Hogg: Major ignored me on BSE
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Your support makes all the difference.DOUGLAS HOGG, the former agriculture minister, warned John Major that Britain was facing a "national calamity" when scientists established a link between "mad cow" disease and its human form, CJD.
The former Tory minister, who presided over the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) through the worst of the beef crisis, plans to tell the BSE inquiry that his warning that it would cost hundreds of millions of pounds was at first ignored by his Cabinet colleagues.
His claim that he knew there would be a "public reaction of a colossal kind" is in sharp contrast to ministers' soothing words at the time.
Members of the last Government start giving evidence to the inquiry tomorrow, on the day that Europe is expected to vote to lift the ban on exports of British beef. The testimony from members of the Tory government is certain to turn into a vicious blame game.
Edwina Currie, the former minister sacked over the salmonella-in-eggs scare, has already attacked her government's "crass, incompetent" handling of the affair and accused Maff of "compounding problems".
Mr Hogg, who took most of the flak, will give evidence to the inquiry on 16 December. He plans to tell the inquiry that he wrote to the then Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet in an attempt to highlight the impending crisis when he was told of the link between BSE and CJD in March 1996. However, his appeal for the former government to set up a judicial inquiry was ignored.
"I knew we were facing a national calamity," he told the Independent on Sunday. "I said in my letter to the Prime Minister that it would cost many hundreds of millions of pounds. The public was very sensitive about BSE. Once there was evidence, it was quite plain to me and to the officials in the department that there would be a public reaction of a colossal kind. We were facing the destruction of the beef industry."
In his evidence, the former minister will admit that "errors" were made in the handling of the BSE epidemic but insist that nobody should be blamed for them. "You should not judge people by standards of hindsight," he said. "They may have been wrong but culpability is different from error."
He now also admits that ministers are no longer trusted to tell the truth on food issues. "The public has lost confidence in ministers and Maff," he said.
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