I SAT through the third badger debate within a year in the Commons last Thursday.

I do not believe it added anything to the sum of our knowledge on the subject.

Speaker after speaker agreed that we must follow where the science leads.

Unfortunately the science is inconclusive.

And where there are two polarised positions, both claiming that science is on their side, we have a political and economic issue to decide.A motion urging the Government to stop issuing any further licences to cull badgers was carried by 219 votes to 1.

But don’t read too much into that, because there are 650 MPs - so less than a third of them voted.

This does not mean that the other two thirds are idle or disinterested: the government ‘payroll’ – accounting for about 100, by convention do not vote on back bench motions, which is what this one was; the others could quite decently say that they abstained on principle because the motion had jumped the gun.

We have yet to see the expert independent report on two trial culls which finished earlier this year.

The sensible thing to have done would have been to wait until it had been published before having the debate.

The facts are that there is a growing export market for dairy produce and we are at a competitive disadvantage because of the spread of TB, a devastating disease which is costing our farmers and tax-payers dear.

This disease spreads to cattle from a reservoir of infection among wildlife, principally badgers. Last year we slaughtered 104 TB infected cattle for every day of the year at a cost of nearly £100m.

At the same time as we have seen the disease spread in the UK, our competitors have seen it brought under control: Ireland has had a 45 per cent reduction in the infection of cattle since 2002.The common denominator among those countries that have succeeded in controlling the disease is that they cull badgers.

Currently, we can’t vaccinate cattle because, until very recently, there has been no way of distinguishing between a vaccinated animal and an infected one.

For this reason it is against EU rules to vaccinate; to do so would exclude our produce from international markets altogether.

We need the scientists to get on with field trials to prove the effectiveness of a test that has just been developed which can tell the difference between infected cattle and vaccinated cattle. Then having done that, we can negotiate to change the international rules.

Realistically, however, these two preconditions are going to take the best part of ten years, but we have to deal with the problem now.

We also need scientists to develop a successful vaccination programme for badgers.

Currently a trial is taking place in Wales. It will take some time before we can establish how effective it is. There are practical difficulties and very significant costs associated with trapping and injecting enough badgers, so it is important that scientists develop an oral vaccine and a suitable bait.

The Government is spending millions of pounds on this research but we just don’t know how long it is going to take. In the meantime I think it is sensible to continue learning from trial culling programmes to see if they can reduce the spread of the disease in the way that they have done in other countries.