10.

Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater):

I have already commented on the need for Members of Parliament to be able to continue to help their constituents during this appalling crisis. I follow the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). I have just received the latest issue of the foot and mouth bulletin, which is produced by the south-west National Farmers Union and is a most excellent document. It will not have made pleasant reading for him, as the last two days have seen a rash of new cases in Devon and Gloucestershire, heightening fears that those counties may be following the pattern established in Cumbria. The simple statement made by a gentleman who was standing beside the Prime Minister in Exeter on Saturday, Anthony Gibson, who has been very much involved in the communication, highlights the scale of the problem. I know that the Minister was in Taunton and Devon and will understand the scale of the problem.

I have here a copy of the 1968 inquiry. Now is not the time to discuss the issues involved, but serious questions will have to be asked, and a full public inquiry or royal commission will have to be held into how the matter was handled. It is a scandal that the matter has got out of control, but I shall not discuss that today.

On Friday evening, I visited and had a meeting in Porlock in my constituency. Porlock is on the edge of a national park--Exmoor--which, thank God, does not have foot and mouth at the moment, although it is creeping all around the area. Following the announcements that Combe Martin and Blackmoor Gate, a big cattle auction area, are now in an infected area, the disease could be drawing towards Exmoor. Exmoor is, rightly, closed. It has a fabulous herd of red deer, and, following the terrors of what is happening in the Lake district, we have the same terrible fears of what might happen on Exmoor if the disease got into the red deer. Arguments have been advanced about whether red deer are susceptible to this strain of foot and mouth, but we do not want to run such risks.

I want to discuss the role of the rural economy. At Wednesday evening's meeting there were 200 people who run various forms of business, including rural accommodation, holiday accommodation, caravan parks, pony trekking and various events and attractions. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) is lucky. The people I met have no bookings at all. Everyone has cancelled, having been told that Exmoor is closed for riding or walking holidays. Many other Members of Parliament will share my experience. Those people say that they are four weeks from meltdown, which is about as long as they hope that the bank manager will not come to call. They do not know where to turn. I am an experienced Member of Parliament and I felt as hopeless in that meeting as I have ever felt. Those people had built up livelihoods. I could not think how to advise them on how to survive.

I can make a special case for Exmoor. It is a national park with a fabulous and important herd of red deer. Rural business people could encourage others to visit the park and say that they can walk on the roads and the lanes, but they do not want to do that because they know that their whole business is built around the attractions of Exmoor and its herd, and they do not want to put it at risk. They were terribly torn and asked me what they could do.

My hon. Friends have made various suggestions, such as that concerning the business rate and the Inland Revenue not calling for its money in a hurry, and for a sensitive and intelligent approach to be taken by banks. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) suggested in a non-partisan manner to the Prime Minister that some form of interest relief grant from the banks might see people through and the Prime Minister said that he would consider that. I am not sure how much of the tourism structure will survive. I am also conscious that, depressed though farming is given the state of farming prices, many agricultural diversifications, such as farm accommodation and bed-and-breakfast, will also be affected, leading to a further destruction in farming incomes. Tourism will be the most difficult problem for the Minister. We will see a significant part of its fabric collapse.

Somerset county council and others have appealed for the power to close roads. A road over the top of the Quantocks is not too heavily used. There are alternative routes. I think that the Minister knows the Quantocks well. It has a deer herd. The access roads on the southern flanks of Exmoor should be closed. There are infected areas to the south of Exmoor. There should be powers at least to restrict the use of minor roads and to establish an intensive disinfectant operation, perhaps with Army support on the southern roads. There should be access only to a limited number of roads on Exmoor.

Lord Whitty, the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, helpfully said in the other place that the county council had powers to close the roads. The county solicitor told me that it did not have such powers. I tried to clarify the matter and contacted a senior lawyer in the DETR who said that he did not know who had advised Lord Whitty, but that the Department has no more powers concerning non-infected areas than a county council, and that neither of them had the power to close roads. The only way round the problem is to use emergency powers.

If Exmoor becomes an infected area, we will have the power to close the roads. I admired the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he talked about the precautionary principle, but that now seems to have been lost. I telephoned the Benefits Agency about people who will be laid off and asked what plans had been made for them. As a Member of Parliament, I can get a reasonably good service, but it did not seem to be switched on to the problem or to have any idea about it. No message seemed to have come down from above saying, "Make sure you are ready to help such people."

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