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Foot and Mouth/Bluetongue

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and welcome the relief package that he has announced, although it will go nowhere near meeting the huge economic cost of foot and mouth to the farming and related industries. As the Secretary of State said, this has been a terrible year for the farming community: between them, bluetongue and foot and mouth have effectively closed down the livestock industry over huge areas of countryside at the busiest time of the year. That has caused economic hardship, but we should not underestimate the emotional hardship that it is causing in rural communities, the impact on animal welfare, or the blow to the reputation of farming and the integrity of our scientific establishment. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, by a cruel twist of irony, work on a vaccine to protect against bluetongue has been put on hold because it was taking place at Pirbright, the source of the foot and mouth outbreak? When does he now expect a bluetongue vaccine to be available? Bluetongue may be a misfortune but foot and mouth disease is different. The Government have been caught red-handed and are damned by their negligence. We know that the source of the outbreak was a Government-regulated and licensed laboratory. We also know from Professor Spratt's report that the most likely cause of the infection was leaking drains. The Secretary of State has attempted to maintain that foot and mouth escaped from Pirbright through an extraordinary combination of circumstances, but the really extraordinary thing was the state of the drains at Pirbright. The Government's initial reaction to the outbreak was, I am afraid, characteristic. The Prime Minister announced that he was taking personal charge and immediately sent his spin machine into overdrive in an attempt to pin the blame on Merial, the private company at the site. That was shabby and dishonest and it smacked of desperation. The reason for the Prime Minister's desperation to find a scapegoat has since become clear. As long ago as 2002, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council stated in an official report:"““Some laboratories and other areas of the Pirbright estate are not close to the standard expected of a modern bio-medical facility and are well below that expected of a facility of such importance””." It recommended awarding funding for biosecurity at the site. What was the reaction from the then Chancellor? In the following two years, funding from DEFRA and other Government Departments to the Institute for Animal Health was cut. It gets worse. In July 2004, Merial wrote to DEFRA with proposals to replace the drains. Nothing happened for two years. Tenders for repairing the drainage systems were finally received in October 2006. Why did it take so long to obtain those tenders? Why did work not start until July this year? Why were repairs to the drainage system not prioritised? Is it not clear that if the Government had acted in a timely way on the repeated warnings about the integrity of the effluent pipes at Pirbright, the farming industry would not be facing a bill for hundreds of millions of pounds, and the reputation of British science would not have been dealt a body blow. Will the Secretary of State confirm that among the dangerous pathogens held at the Pirbright laboratories are viruses lethal to humans, such as E. coli, BSE and avian flu? Is it purely a matter of chance that it was the foot and mouth virus which escaped from Pirbright and not some more deadly disease? Does the Secretary of State accept that the Government's failure to secure the laboratories at Pirbright amounts to gross negligence? What provision has been made for compensating the farming community for the costs that it is suffering as a result of the Government's negligence? The Pirbright site was last inspected in December last year. What were the findings of that inspection? Why was the licence to operate not withdrawn? Can the Secretary of State confirm that if a dairy farm had been found to have such poor biosecurity, it would have been closed down? The Secretary of State states that a safety alert has been issued to all animal pathogen category 3 and 4 laboratories, which will be followed by inspections. On the basis of the inspection regime at Pirbright, what confidence can we have that they will be thorough and that any recommendations will be acted upon? I represent a Surrey constituency. I know how traumatic this whole affair has been for Surrey farmers and others in the immediate area, but I have also recently met with hill farmers in Wales. They too are deeply concerned about the viability of their businesses, about the welfare of their animals and about their own families and future. The same is true across the country. People want to know exactly how this disease got into the environment, yet that is the one question that the Government refuse to investigate further. How very convenient. How many people have been disciplined or removed from their posts as a result of this catalogue of negligence? Who is going to take responsibility? Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to apologise? Can we not conclude that if this is what happens when the Prime Minister takes personal charge of a crisis, he is better off out of it and that, if the Labour Government cannot be trusted to deal with the foot and mouth virus, they cannot be trusted with anything?