Well, Simon Thomas lamented at the start of his remarks that there weren’t many questions left to be asked and now there are even fewer, but I would like to join everyone else in welcoming this statement and actually congratulating the Cabinet Secretary on her willingness to engage with farmers and to listen to all views, and for the flexibility of her approach. I do think that this document, taken in the round, is a significant step towards the eradication of TB.

There will, no doubt, be lots of complaints about individual parts of the package, but I think that, as a whole, it does represent very significant progress indeed, in particular the difficult political decision—I acknowledge that right at the outset—to envisage culling of badgers, be it of a limited kind. There is no unanimity on the value of this even within my own group, so I do understand the difficulties that the Cabinet Secretary has to cope with on this particular aspect of it.

As regards regionalisation, I think this is a sensible approach and it will be particularly welcomed, of course, in north-west Wales. And there are, of course, fears in the farming community—in the high-risk areas in particular—that this is going to stain them, in a sense, and increase their costs and adversely affect prices. I think we must do as much as we possibly can to explain to the public at large, and others who are interested stakeholders in this, that this is not necessarily something that makes the meat and other farm produce that is produced in these areas unsaleable or inedible. I think it’s very important to carry on with what the Cabinet Secretary has been doing, which is to take the farming industry with us in a collaborative venture towards the goal that we all want to see.

As regards the compensation cap, I heard what the Cabinet Secretary said about—. Actually, I think the figure is only 95 animals that were involved last year, over £5,000. But there is a specific unfairness to individuals, particularly where they’ve invested significant sums of money in animal genetics. I’m pleased to hear that she’ll keep this under review, and if it proves to be the case that individuals are losing significant sums of money, given the precariousness of farming incomes, I think it would be very welcome if this could be revisited as soon as there’s enough information available.

As regards the role of wildlife, I notice that the document does say that TB can infect all animals and some are regarded by veterinary experts as reservoirs, which can lead to a persistence of the disease. Of course, this particularly involves badgers. We know from the most recent Wales ‘badger found dead’ survey that there was an infection rate of nearly 7 per cent, which is much higher than that found in cattle, and in some areas of Wales about one in five badgers tested in this survey were shown to be suffering from the disease. I think it’s very important that we should see this as an animal welfare issue for badgers and other wildlife, as well as for cattle, and it needs to be explained that TB is a horrible disease for badgers as well as for cattle and there are other issues involved with an explosion in the numbers of badgers as well. We accept that deer need to be culled. There isn’t a great deal of controversy about that. Given that badgers have no known predators and there’s been a collapse in the hedgehog population and significant problems with ground nesting birds, there are other reasons for the control of badgers as well. These are issues that, I think, which have to be faced up to if we are to have real biodiversity in the countryside. I know that’s not directly relevant to this particular statement but it is an important part, I think, of the argument to try and bring the public with us on what is, I know, a very difficult issue.

So, I’ll just repeat what I said earlier on, that I do think that this is a step change for the Welsh Government in dealing with this problem and I congratulate the Cabinet Secretary for grasping this nettle.