Richard Haddock, South Hams farmer and south west chairman of the Conservative Rural Affairs Group, says Farming Minister George Eustice’s accreditation scheme will not control TB...

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I have no doubt livestock farmers will be thrilled at the prospect of a new accreditation scheme which, apparently, is the Government’s latest attempt to control TB.

There will doubtless be merry-making. Unrestrained celebrations. Bonfires. Toasts to the continuing good heath of Farming Minister George Eustice. Unfortunately this is yet another case of the Government choosing to treat the symptoms rather than the cause.

But it’s what grabs the headlines that counts. A bit like claiming such a successful result for the latest round of badger culling. A lot of badgers may well have been taken out but since the Government has already conceded that at least 40 per cent of the badger population is TB-free that means on the balance of probability 40 per cent of the badgers culled were, equally, clear of the disease.

And shooting uninfected badgers doesn’t really play very well with the public.

As to the new accreditation scheme, what wasn’t announced is the fact that some 30 per cent of the vets who have so far been signed up to carry out TB tests have now pulled out of the scheme because they aren’t getting paid enough to cover their costs.

Thirty per cent is quite a proportion to lose when the system is already so stretched trying to cope with the case load. There can only be one possible outcome: a logjam of cattle held back on farms because they cannot be moved because they cannot be tested. Loss of trade, loss of condition, and thus loss of income.

So chaotic has the system already become that 80 large farm enterprises in the south west have now taken on their own vets to carry out TB testing, thus carrying the entire burden of cost themselves – which is precisely what the more cynical of us believe is what Defra is ultimately trying to achieve in each and every case.

As to George Eustice putting his faith in biosecurity, I would just remind him of what happened to me when we discovered a large badger sett and associated latrines in some grazing woodland.

I sought the advice of Defra vets who said I should close it off with an electric fence which would allow that badgers out for food and water but stop the cattle getting in.

When the kids from the nearby estate had repeatedly nicked either the fencing or the batteries we replaced that with a five-strand barbed-wire fence and a chained and padlocked gate. After the theft of three chains and three padlocks we fenced the lot – while still allowing the badgers free movement.

Mysteriously, a few days later I had an Rural Payments Agency inspection and was heavily penalised for taking pasture land out of use – even though I had only been following the Defra vets’ advice.

At my own expense, I went to Brussels and asked what was I?supposed to do. The answer I got: the UK should have asked for a derogation to cover such circumstances. But neither the NFU nor Defra – the only two organisations which could have done so – had requested one.

And who was then a junior minister at Defra? One George Eustice. Five years on we have stayed clear of TB but I have yet to receive a word of apology from Defra, the RPA, or indeed the minister for the frustration, annoyance and financial loss their incompetent application of biosecurity rules cost me.

Meanwhile, the spectacle of George Eustice trying to persuade the public that some ill-conceived, half-baked ‘accreditation scheme’ is somehow going to stop TB in its tracks is merely a further sign, in my view, of how Defra has finally lost the plot.