Whitehall condemned over BSE
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=003707073259657&rtmo=fqoqw0os&atmo=rrrrrrvs&pg=/et/00/10/27/nbse27.html
October 24, 2000
By David Brown and George Jones
Related Articles: The families, the victims, the bureaucrats, the criticisms, the findings, the science, the cause, the lessons, the inquiry, What they said, Yesterday in Parliament, Daily Telegraph: Getting to the meat
A DAMNING indictment of the system of government that
kept the public in the dark about the country's worst human and animal health crisis
was delivered yesterday by the BSE inquiry.
The obsession with preventing panic led to long delays in protecting consumers and the farming industry from the disease. "Officials and ministers followed an approach whose object was sedation," the report said.
But Lord Phillips, Master of the Rolls, who headed the £27 million inquiry established by the Labour Government for more than two and a half years, said there were "no individual villains or scapegoats" among the former Tory ministers, scientists and senior civil servants in the report.
While individuals were criticised in the 16 volumes of the
report, the vast weight of censure fell on the tortuous workings of the Whitehall
machine. The report also gave official recognition that BSE, which has led
to the destruction of millions of cattle and cost the taxpayer £5 billion, caused new
variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD).
Eighty young people have died of the disease, five are terminally ill and no one knows how many more cases will follow. Families of the victims are in line for payouts of at least £100,000 as well as help caring for those suffering from the disease under new measures announced by the Government yesterday.
Government officials said that on the "worst case" scenario the number of victims could be as high as 134,000. The report was presented to a sombre House of Commons by Nick Brown, the Agriculture Minister, who described BSE as a "national tragedy".
Tim Yeo, the Tory agriculture spokesman, made a public apology for the shortcomings of Conservative governments in the late 1980s and 1990s revealed in the report. He said: "I am truly sorry for what has happened and I apologise to the families who have suffered bereavement and those who are still fighting this terrible illness."
John Major, who was Prime Minister at the height of the BSE
crisis, told the Commons: "All of us
must accept our responsibilities for shortcomings." But the report, drawn up by Lord Phillips, was less critical of
individual Conservative ministers and civil servants than advance briefings
had suggested. He said: "Those hoping to find villains or
scapegoats should go away
disappointed."
Instead it put the main blame on a culture of secrecy within the Agriculture Ministry, poor communications between Government departments, bureaucratic delays in responding to scientific warnings, and a over-riding desire to avoid a health scare.
"The Government did not lie to the public about BSE. It believed that the risks posed to humans were remote. The Government was preoccupied with preventing an alarmist over-reaction to BSE. It is now clear that this campaign of reassurance was a mistake," the report said.
But it acknowledged that when, in March 1996, the
Government announced that BSE had
probably been transmitted to humans, the public felt they had been betrayed. "Confidence in government pronouncements about
risk was a further casualty of BSE."
The shortcomings by officials were not the product of
"indolence" - but for the most part were mistakes made under the pressure of work. Some who
were criticised were also praised
elsewhere in the report.
Lord Phillips said: "I don't think we have pulled our punches and I don't believe this report is a whitewash." He did not believe that earlier action by the Government could have prevented the epidemic. Thousands of cattle had already been infected by the disease by the time it had been identified by scientists.
Lord Phillips said: "Unknown to anybody, the disease was spreading very widely, like a chain letter, before it was identified. By this time there were already thousands and thousands of cattle infected and nobody realised this - and at the same time people were eating cattle."
But, after initial delays in informing the public of the disease, there was "no attempt to conceal the facts from the public", he said. However, successive ministers, including John Gummer, Douglas Hogg, his successor at the Agriculture Ministry, and Stephen Dorrell, the former Health Secretary, were criticised for playing down the risk of BSE-infected beef contaminating humans.
There was anger among the families at the behaviour of ministers and officials in the former Tory Government. John Keleghar, who lost his 23-year-old son Mark in May 1999, said he could not accept the apologies made by former ministers.
Mr Keleghar said: "The people from the Conservative Government only apologised today because they felt they had to. The reason they didn't apologise before was because that would have been an admission."
Mr Brown did not seek to score political points. He focused on failures in the system of government, promising that Labour would be more open, publishing scientific advice on the internet and ensuring more co-operation between departments. He said there would be a review of whether any serving civil servant should face disciplinary action.
Even now, Mr Brown said, it was not clear how the disease entered the national herd, or why Britain had been so badly affected. He would be commissioning an independent assessment of scientific understanding, including recent findings on the origins of the epidemic.
Keith Meldrum, the former chief veterinary officer who was expected to face strong criticism, said last night he was "very pleased" with its findings. It described him as "a particularly dedicated and hard working civil servant" who put public safety before the interests of the livestock industry. He expressed "deepest sympathy" for the relatives of vCJD victims.
Prof Sir John Krebs, the chairman of the Food Standards Agency, gave a pledge that "never again will vital information be withheld from the public".
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