I thank you for your statement today. I'm not going to reiterate everything, but I'm clearly going to say that, again, I can't support—and I'm glad you don't—a full-scale badger cull. If we look at the cost of that, all the science makes it perfectly clear that, unless you so significantly or almost wipe out the badger population, it isn't going to have the effect that everybody thinks it will have. That's already happening in some parts of England, where badgers are on the verge of extinction. And, to my mind, I have never seen anything like this. This is a protected species that we are wiping out here, and we need to be clear about that. It has cost £50 million already to the taxpayer, and I never, ever hear anyone talk about that particular cost. So, I'm glad, Minister, that you look at all the different aspects, and you have identified a link between cattle movements in some cases. I was going to ask, but you seem to have already answered it, whether we must make that enforced, whether it must be mandatory. It cannot be the case that people are moving cattle without going through a process that makes it—. No farmer wants TB—I recognise that—and I think anything that we can put in place to help those farmers not have that has to be a positive, and maybe this is something that we need to do.

I think I've also asked this question before; I'm going to ask it again. It is the case that some farms have almost been in the status of being infected by TB? Should we look at the real possibility that that will always be the case and why it is the case? Are there factors like the land being so badly infected by TB, maybe by the slurry that exists on those farms? And should we look at—and I think it's probably time that we did, in some cases—coming to the final conclusion that, for some farms, putting cattle on them is actually inviting those cattle to have TB because the land is so badly infected? Now, it might be the case—and I can hear some sharp intakes of breath—that this is a difficult conclusion for some, but it might be a necessary conclusion, and all that we're going to do on those farms is end up causing distress to the farmer, to the animals, and, of course, a cost to the public purse. So, I think we really seriously need to look at that as well.

I do recognise that there's misery and that there's heartbreak behind this, and I'm really pleased to hear that we have a bTB centre of excellence that we're now working with. There was also a conference in Derby last week, and it was in the University of Derby, and it was the first ever national conference on badger vaccination. There were around 80 groups and organisations already vaccinating badgers or wanting to start up inoculation programmes, and they attended. So, again, I'd like to know if your department will review the findings of that and the outcomes of that conference and see whether we can take any learning from it and help reduce this disease.