UK businesses sue Blair government

By Sarah Foster

In a landmark legal challenge, thousands of UK businesses that were crippled by the handling of last year’s foot-and-mouth epidemic are suing Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor government for a minimum of 1.5 billion pounds in damages ($2.9 billion).

The tab, which could go as high as 7 billion pounds ($10.2 billion), makes this one of the largest compensation suits in British history.

Lawyers for the London legal firm Class Law, representing approximately 2,500 people who have joined the action to date, delivered a letter April 19 to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs setting forth their demands.

DEFRA, the agency responsible for managing the final four months of the crisis, was created shortly after the June 7 election by merging the long-established Ministry for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries and the Department of Environment.

In its letter, Class Law seeks pre-action disclosure on behalf of the United Kingdom Rural Business Campaign, an umbrella organization set up to represent victims throughout Britain. Though farmers were compensated for animals slaughtered, thousands of businesses connected with tourism and agriculture lost a year’s profit. These were the “collateral damage” of the government’s war on foot-and-mouth disease, and they received not a penny for their losses.

States the letter, “These range from farmers whose animal movements were prevented but who did not receive compensation because their animals were not slaughtered, to suppliers of animal foodstuffs and agricultural equipment on the one hand, to hotels, public houses and providers of recreational and holiday activities on the other.” Also joining the suit are widows, “whose husbands paid the ultimate price by taking their own lives in the face of disaster.”

The UKRBC wants “full and fair” compensation for all that were affected, a public inquiry and safeguards established to ensure that an epidemic on such a scale will never happen again.

Among those joining the lawsuit is Kirstin McBride, 22, of Mouswald near Dumfries in southern Scotland, whose pet goat, Misty, was slaughtered last April by a vet and MAFF official who broke into a locked shed where the goat had been hidden. McBride considered pursuing a civil action against those responsible, but costs made this prohibitive for her and her family.

As reported by WorldNetDaily, McBride hoped “to find a way of not letting them get away with murder.” The Class Law action provides that opportunity.

“The only way, I think, any of us can get anywhere is by working together rather than all going separately,” McBride told WorldNetDaily. “It’s difficult for one single person to take on the whole of the government, but this way we can, and I’m quite hopeful that this company will be successful.”

Major businesses and groups that have entered the action include the Aberdeen Angus Steak House chain and the Youth Hostel Association.

The UKRBC campaign manager Graham Williams was among the victims. Williams lives and works in the hill country of Wales, where he owns a business called Free Rein that rents horses to people who want to ride into the Welsh mountains and countryside. Dependent on Williams is a network of working farms, small hotels and inns where riders can stay. The government closed the countryside last spring, and Williams had to return money to people who had booked their horses. Those providing accommodation saw their businesses savaged.

“Most of these businesses are family-run,” Williams told WorldNetDaily. “They’re absolutely up against the wall. They can’t even go out and fight.”

Customers ‘culled’

In Williams’ view this was a “culling.”

“[The government] slaughtered all these animals, but they paid for those,” he said. “But I have regular customers whom I had to turn away. I had to give them their money back. My customers were culled as surely as a herd of sheep.”

Williams said some 40,000 farmers suffered “quite large” losses because they could not move their animals around for grazing, yet they received no compensation. These farmers are welcome to sign onto the lawsuit, he said.

Though the Class Law solicitors are not charging for their services, a 2 million pound ($2.9 million) fighting fund has been set up to finance such expenses as tests, expert testimony, transcriptions and the services of additional attorneys. Claimants are being asked to contribute to the costs on a sliding scale, according to amount of loss suffered.

But the lawsuit is not just about money. It’s about getting answers to questions that have dogged the government and its spin doctors from the outset of the epidemic – such as when and how was the disease introduced into England? Did the government know before the official date-of-confirmation that the disease was in the country? If so, what steps, if any, were taken to prevent it or keep it from spreading? Why weren’t farmers told of the impending crisis? Once the disease was formally acknowledged, why did the government wait four days before ordering a stop to all animal movements throughout the country – a hesitation that increased the likelihood of its spread?

The official version is that the epidemic began at a pig farm in northern England when farmer Bobby Waugh fed contaminated swill to his animals. Waugh, unaware that his animals had been infected, sent a truckload of them to Cheale’s abattoir (slaughterhouse) in Essex, a county east of London. There, on Feb. 19, 2001, an official identified the disease in one of the animals. His diagnosis was confirmed the following day.

The government has stuck to this story, though it admits the disease was probably in the country “two or three weeks” earlier. But it has steadfastly denied all calls for a public inquiry that would throw light on the causes of what should have been a relatively routine veterinary incident had it been properly handled. Instead, it became the worst tragedy to hit Great Britain in peacetime in over 300 years.

Time for answers

“It’s time for answers,” says Class Law partner Stephen Alexander in a press release. “The government has a duty to at least respond. This is a straightforward matter of political negligence and an abdication of responsibility; it will no doubt end in the High Court.”

In its request for disclosure, the firm charges that the government failed “to investigate and/or recognize the incidence of the disease in the country despite several opportunities to do so prior to the official confirmation on 20th February 2001.” Moreover, it failed to stop all movements of animals for four days after the official confirmation.

Class Law is asking for internal memos, e-mails, reports, instructions, contingency plans and other documents dealing with the outbreak of the epidemic.

“The evidence we have gathered to date shows that the disease was in the system and that the government didn’t do anything about it,” says Alexander. “There are other examples. … [W]e are building up evidence that it was around in significant amounts before January [2001].”

Class Law details a specific case in a letter the firm sent to DEFRA a few days before the request of pre-action disclosure. In that letter, Class Law asked that two cattle – which died apparently of foot-and-mouth in early October 2000 – be exhumed and examined for the disease.

The cattle had died in a field, and the owner – a farmer whose name has not been released – promptly notified MAFF and asked that an official come by. Someone did stop by, though he was not from MAFF but from the Department of Environment. It is not known if he was even a veterinarian. According to the farmer’s sworn statement, “the official was not interested in the fact of the death of the cattle nor the cause thereof.” He was told to bury them in the field.

Last November, over a month since the last case of foot-and-mouth was reported in the UK, the same farmer wrote to “the First Minister” requesting that the carcasses be exhumed and tested. His suggestion was refused.

‘Blackmailed by MAFF’

An individual (the name is not released) in Cumbria – the county worst hit by the epidemic and the culling policy – wrote a letter to Class Law.

“I witnessed one of the most horrific massacres known in this country and also some of the most incompetent bungling you could hope to imagine,” the writer declared. “I spoke to a certain Cumbrian wood yard last Thursday morning. The owner told me they had been contacted in November [2000] concerning supplies of wood for pyres in the event of FMD. This is well-known. But what is not well-known is that this family were blackmailed by MAFF. Supplies of wood and railway sleepers [cross ties] were purchased by MAFF from this yard. When the pyres stopped, it left the yard with a large quantity of sleepers, etc. This caused great cash-flow problems. MAFF refused to pay until the firm took legal action in the form of Breach of Contract. MAFF eventually paid some money in August 2001.

“BUT they were told they would only be paid if they signed a confidentiality agreement stating they would not talk about the dealings with MAFF.”

The writer said he has the name of the wood yard and telephone number.

The letter and other materials are posted at www.Warmwell.com, a site that has chronicled the entire crisis, day to day, almost from its beginning.

Particularly suspect are the steps taken by MAFF once foot-and-mouth was recognized. Not only did MAFF not stop animal movements, its actions worked to encourage the spread of the disease.

As detailed in the lawsuit’s request for pre-action disclosure, a farmer who was also a sheep agent in North Wales was in France when he learned of the outbreak. “Realizing that the export of animals would be stopped, and that his business would be affected, he contacted the [MAFF] and advised them to kill all the animals that had been accumulated by agents and dealers at the points of export as there was insufficient feed available. …

“Contrary to this advice, and in total disregard of the effects of their actions, [MAFF] told the dealers to redistribute the sheep among various farmers through the country so they could be fed.”

“Given that some at least of these sheep were likely to have been infected, this action only exacerbated the spread of the disease at a time when all possible precautions should have been taken,” Class Law states.

The ‘European Dimension’

WorldNetDaily researched the limitations imposed by the European Union on England’s handling of the crisis.

Epidemiologist and author Richard North has written extensively on this subject in his book “The Death of British Agriculture,” and in a shorter but no less eye-opening account he co-authored with Sunday Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker, which is accessible at www.SilentMajority.co.uk. Check the “foot and mouth” section. SilentMajority.co.uk is an Internet public forum.

In a chapter of the latter piece, titled “The Hidden ‘European Dimension,'” North and Booker describe the effect surrendering its entire agricultural policy and other aspects of the British economy to the control of bureaucrats in Brussels had on the handling of the epidemic. As part of the European Union, when foot-and-mouth hit, England was not permitted to handle the crisis as it saw best and was restricted in what it actions it could take to contain and eradicate the disease. Steps that should have been taken had to be cleared with the super-government headquartered across the channel.

“Since the EU now had ultimate control over the response to any outbreak of FMD within its territory, the British government was obliged to act within the terms of the directive in everything it did,” they write.

This was not the case in similar crises in the past. When foot-and-mouth hit Britain in 1967, animals were quickly slaughtered and buried the same day on the same farm, but in quicklime. This time, with the European Union calling the shots, quicklime burial was nixed for environmental reasons – hence the huge funeral pyres and later mass burials in pits dug miles from the farm.

Similar restrictions applied when it came to compensation, a matter “politicians seemed anxious to keep under wraps,” North and Booker observe. “Brussels now had total control over what compensation could legally be paid to all those [who] suffered financial loss as a result of the crisis. Farmers whose stock was slaughtered could be compensated for the market value of their animals under an EU scheme to which UK taxpayers contributed 80 percent. But the EU made it illegal to compensate farmers who had been prohibited from earning a living because of movement restrictions on their animals, even though they were suffering severe financial losses solely as a result of government action.”

What’s more, they declare, “It would also be illegal under EU ‘state aid’ rules to compensate the huge number of other businesses which were now suffering severe economic damage, not least due to the closure of the countryside and the drying up of tourist income. (It was estimated that tourism related to the countryside brought in 12 billion pounds a year.)”

How, then, in the face of such edicts, can Class Law ask for compensation for non-farming businesses and farmers whose animals were not slaughtered but who suffered financial losses nonetheless?

“Our case is based on the fact that those rules assume that everything was normal,” Alexander told WorldNetDaily. “They assume that everything was normal, that people [in government] acted correctly. We’re alleging that the outbreak was caused because the government failed to spot the disease in time and then made the disease worse by the measures they took which actually spread the disease. So the damage to the rural economy was caused by the actions of the government. Therefore, those [EU] rules don’t apply.”

Alexander also explained that in England there are no class actions “as you have in America.” Instead, there are group actions. “In a group action, you have to join in positively to be part of it,” he said.

Alexander confirmed that the figure for compensation could go as high as 7 billion pounds, but a lower figure is more likely since the compensation is based on loss of profits rather than turnover.

“I think, realistically, it will be between 1.5 and 2 billion,” he said.

A spokeswoman for DEFRA said the government had a duty to control major animal diseases but was under no obligation to provide compensation for outbreaks of foot-and-mouth.

“There are no plans to introduce such payments,” she told the Associated Press, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. “The government cannot be the insurer of last resort, and it cannot pay for all losses related to the outbreak”

The government has 14 days to answer the request for documents.

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