§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dobson.]
§ 12.30 a.m.
§ Sir Richard Glyn (Dorset, North)I am grateful for this opportunity of raising a matter of considerable public interest and of dragging facts into the open, some of which have been systematically concealed from the press and, thereby, from the public for a surprising number of years.
I have no personal interest in this matter whatever and I have never attempted to bring a dog into this country. On the contrary, in the days when I bred and exhibited dogs, I regularly exported them to many parts of the world. I visited dog shows in European countries, sometimes as a judge and sometimes as a spectator, and I discovered that many nations had different, and in some cases better, methods of guarding against rabies than the system used for so long in this country, which has recently broken down.
Tonight I speak purely as a private individual and not as an official of the Kennel Club or of any other body. The Kennel Club is not concerned with the import of dogs or with the quarantine regulations.
Like other people with a working knowledge of rabies prevention, I was astonished when in his statement of 29th October the Minister of Agriculture ventured to claim that Britain's quarantine regulations were the most progressive in the world. That statement alone was sufficient to reveal his lack of knowledge of the more progressive methods which have protected other countries for longer and much more effectively than has the outmoded and unreliable system in use here, which was first introduced in 1897.
The Minister's tendency to cling to this out-dated method through thick and thin is rather like a frightened non-swimmer clinging to a lifebuoy.
The system has not been improved in any way in the last 72 years. I would be wrong to say that the system has not changed, because in 1914 the six months' quarantine was reduced to four months and a few years later it was restored to six months. In spite of warning after 371 warning, quarantine was never extended to other rabies-carrying animals. It has affected only dogs and cats, nor has it been limited to animals coming from countries where rabies had existed in the previous 12 months.
On this matter, the Expert Committee of the World Health Organisation, speaking of countries free from rabies, said:
There can be no objection to the importation of dogs from countries free of rabies, provided they have been isolated en route.The Ministry here has been no more willing to extend our quarantine system to animals other than dogs and cats than it has been to exempt from it animals coming direct from rabies-free countries, as has been done with perfect success for many years in other places.The truth is that the Minister and his advisers have, with their heads well buried in the sands, been keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that nothing would go wrong while refusing to study the far more progressive and effective methods tested over very long periods elsewhere.
The Minister may say that he has no official knowledge of what happens outside Britain, but a simple inquiry at the Swedish Embassy would reveal that a simpler and far less onerous system based on blood tests, with quarantine required only for animals coming from areas where rabies has been diagnosed recently, has kept Sweden free from rabies ever since 1871. It has been free of rabies during 98 years, during which period Great Britain has suffered at least five outbreaks of rabies and over 100 people in this country have lost their lives from that disease.
Many other examples could be given, but in the short time available tonight I wish to concentrate principally on three main issues: first, the Minister's neglect in failing to alter our outmoded regulations long before this; second, his failure to have any effective emergency procedure ready to meet an outbreak which any prudent person must realise must eventually occur; and, third, to the Minister's repeated refusal even to test vaccines which have proved so invaluable in other countries.
First, the Minister has had ample warning that animals other than dogs and cats can infect humans with rabies. This fact has been made known by the World Health Organisation on many 372 occasions. Rabies outbreaks in other countries have been due to monkeys, camels, goats, horses and many other warm-blooded animals. It is said that there is nothing so alarming as a rabid sheep.
Moreover, the Minister must have been aware that there have been several cases of rabies among imported animals other than dogs here in Britain within recent years. For example, I have reason to believe that about four years ago a female leopard developed rabies in a British zoo. What happened? It appears that the matter was hushed up. Certainly the public never became aware of this incident, although the fact was spoken of in veterinary circles. What was done to give better protection to the British public? Absolutely nothing whatsoever.
I give another example. It is said that about three years ago a monkey in North London was found to have developed rabies. The Minister knows that the monkeys imported into Britain since that time run into tens of thousands, mostly for research—a fact which I regret—but many go straight into pet shops where they are sold immediately without any quarantine or health check whatsoever.
The Minister must be aware that in other countries humans have contracted rabies due to bites from rabid monkeys, but here, again, the matter seems to have been hushed up, and the Press and public heard very little about it. What did the Minister do to change the quarantine regulations to protect the British public against rabid monkeys? Absolutely nothing.
How many other cases of this nature have been hushed up? We may never know, but we do know for certain that up to now absolutely nothing has been done to change the regulations so as to protect the public from this very real danger of rabies introduced by animals other than dogs and cats.
On the second point, the Minister is well aware that before the recent incident at Camberley a number of dogs had developed rabies after spending six months in quarantine. These cases also were hushed up. Some veterinary surgeons say that there were two cases; others say that there were three cases. Perhaps we shall be told tonight how 373 many there were before the recent incident. It is said that these dogs had all been left in quarantine for more than the statutory six months, for reasons not made clear. Well, one can only say that it is somewhat remarkable that those that developed rabies over six months were those which had been left in quarantine kennels for longer than the statutory period. These must have been a very small minority of dogs quarantined.
This raises the important question of cross infection. Could all these dogs have been infected with rabies while in quarantine? This is a question to which I think the Minister must give the most serious attention. No one but he can ever ascertain the answer, and I hope that not only the latest case but the two or three previous cases will be fully investigated.
In any event it was clear that it could be only a matter of time before a dog would develop rabies outside a quarantine kennel and it was the Minister's plain duty to have emergency procedure ready to take effect immediately it was needed.Nothing of the sort was done. It was a matter of the utmost good fortune that the recent case occurred in an area where many of the residents had lived abroad —mostly in the Services—and were familiar with the symptoms of rabies. Otherwise the disaster might have been much worse. In the event, two people. one of whom discussed the matter with me personally and who wishes to remain anonymous, realised that the dog was rabid and with almost unbelievable gallantry they secured it at great risk to themselves. One pinned it to the ground while the other secured its jaws, foaming with saliva, with a piece of string as an improvised muzzle, and they took it to a vet.
In this way the outbreak was limited through the action of gallant citizens who recognised rabies and knew what to do and took action, as it were, by private enterprise. What a contrast with the Ministry! When at last the Ministry was convinced that the dog was actually rabid, it had no idea what to do next. The Ministry felt the need for some official instrument to constrain the dog and borrowed what has been described as an apparatus from Heathrow Airport, apparently with the help of the 374 R.S.P.C.A. With this apparatus, the dog already held locked in, was secured. Later the apparatus was returned without mentioning that it was covered with rabid saliva, with the result that two men who handled it are now receiving anti-rabies injections.
Had this happened in Hyde Park or any part of London or any big city where people had not seen rabies before and did not recognise it, the Minister's negligence in failing to provide adequate, or, indeed, any, emergency arrangements might have led to far more people being bitten and a far more serious outbreak.
Thirdly, there is the question of vaccination. The Minister appears to shrink from this although other nations have proved its worth, and not only where rabies is endemic. For example, Switzerland, although surrounded by countries where rabies continually occurs, kept free of the disease for many years by a simple policy of vaccination. Switzerland has rabies today, not because any vaccinated animal developed it but because unvaccinated animals found their way into the country.
The Minister is well aware of the success achieved in Malaya, as it then was, by the use of Flurry vaccine, whose systematic use eradicated rabies completely. Thereafter every dog within a cordon sanitaire of 20 or 30 miles adjacent to the frontier was systematically vaccinated, which prevented the disease being reintroduced except for one solitary case of a dog smuggled in. Less good results were reported from Rhodesia, where vaccinated dogs were identified only by an earmark. Some native dog owners are said to have thought it better to dispense with vaccination and to fake the earmark. Later, some earmarked dogs were found to have rabies, but had they really been vaccinated?
Malayan health authorities proved that vaccination brings out rabies in an infected dog within three weeks, and on their advice the period of quarantine for Malaya was reduced to 30 days after vaccination had been carried out in the quarantine kennels by an official vet. This procedure worked well and was approved by the Expert Committee of the World Health Organisation. Vaccination would be a godsend to the owners of 375 dogs now in "house arrest" in Camberley. The ordeal of watching one's muzzled pet for six months fearing every hour that symptoms of rabies may occur must be a ghastly experience for any dog lover.
Our present quarantine regulations are outmoded and inadequate. They admit without quarantine performing dogs—of an indefinite category—even when these come from areas teeming with rabies. They also admit many other species of animal known to carry rabies, and this without quarantine. The truth is that they are about as watertight as the average shrimping net. Our immunity from rabies, which has existed for a much shorter period than that enjoyed by more enlightened nations, has been due to good luck and not to good management.
The Minister has refused a public inquiry. He relies on his own inquiry behind closed doors. If the report when we see it takes no account of increased medical and veterinary knowledge acquired since 1897, it will be clear to the world that, with regard to progressive ideas, the minds of the Minister and his advisers are as firmly closed as the doors behind which his private inquiry is doing its work.
§ 12.45 a.m.
§ Mr. Cranky Onslow (Woking)I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) for choosing this subject for an Adjournment debate this evening. I am also grateful to the Minister for allowing me a moment or two to speak. He will know my constituency interest.
Perhaps I can reinforce that by saying that anybody who has lived in a country where rabies is prevalent and been confronted by a rabid dog on his own doorstep, as I have, will well know the importance of keeping the threat of this diseaseout of this country. We must admit that we have been—I hope I can say this without being misunderstood—fortunate in this case, fortunate, as my hon. Friend said, in the prompt and courageous action of Mrs. Hemsley and her neighbour in tracking down and pursuing the dog when they recognised that it was in all probability infected with rabies; fortunate in that a swift diagnosis by a qualified vet was available; and fortunate since that time in the patient 376 and disciplined co-operation of the local residents, for which we shall have cause to be grateful. There is a good deal of time to go yet before all causes of anxiety can finally be removed. We must understand that the strain and the need for awareness will remain.
Like my hon. Friend, I am not convinced that the Ministry was ready for this outbreak. I believe that it was taken by surprise by it as much as the public at large were. What the Minister himself described as the special drive against susceptible wild life in the area had value only as a public relations exercise. I do not think that anybody imagines that it was relevant to the problem of control.
All that I say now—and to an extent this applies to many of my hon. Friend's remarks—is anticipatory of the review which we expect the Minister to produce fairly soon, and to some extent this may be a premature debate. There are some statistics which I hope the Minister will he able to produce in answer to Questions I have down for tomorrow. Most of all, I hope that we can have a firm assurance tonight that when the Minister's report is available the House will be given time —by that, I mean Government time—so that we can have a proper debate on all the issues involved, because this is a matter of considerable interest and needs to be gone into thoroughly.
There is one respect in which there is a case for immediate action, either by the Minister or by another Department. This concerns the problem of the officers of the Staff College owning dogs who are due for posting either elsewhere within the United Kingdom or overseas within the next two months. They are faced with considerable problems of expense and difficulty in maintaining the quarantine of their dogs. This is a matter which I have already raised with the Ministry. I hope that the Minister will be able to say something constructive about this point tonight.
§ 12.48 p.m
§ The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr. John Mackie)I appreciate the interest of the hon. Member for Dorset, North (Sir Richard Glyn) in this matter, and I know that it is not easy to get an Adjournment debate exactly when one wants one, but I think that the hon. Gentleman has chosen an 377 entirely inappropriate time to raise this subject. My right hon. Friend has commissioned a special inquiry into the recent case at Camberley where a dog developed rabies after completing the quarantine period, and although the hon. Gentleman would like a public inquiry, it is only right that we should wait for the report of this inquiry.
The hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) has expressed the hope that we can have a debate in the House on the report. I myself cannot promise any debates, but I will draw the hon. Gentleman's remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. The report will be available in about a fortnight. Until it is received I do not propose to be drawn by some of the points which the hon. Member for Dorset, North has raised into anything that might be taken as prejudging the findings of this inquiry, nor can I foreshadow any decisions that my right hon. Friend may reach.
I come now to one or two of the points that the hon. Member for Dorset, North made. As long as my two right hon. Friends and myself have been Ministers, we have not to my knowledge concealed anything from the Press about an outbreak of rabies or anything else. I remember the case of the leopard, and I think there was also a lion cub and a monkey which took the disease. In none of these cases did we hide anything from anyone.
I am happy to review past experience with our traditional safeguards. There is a world of difference between this country and Sweden, if I may say so. There are very few dogs in Sweden, but, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, we have about 4,750,000 dogs in this country. It does not help to make comparisons with countries where conditions are so different. In the light of worldwide experience of rabies control generally, this country, bearing in mind the size of our dog population, has a record second to none. We want to maintain that record.
The hon. Gentleman's views on vaccination and blood tests as a means for protecting this country against rabies are well known. I agree that modern vaccines have great virtues in certain circumstances. No one denies that. The question is simply whether they have a 378 place in our island where the disease is not endemic. Although he referred to the opinions of experts, the hon. Gentlemanseems to be in conflict with the overwhelming majority of veterinary and medical opinion in this country and, despite the fact that he has called them in aid, the World Health Organisation's experts
I ask the hon. Gentleman to consider the risks to which he would expose our citizens, our domestic animals and our wild life. First, as my right hon. Friend has already told the House, no vaccine will give absolute protection in the field. Indeed, a dog twice vaccinated against rabies with the Flurry vaccine nevertheless succumbed to the disease while in quarantine in this country. There is ample veterinary evidence that the vaccine will not give protection in every case. I think that the hon. Gentleman knows that, since he has put down some Questions for tomorrow asking for details of such cases.
Second, there is a risk—I do not overstate it—that a vaccinated dog can excrete the virus, if only for a short time; our quarantine requirements protect us from this hazard. We cannot open the door to symptomless carriers, however rare they may be.
The hon. Gentleman may he willing to take a chance on the effectiveness of the vaccine, or on the presence of symptomless carriers, but would he be content that animal and human health in this country would be safeguarded so long as we had a piece of paper, from any country of the world, certifying the fact of vaccination? Would it always be worth more than the paper it was written on? Or is he seriously suggesting that we should revaccinate every dog brought into the country? That would not get us anywhere. He must know that if a dog incubating rabies enters this country no vaccine will prevent onset of the disease.
The hon. Gentleman persistently refuses to distinguish between vaccination as a control measure in those countries where rabies is prevalent, or where there is a constant risk of its being introduced, and its preventive use against the introduction of the disease into countries where it is not endemic. He implies that ours is a reactionary approach at a time 379 when many other countries perforce rely on certificates of vaccination and do not impose quarantine restrictions.
I say "perforce" because most of these countries have land frontiers, which easily undermine any quarantine arrangements, especially with a disease to which wild life are susceptible. Other island countries, including Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica, which share our freedom from rabies, apply safeguards similar to, if not much more stringent than, ours. They will not accept dogs from other countries unless they are free from rabies. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Switzerland being free for a certain time, but it now has rabies in spite of its preventive measures.
The hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest that we had closed minds on the subject. We have, in fact, taken the advice of the World Health Organisation on all the latest aspects and developments in the treatment and control of rabies. The hon. Gentleman dwelt on the experience in Malaysia with vaccination, but he is simply not comparing like with like. He did not mention that in the Malaysian campaign against rabies, of which mass vaccination was an important feature, it was preceded by the slaughter of 30,000 dogs. If we had a situation of that nature and magnitude in this country, we might well need to turn to vaccination for salvation, but, happily, the measures successive Government have pursued throughout this century, and which the hon. Gentleman now wishes us to abandon. spare us anything of that kind.
The hon. Gentleman will recall that the World Health Organisation recommended that where quarantine measures are practicable countries should continue
either to prohibit the importation of dogs and cats or to subject them to a prolonged period of quarantine.We are not prepared to ignore such authoritative advice. Quarantine gives a greater measure of protection than vaccination, and the country is entitled to this security.The hon. Gentleman spoke about the added advantage vaccination gave in that 380 it brought on the development of rabies more quickly. There is no evidence to support this.
I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's references to gaps in our defences over other imported animals. We have always kept a close watch on this, even where the risk is remote, and I would refer the hon. Gentleman to my right hon. Friend's recent statements on this subject. As I have said, I cannot anticipate the results of my right hon. Friend's inquiry.
So I would ask the hon. Gentleman to consider what he is advocating, and to ask himself whether he is right and the medical profession, veterinary profession and the World Health Organisation are wrong. Even amongst members of the National Dog Owners Association, who one would have thought were most aware of the distress of separation from their dogs, a recent poll showed very strong support for quarantine. The price of forgoing quarantine for imported animals might be at best to impose upon a larger number of people and animals the kind of unpleasant measures that we were reluctantly forced to take at Camberley. I would pay tribute here to the people there who handled the situation so well and to the very brave lady who captured the rabid dog. We will look into the hon. Gentleman's point about subsequent action.
The hon. Member for Woking raised the question of wild life. We are accused, on the one hand, of not taking enough precautions and, on the other, of taking too many. The dog was free for the best part of an hour, and we do not know exactly where it went, in an area on the common at Camberley containing a lot of wild life. Although we all deeply regretted the killing of wild life there, it was a precaution that had to be taken.
I hope that the hon. Member for Dorset, North will not immediately press these matters. As I said earlier, it is a pity he could not await the report of my right hon. Friend's inquiry.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at one minute before One o'clock, a.m.