Ministers made 'serious misjudgement' over foot-and-mouth crisis

The Government was today accused of a "serious misjudgement" in its handling of the £8 billion foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001.

The Government was today accused of a "serious misjudgement" in its handling of the £8 billion foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001.

A report by the Commons public accounts committee said that the then Ministry of Agriculture was guilty of misjudgement in assuming that the risks of an outbreak were low, and consequently failing to plan for the scale of problems it faced.

MPs noted that the department, headed at the time by Nick Brown, now minister for work, had contingency plans which focused only on agriculture.

In the event the outbreak caused most damage to the tourist industry - which incurred £5 billion of losses.

The Government, the report said, was too slow to impose a national movement ban on livestock; should not have allowed the blanket closure of footpaths for a lengthy period; should not have disposed of carcasses on mass funeral pyres; lacked a clear-cut policy on whether and when vaccination should be used; and was too slow to call on the armed forces for assistance.

That last lesson was learned during the 1967/68 outbreak but, said the committee, seemed to have "fallen out of the collective memory of the department".

The MPs also said that the department's systems for paying compensation to farmers whose animals were destroyed featured inadequate cost controls.

Farmers received nearly £1,400 million in compensation and other payments - with the assessed values of animals tripling during the crisis.

The report noted that the department allowed potential recipients of compensation to select and appoint valuers themselves.

Similarly, the report said, the department found itself in a "weak negotiating position" and having to pay a premium to get clean-up work, such as the cleansing of farms and the construction of disposal sites, done quickly.

The department has been withholding £90 million from companies in respect of invoices where it has so far been unable to verify that the work claimed for has actually been carried out.

"The department's weak negotiating position resulted in it paying excessively for goods and services. For example, it paid up to six times the going rate for land; and valuers, slaughterers and private vets all demanded and received higher fees rates ...

"Cost and financial controls were weak, particularly during the early weeks of the crisis."

The committee's most basic criticism related to the department's contingency planning.

In line with EU guidance, the department's plans were based on an assumption that there would be no more than 10 infected premises at any one time, the report noted.

It continued: "The department had not considered any other scenarios because it felt that the risks of foot-and-mouth disease were low. This was a serious misjudgement. In the event at least 57 premises were infected before the outbreak as discovered and 2,000 premises were infected in total."

The contingency plan failed to account for the possibility that farmers might not meet their obligation to report the disease, nor that it might be spread through sheep, where it is difficult to detect.

The report estimated the cost of the outbreak to the public sector at over £3 billion, with the private sector - notably the tourist industry - suffering a hit of over £5 billion.

A Defra spokesman said: "The committee's very thorough report acknowledges that it was a crisis and decisions had to be taken immediately.

"We were dealing with an outbreak on an unprecedented scale, handling a vast operation, and while we got a great many things right, we accept that there were mistakes and lessons have to be learnt."

Since the crisis, the Government had set up the Civil Contingencies Secretariat to co-ordinate planning UK-wide and local and national contingency plan exercises have been held, said Defra.

The department accepts the need for greater flexibility in contingency planning, better communications and the need for speed in scaling up operations like the response to foot-and-mouth.

A new animal health and welfare strategy had been developed, and Defra was consulting on a new framework within which outbreaks of animal disease can be handled in partnership with farmers and the wider rural community, said the spokesman.

In response to today's report, the department said it will pursuing cases where it believes it has been overcharged. Reviews of animal disease insurance, valuations, valuers and compensation issues are already under way.