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Foot and Mouth Disease and Bluetongue

My Lords, on the last point, external lawyers and representatives are looking at these reports. Everything will be published. Nothing will be unpublished. We have published an enormous amount. We published Professor Spratt’s report and the HSE report a few days before what turned out to be the second outbreak that we found, so there was a gap. I am very grateful to the noble Lord for raising the issue of diversification because it gives me a chance to make a further point. I met the three farmers concerned with the first three cases—one of whose cattle did not have foot and mouth but were slaughtered—Mr Pride, Mr Gunner and Mr Emerson. They were the three farmers who had first discovered the disease. All of them are model farmers. They had diversified into all sorts of businesses, which I shall not recite. When I had a brief discussion with them on neutral territory in a farm shop, which was the first time they had all met, I raised the thorny issue of insurance. Mr Pride told me that he was insured. He said that he had his farm shop insured for fire, burglary and all the kinds of risk that you insure a business for. He had even paid an extra premium to cover interruption of business. I never asked him whom he was insured with and I do not know to this day. However, the small print in the insurance stated that anything related to foot and mouth was not covered. I certainly intend to follow this up with the financial institutions and the banks. Mr Pride was sold an insurance policy to cover interruption to business. I do not refer to his farm business. His farm shop was covered for interruption to business. However, he is caught out in the small print. As a Minister I cannot talk about cost sharing and responsibility policy on disease control and animals when people are left in that position. I understand that there is a difficulty with insuring crops in the ground and other issues and with the cost of some of these exotic diseases, but that kind of short-changing is a serious business that must be pursued.