HC Deb 11 December 2002 vol 396 cc313-4W
Mr. Evans

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how many representations from(a) Lancashire and (b) the north-west of England she has received regarding the loss of cattle-passport slips by the Cattle Movement Service. [85338]

Alun Michael

The British Cattle Movement Service has received around 22,000 representations about movement notification failures since May this year from around England, Scotland and Wales. It would be wrong to assume that these involve the loss of cattle movement notification cards by the Department since I am informed that these are recorded on computer on arrival and in many cases where an issue arises a check shows that no notification has been received by the British Cattle Movement Service. It follows that breaking down figures on representations on to a county by county or region by region basis would only be available at disproportionate costs.

Mr. Evans

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what actions she has taken regarding the loss of cattle-passport slips by the Cattle Movement Service; and if she will make a statement on the loss of the slips. [85339]

Alun Michael

The British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) operates to ISO 9001:2000 standards, is registered with the British Standards Institute and its operating practices have received the Kite mark. All documents received by the organisation are scanned and recorded on arrival and great care is taken to avoid any loss.

Some cattle keepers have claimed to have told the BCMS about cattle movements when their computerised records have been cross-checked and deficiencies found as part of the subsidy claims checking process. I understand that the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) and the BCMS check these cases very carefully. It is wrong to assume that the BCMS has lost keepers' movement notifications when they have no trace of the document ever arriving at the BCMS site. If keepers want to guarantee that their notifications are received by BCMS they can send them by registered post or by e-mail to the BCMS website at www.bcms.gov.uk.

Mr. Keetch

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of differences between(a) the data held on the British Cattle Movement Service Online Tracing System, (b) the data held by the British Cattle Movement Service and (c) the records of cattle keepers themselves; what plans she has to rectify these differences; and if she will make a statement. [85363]

Alun Michael

I am assured that there is no difference between the information held on the cattle tracing scheme website (CTS Online) and that held on the main database held by the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS). The online database is a copy of the main database.

The differences that exist between the Government's central database and on-farm records represent those births, deaths and movements that the keeper has taken steps to record on one but not on the other. Our programme of on-the-spot farm inspections bring these differences to light and we work with keepers to sort their records out. Where serious discrepancies are found, individual animals or, in the worst case, the whole herd of cattle will have a movement restriction placed upon them until the problems are rectified.

Mr. Keetch

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment she has made of the relationship between the Rural Payments Agency and the British Cattle Movement Service; what plans she has to help improve this relationship; and if she will make a statement. [85364]

Alun Michael

The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) and the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) are both constituent parts of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Both are committed to providing consistently high quality services that are valued by their customers. With the legislative requirement to cross-check common agricultural policy bovine subsidy claims against the cattle tracing system, it is essential that they work together to achieve these objectives.

A formal Service Level Agreement exists between the agency and the service and this is constantly reviewed. I understand that they have had a good working relationship in the past and they have liased extremely closely over recent months to ensure that the queries discovered during the cross-check exercise were resolved without referral to the industry where possible. Rural Payments Agency staff working at, and in conjunction with, the British Cattle Movement Service, examined over 150,000 cross-check queries during recent months.