---

Foot and Mouth/Bluetongue

I welcome the Secretary of State's comments about involving farmers and stakeholders in wider discussions about biosecurity and about the need to look at insurance-based risk policies. I congratulate him particularly on learning the lessons from the 2001 outbreak, by declining to close the countryside to visitors, because it is the value of people using our footpaths, pubs, shops, restaurants and attractions that keeps the rural economy going. We need to be clear that, although farming makes an important contribution to the rural economy, other drivers are there as well.