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Foot and Mouth - 4 December 2001

Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon): Although the first outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in my constituency did not occur until April—the election had been called before the first outbreak occurred—a large part of North Yorkshire was already frozen because of outbreaks elsewhere, in Wensleydale, and in Cumbria. Businesses have lost in every season this year. North Yorkshire is still not a free county, but I hope that in a week or so, certainly before Christmas, it will have that status, access will be largely, but not entirely, opened up and businesses can begin to look forward to next year without the catastrophe that overwhelmed them this year.

The business crisis has been widespread. Foot and mouth disease is thought of first as an agricultural and livestock problem, but the ripples go extensively through businesses. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) spoke eloquently about the youth hostel movement, which takes about £2 million a year. Just before the outbreak, I opened a refurbished youth hostel in my constituency, which promptly became non-functioning because of the lack of visitors. Tourism is often thought of as bed and breakfast, but many retired people who may have a spare room take visitors and do bed and breakfast; their life does not revolve around it. However, the people who run pubs and hotels are often wholly dependent upon free movement and on people being able to visit. There is no purpose in going to areas such as Grassington, for example, other than to gain access to the countryside of Wharfedale and Malhamdale. If people cannot gain access to the countryside, they do not go; businesses have had only 10, 12 or 15 per cent. of their visitors the previous year. It will be interesting to know whether the Christmas bookings are better, because people expect the countryside to be freer.

There are outdoor education and trekking centres in my constituency. Some people had just set up a business, and bought ponies and hired staff, and their business simply failed. I mentioned pubs and the hotels; the country shows at Pateley Bridge, Kilnsey and Malham were a complete wipeout, and the Masham sheep fair, perhaps most poignantly of all, this year had a competition for fake sheep. There were pens on Masham marketplace and people competed to make sheep out of wire, wool and so on—they were very imaginative—as they could not show the real thing. My neighbour had a high-quality entry, which she kept in her garage. I communed with it for some weeks when the wool was being stuck to the exhibit.

Many businesses have turned to making plaques for a living, which are awarded to for fell racing, or at country show events. Business is down catastrophically, even miles away from the infected areas; the National Trust and some public and semi-public bodies have suffered too. In towns such as Settle, where the epidemic started, there have been ramifications for almost every business that one can mention. Hotels and pubs in Horton in Ribblesdale—the epicentre of the epidemic—and in Malham and Grassington have all been affected. Businesses usually hope to make some fat over the summer and have a good autumn half-term holiday, which is the last real attempt to make money before the winter weather sets in. However, they have not been able to put by any stores, so the crisis will come this winter.

The crisis in businesses in my constituency, especially in tourism, is associated not only with the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. During the fuel crisis, travellers searched desperately to find a pump open in the Yorkshire dales. The serious problems caused by flooding also had an impact on tourism, and the persistently high level of the pound has made it much cheaper for many people to go abroad for their holidays than to spend them in the United Kingdom.

Those factors were present before the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The Government's business rate relief and various funds provided some help. Regional development agencies have channelled funds, although there have been common complaints throughout the UK about the sheer bureaucracy of the processes that must be gone through before the money can be accessed. For many businesses whose desperate need was survival, the requirement to propose a business plan for future development was three or four steps beyond the crisis.

Mr. Burnett : I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who accurately and compellingly describes the parlous conditions faced by many country businesses as winter approaches. Does he agree that it would be extremely unwise and unfair for the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise to demand payment of deferred corporation tax, income tax and value added tax?

Mr. Curry : The hon. Gentleman has uncannily anticipated the point that I was about to make. However, repetition is no sin in politics, so I will not hesitate to make that point in a moment.

Charitable giving has been important. Craven had a target to raise £1 million to help affected businesses. The Minister also referred to various other charitable funds. There is a hardy resilience among my constituents, but it is astonishing that Government agencies are calling in the debts just as the crisis begins to bite in winter.

Alun Michael : The hon. Gentleman's intervention gives me an opportunity to nail a lie. There is no change in the approach of Inland Revenue departments to those who are affected by foot and mouth disease. We have given an undertaking to continue to be sympathetic when we consider each request for help and support. The joint helpline is still open seven days a week to provide that assistance. There have been a couple of reports that debts would suddenly be called in. I am satisfied from my own inquiries that those are rural myths. Treasury colleagues assure me that they intend to be as helpful as possible to businesses that are going through the difficulties to which the right hon. Gentleman rightly referred.

Mr. Curry : We have dispatched urban myths that were invented by a previous Secretary of State, we have had the rural myths, and we can now concentrate on the difficult business realities. The Minister's remarks are useful, and I will invite businesses in my constituency to let me know immediately if they receive a demand from the Inland Revenue or other agencies. I am sure that the Minister would want me to contact him instantly with that evidence, so that he can tell whoever has issued a demand to stop. Lord Montgomery says in his autobiography that his mother would sometimes say to the nanny, "Go and find what Bernard is doing and tell him to stop it." That may not be a bad motto for the agencies.

Alun Michael : It would be unrealistic to suggest that the Inland Revenue should not talk to people about how, as business gets back to normal, they may deal with payments over time. I do not want to suggest that the Revenue should not talk to anyone, and Ministers have made it clear that, while the current situation remains, they will be sympathetic and pursue the line that I described.

Mr. Curry : The Minister will know that businesses do not expect gifts from Government. Businesses know that the money must be repaid, so the importance is in the tone and nature of approach and making it clear at the beginning that this is not a demand for payment, but an exploration of how the two sides can co-operate on a problem that everyone recognises. That is the key. There is a case for extending the business rate relief, simply because winter is such a difficult period, and the Minister will no doubt examine that as he collects his thoughts. We also need a full response to the Haskins report, which was generally sensible and solid. He is a bit the Lord High Everything Else of the Government, but on this occasion he has done a reasonable task. The Government made an immediate response, but more detail is required.

Above all, businesses need not money but some certainty. Hon. Members should imagine that they are a business. They have just suffered a catastrophic year and are being told by everyone that they should modernise, advertise their services and improve their facilities to attract new visitors. They must invest to do that; they cannot just sit and wait for it to happen. They also know that if there is one more outbreak of foot and mouth disease—we should not forget that the Government expect a tail to the epidemic—a whole chunk of countryside could be frozen again and such investment would be useless.

Businesses cannot choose not to make the investment, because they cannot just sit there and do nothing. Equally, if we do have an outbreak, there must be a response. It would be enormously helpful if the Government outlined the approach that they would take to isolate any outbreak and ensure that the repercussions would not plunge scores, or perhaps hundreds, of businesses into the same situation as earlier this year. That is particularly important, as the Government will shortly pass the Animal Health Bill, which will give them the legal means to compensate for animals slaughtered following vaccination as part of the programme for controlling foot and mouth. I do not prescribe a solution, but the Government must understand the great apprehension across the countryside that we are not yet done with foot and mouth and that it could come back and kill any recovery.

I will make one point to the Minister with which he will be painfully familiar. I mentioned country shows and the importance of attracting tourists. If the 21-day rule restricting movement persists, it will have an immediate and deleterious impact on the ability of traditional country shows to go ahead. Animals must be brought to and taken away from such shows and play an important part in them. If that 21-day rule is applied rigidly, it will be the death knell of many traditional country shows. They attract all sorts of people: those who make umbrellas, products from rocks and wheat, shoes and riding kit. Animals, although key, are not the only element, and an enormous number of businesses gain much of their lifeblood from attendance.

Mr. Burnett : I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I do not want to tax his patience, but I must say that I agree wholeheartedly. I was speaking at the Okehampton livestock show dinner last Saturday evening, and that point was made to me. Does he agree that it would be wise for the Government to exempt livestock shows from the proposed cooling-off period?

Mr. Curry : It is inevitable that in the period in which we are relaxing from foot and mouth disease, a licensing arrangement for movement will continue to be in place. I do not expect the Government to lift all restrictions, but it would be sensible to examine the particular conditions of animals to decide whether they could be moved relatively short distances to local shows and back again without falling foul of the measure.

The hon. Gentleman will also know that we are hoping to get an announcement that auction marts will start again quite shortly. They also have an important role to play in the countryside, not least because they are the most important rural instrument for combating social exclusion among members of the agricultural community stuck on the top of a hill—one of the few occasions that they actually get down and meet fellow human beings is at the auction mart.

The epidemic has shown how interdependent agriculture and tourism are, but how exposed the countryside is to those two industries, and how inadequate the wider economic base in the countryside often is. We agree that we need better quality and more diverse facilities and Haskins has spelt that out pretty starkly. I applaud the efforts to bring regeneration into some of the market towns, which we all agree are important. I will assume that the hon. Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Burnett) agrees with Haskins before he intervenes again to tell me that he agrees. So many market towns have centres characterised by charity shops and financial services organisations because much of the traditional fabric of retailing has gone.
The regional development agencies are now talking about how to develop business. In the rural areas, it is important that food clusters—businesses dependent on agriculture, but spreading out to processing, going up market, trying to get higher quality food and dealing with the local supermarket, which is often regarded psychologically as a difficult thing to do—be given broad encouragement.

Let me make yet another plea about telecommunications equipment in the countryside. If somebody has a small business at the top of the dale it is prohibitively expensive to get in there the sort of wires and communications that would enable them to deal competitively with people who have access to higher technological products such as ISDN. Hundreds of thousands of pounds is needed to install such equipment. If we really want to wire up the countryside, to ensure that people can promote high value added businesses from the countryside, that question must addressed urgently.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I know that the Minister understands the problems because a short while ago I led a delegation from North Yorkshire spelling them out to him, but as I said before, repetition is always a virtue in politics provided it is not taken to extremes, and that is why I intend to stop now.

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David Curry MP | House of Commons, London SW1A 0AA | tel: 020 7219 6202