I acknowledge the Minister's best intentions and her openmindedness and her willingness to consider doing things that are politically difficult for her in her party and her general willingness to engage with farmers and the farming community generally on this hugely difficult issue. But, despite all that and 18 months after the launch of the refreshed eradication programme, it's clear that the Government is not unambiguously winning the war against TB. And I agree with Llyr Gruffydd, in what he said earlier on, that, in the statement, the Minister does seem to be openly blaming farmers to an extent, when, actually, it's the Welsh Government that ultimately has the answer to this problem, because it's the Government's policy that is going to enable the measures to be taken that do hold out a prospect of real success. And there's no doubt on the figures that we're not really making any significant progress at all. The Minister attributes the 12 per cent increase in cattle slaughter to heightened sensitivity of testing and surveillance for TB, but the Minister said in her statement:

'We expect this investment in removing infected cattle earlier to reap rewards in the medium term'.

Well, as I've said many times, farmers don't really have the time; TB is having a drastic effect on the rural economy and devastating the livelihoods of cattle keepers, and many of them family farms. I acknowledge that she does fully appreciate the deep psychological impact as well as the economic impact that having an infected herd can bring. 

In 2017, the Government did seem to be taking steps in the right direction and I applauded at the time, and have done since, her willingness to combat the disease in the wildlife population by a means of cage trapping, testing and humanely killing infected badgers. But, as Llyr Gruffydd again pointed out, the figures here are absolutely dismal. Three licences on three farms in the whole of Wales is not even a pinprick. To put this into context, a cow is slaughtered in Wales as a result of TB every 46 minutes, whereas a badger is culled every 3.6 months. So, if this is an indication of the Government's priorities, then they're wholly misconceived, in my view. NFU Cymru have said that up to one in five badgers in Wales are infected with TB, so we must, if we're to get to grips with this problem, do something about this reservoir in the wild.

Now, the Minister said in her statement that she's working with farmers and stakeholders and vets in Gower on a badger vaccine. How is success in this area going to be measured? Previous eradication programmes have proved that the so-called science-led approach actually has reaped nothing but failure. In contrast, while vets are chasing badgers across the Gower with vaccinations, in England, there's been considerable success by a totally different kind of policy. Badger culling in high-risk areas of England produced the following results: in December 2018, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs revealed reduced disease in cattle over the four-year cull period, with the number of confirmed cattle breakdowns down by around 50 per cent. In the Gloucester area, the incidence rate has dropped from 25 per cent to 12 per cent in the 12 months following the fourth year of badger culling. In Somerset, new herd incidents have dropped from 10.4 per cent to 5.6 per cent. That is real progress.

Now, I do realise that this is a difficult and emotive issue, but as I remember Simon Thomas, when he was the Plaid Cymru agriculture spokesman, saying here many times, the choice is a simple one, you either cull badgers or you cull cattle, and, of the two, I know which is preferable and most effective in the longer term. What we require is a multifaceted approach, and I accept that a lot of what the Minister says is sound common sense on biosecurity and the controls on cattle movements, individual action plans for farms, especially in high-risk areas, and easily accessible information for farmers on how to prevent TB transmission. But tackling the spread of TB in the wildlife population by way of English-style culls in Wales's worst affected areas seems to me to be an absolutely indispensable way forward if she is to make a success of the policy that I know she is keen to make a success of.