, independent assessment of the pilot culls. We also need the Government to make international comparisons, and not only with other culling practices. Somebody has said to me already this afternoon, “You didn’t make your usual statement.” I will make it now: Badgers are not possums. They really are not; they are completely different creatures. The Government should be making international comparisons with countries that have focused on vaccination as an alternative, where vaccination is used, as it is with other species, to establish a critical mass of immunity. That is the key point about vaccination. It is not about individuals necessarily; it is also about critical mass and ensuring immunity at a level that gives a country a sense of moving forward and eradicating diseases such as TB. There are countries that have focused on vaccination as an alternative. We have heard a lot about Wales this afternoon, where the approach appears to be working, and we know that Ireland is considering a shift to a different approach that would involve vaccination. Finally, and above everything, we need the Government to commit to abandoning culling if an independent evaluation of the pilot areas demonstrates a failure to deliver a meaningful, long-term reduction in the incidence of bovine TB.
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