Tim Farron

I did not give my hon. Friend any warning whatsoever, so I thank him for his eloquence and for immediate springing to his feet on this issue, which he cares about deeply, as do I. Is it not ludicrous to outlaw the culling of badgers for scientific purposes—to try to reduce the spread of a dangerous disease—yet permit it if developers want it? That seems outrageous and is certainly lacking any kind of scientific underpinning. Farmers, rural communities and all of us who care about animal welfare, wherever we live, deserve a clear, evidence-based plan from DEFRA that sets out how England will achieve TB-free status by 2038, with milestones, accountability and fair support, including very fair compensation for those on the frontline. The lack of direction since the Godfray review in 2018—under both the Government in power now and the Conservative one that preceded it—has increased and created uncertainty and frustration right across the industry. As Liberal Democrats, we are calling on Government to publish a transparent, science-led evaluation of all disease control measures, including cost-benefit analyses, vaccination data and surveillance outcomes, to ensure that every action taken is effective, humane and sustainable. I echo some of the wise words of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George). We believe very much that the way forward must be safe, effective and firmly rooted in evidence. Running the risk of attempting to be reasonable on all this—a Liberal Democrat trait—the evidence on the science really is mixed. To show my own long standing, I remember some time ago the last-but-one Labour DEFRA Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leeds South (Hilary Benn)—who is a good and decent man, I ought to say—at the NFU conference back in 2009. When he was pressed by farmers on why he would not support even a limited form of badger cull, his answer was, “Well, we would, but public opinion would not let us.” It is really important that we make evidence-based decisions. That was maybe very honest of the right hon. Gentleman, but it underpinned what is often the problem with democratic Governments: sometimes we make the wrong decisions because we do not think we will get away with the right ones. The current DEFRA review, published in August, found that culling may reduce infection quickly in some high-density and high-risk populations. There is a big “but” coming, and it is this: badger vaccination delivers a more consistent reduction in TB prevalence across both the core and surrounding buffer zones, if delivered properly. That is a massive “if”, is it not? Farmers lack trust in the vaccination plan because they lack trust in this Government and in their posture towards farmers and farming in general. Clearly, vaccination would be the way forward, but we can surely understand why farmers lack trust in a Government that have damaged them through inheritance tax changes—the family farm tax—and botched the roll-out of the sustainable farming incentive, and opened and shut windows for the likes of stewardship schemes and what have you. This is not a Government that farmers currently trust, and the difficulty of rolling out a vaccination programme against that lack of trust is massively scaled up.