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Avian Flu

My Lords, I am similarly grateful to the noble Baroness for giving us the opportunity today to talk about these issues. In July this year, a group of my senior team in the diocese spent four days in Romania. We were the guests of the Orthodox Church in the Diocese of Iash and as part of our visit we spent a day in the rural communities seeing something of the ministry of the Orthodox Church. Once you are out of the major towns in Romania, you become very conscious of how underdeveloped are parts of eastern Europe. Farming is by horse and cart without exception and with heavy use of human labour. Everywhere you go, down unmade streets in the villages, people have their own means of producing food. Across the road, there are flocks of ducks everywhere you go. It reminded me of China where the high dependency by the rural poor on chickens and ducks is manifest wherever you go. It is all very well and no doubt right and proper for the EC to start talking about moving poultry indoors. In Romania, only the winter cold will achieve that. There is not a ghost of a chance of the sort of controls that we think of over here being applied there. Poor rural communities are already exposed to the problems of disease, and the problems of managing in the face of that threat are located not only in south-east Asia but on our doorsteps in Europe. No one is helped by panic responses, and our own farming community needs protection from public anxiety. I very much support the remarks recently made about the media. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will take on board the lessons of the foot and mouth crisis in 2001; public anxiety led by the media can lead to the wrong responses and, in this case, to a mass cull of birds that is neither necessary nor effective. The steps already being taken and any proposed for the future will work much better if they are rooted in a process of mutual trust and consensus, and we prepare for that by bringing the parties together and agreeing how we are to handle these matters. When we consider the possibility of the disease mutating and being spread from person to person, leading to another major flu pandemic, we similarly need to avoid panic and be properly prepared. If we are to be properly prepared, it is vital that there is transparency from the start and that people are told the truth. I suspect that the truth is that while we cannot know how the disease will develop, whether it will mutate and in what way, we need to be prepared for a pandemic. Every person and household will need to know in advance what they can do to minimise the impact should such a pandemic take hold on our world. What preparatory material are the Government preparing for the households of our country so that they may be properly prepared? We must not pretend that any of this will be easy. I understand that the Government’s own estimate is that, if we have a pandemic, 50,000 people are likely to die as a result. That, I assume, is on the assumption that the vaccination is effective and widespread. When you start to think of the implications, you can begin to see the challenge—from the impact on residential homes for the elderly through to the loss of the voluntary commitment to community life and community building, which is made predominantly in our society by those over the age of 60 and in retirement. Who will deliver meals-on-wheels and do the lunch club, or the structured visiting of the sick and isolated? The people on the receiving end are not only the elderly themselves; often the people offering the services are elderly. Will the funeral services be able to cope? Standing here as a Bishop, I want to know whether the clergy and religious leaders who have to bear the brunt of this ministry and the ministry of comfort to those who have lost loved ones will be acknowledged and supported. The excellent report prepared by the NHS somehow draws to a halt in front of that issue. On page 32, it refers to the impact on such services as,"““death registration and funeral directors will have an increased work load””." I believe that some of my clergy will have an increased work load—and I know that we have been in correspondence about the importance of religious leaders and local clergy being included in the preparations. After a glance at the report, I find that it does not make enough mention of voluntary organisations in our community; we need to do more on that. The Minister will know of our concerns in these areas. I know that my noble friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell has written to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and I am sure that he will get a positive response. I know from my time in Sheffield, when we suffered the Hillsborough football disaster, the stress on clergy seeking to offer help and support to people at a time of great community stress. The clergy of Sheffield, without being asked to do so, rallied to the football ground and were often the first there to bring help alongside the professionals who sought to bring professional help. In the case of avian flu, that will be exhausting—and that is on the assumption that the clergy do not themselves contract the disease. What happens if two or three of my clergy go down with the disease at one and the same time as the demand on funeral services goes up? These are important issues that need to be thought through. The medical and scientific problem is the presenting problem, but the social and human consequences are the real issue here, as it is with our farmers, and those who raise chickens and produce our eggs and local produce. We have to deal with the science of the disease, but it is how we deal with the effects on people that is the most important question. I am sure we are all agreed that panic will lead to the wrong responses. Even in the face of popular anxiety, those of us who are leaders in the community need to hold our nerve and be well prepared. These events remind us once again that it is a myth that we are in control of our destiny. The test of our faith and our values lies not in control, but in the quality of our response. Avian flu will test that once again.