VAST RELIEF THAT 'BIRD-FLU' SWANS WILL NOT BE CULLED

15:00 - 17 January 2008

It was every MP's nightmare.I was sitting happily in the House of Commons, discussing various interesting questions of public policy, when I got a call telling me I needed to speak to the Secretary for the Environment because there was bird flu in West Dorset.

I rang Hilary Benn immediately, and he confirmed the bad news. After a further conversation with the chief vet at the department and the proprietor of Abbotsbury Swannery, where the disease had struck, I moved to the television and radio studios before setting off towards Dorset.

Mercifully, the TV and radio interviewers were calm and moderate, asking sensible questions without suggesting the end of the world was nigh.

One of the things that struck me most forcibly, as we went through the afternoon, was the extent to which we have now all become used to these animal health disasters.

Shortly after lunch, the National Farmers' Union had swung into action, the control and monitoring zones had been established by the department, and news of the outbreak had been disseminated without any of the lethargy or hysteria that I remember greeted earlier occurrences in other parts of the country.

I have also been vastly relieved to discover no-one has any crazy plans to cull all the wonderful swans.

For those readers of this column, and there must surely be a high proportion, who are acquainted with Abbotsbury, I am sure it will be uncontroversial to say this is one of the most beautiful and remarkable places on the south coast of England or, indeed, anywhere in western Europe.

These are swans with an immense historical heritage, creatures of astonishing beauty that link us directly to the medieval monastic life, set in the most spectacular scenery that even we, blessed as we are in West Dorset, have to offer.

It would have been a catastrophe if anyone had proposed the needless slaughter of the remaining healthy swans, but a quick word with the chief vet was enough to discover such absurdities were not on the agenda.

At the time of writing, I am wrestling with problems afflicting one of my constituents who faces a disaster for his business, and I do not know what further problems may follow. We can at least be sure that there is now, after the serial incompetence of the last few years, at last a working system that goes rapidly into action.

Reflecting the following day on the events, I recollected my family's walk to the ruined chapel high up at Abbotsbury on New Year's Eve. As we stood there in the wind and rain, gazing out at Chesil Beach, I had a sense of what it must have been like for the original monk inhabitants in the Middle Ages.

Little did I think how soon afterwards that lonely and awesome place would be connected with what have now become the all too familiar vicissitudes of modern rural life.