---

Foot and Mouth Disease and Bluetongue

My Lords, I shall take the last point first because it hinges on the answer that I gave to the noble Baroness. Even looking cursorily at the zone changes, you cannot bring in an abattoir and a market without bringing in some farms. There is a balance to be struck here and it is not easy. The noble Lord talked about a nightmare for Defra Ministers but I have to say that it has not been a nightmare for Defra Ministers. I am extremely proud to be a Defra Minister during this period. Staff cancelled their holidays and came in the following day because they knew what would happen. Literally hundreds are involved in this 24/7 operation, both at the foot and mouth local disease control centre in Guildford and at the bluetongue centre in Bury St Edmunds. It has not been a nightmare. A plan was published that drew on the lessons learnt from the previous outbreak, and that plan has been meticulously followed. We are having that reviewed by the person who reviewed the first outbreak. We have learnt lessons. One lesson that we have learnt, which was not in the plan, is that if you start culling in the field, you must immediately put an air control zone around it. Press helicopters were our biggest single problem; they disturbed the animals and the vets could not do their job. We had to introduce air exclusion zones but we did not do so to start with because it did not cross our mind that helicopters would be used and would create serious problems for us. As regards Pirbright being a joint site, noble Lords are quite right that in the past the reason for that was probably to create a marketing synergy. Although this was not part of the discussions that we had leading to the publication of the report, I am told that there is no good scientific reason why they should be collocated. There are two private sector operations—a very small one as well as the large one. The viruses were not supposed to be put into the drains live; that is the whole point of the exercise. There was a two-stage process and they should have been completely dealt with by the time they got to the point where they escaped. Work is going on there to deal with this issue in terms of heat treatment and everything else, but the situation is not satisfactory. I say to the noble Countess—I did not address this point—that the laxity at Pirbright, to which I referred, is set out in Professor Spratt’s report. He refers to the lack of a record of the lorries that went on and off the site. There was no record either of where they came from or went to. There are a lot of lapses in that respect.