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Foot and Mouth/Bluetongue

I do not know whether the hon. Lady is referring to spoil within the Pirbright site. ... The Health and Safety Executive went over the Pirbright site with a pretty fine toothcomb and, as the hon. Lady can read in the report that it produced and which I published on 7 September, the HSE's best assessment is that the route of transmission was the one that it describes. I am not aware—but I will go back and check the report again—that anybody thinks that movement of the virus directly from watercourses to other parts of Surrey could possibly be the route. However, the reason I said earlier that one cannot be 100 per cent. sure is because that is what the two reports said. The explanation is the most likely one, but we cannot be 100 per cent. sure. Professor Spratt reinforced the point that we are also learning about the extent to which the virus can survive out in the open, depending on the climatic conditions. One of the lessons that we will have to learn from this—not just in the UK, but in other countries in Europe—relates to protection and surveillance zones. Since this is not the first time—if I remember rightly, there was a case some years back of a virus escaping from a laboratory in the Netherlands—are there lessons that we need to learn about the nature of the controls that we put in place in case there is an outbreak from such a source? I undertake to go away and reflect on the points that the hon. Lady has raised.