Sarah Dyke

I wholeheartedly agree. The financial burden, and also the emotional burden, on farmers is devastating. We know the pressures our farmers are under already. With inheritance tax, the recent withdrawal of the sustainable farming incentive and the countryside stewardship scheme coming to an end this year, many farmers are on the brink. As we know, TB leads many to close their farm gates for the very last time, so proper compensation is crucial. The current testing system is failing animals and failing our farmers. Too many infected animals slip through undetected, and many farmers lose clean stock completely unnecessarily. All the while, the taxpayer spends nearly £30 million per year on compensation alone to UK farmers. In total, the cost of TB is estimated to be well over £100 million per year to the public purse. I recently visited Gatcombe farm in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), where the TB eradication project is being led by the farmer, Robert Reed, and his vet, Dick Sibley. The research carried out there over the last 10 years raises important questions for the Minister about how we should solve this problem. That work has shown that undetected infection in cattle is the main driver of transmission and that the current skin-testing method has serious flaws. Some cows pass the test 30 times over, but they fail more advanced blood or faeces tests. Enhanced testing is currently illegal in officially tuberculosis-free herds, despite the fact that the failure to detect TB and the lack of trust in the system are causing so many of the issues.