A REPORT analysing the Government's handling of the foot-and-mouth crisis has not provided any new answers, according to a Worcestershire farmer.

Richard Jordan, who was chairman of the Worcestershire National Farmers' Union at the time of the epidemic two years ago, said farmers already knew what the House of Commons public accounts committee revealed today.

The committee's report said that the then Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Foods (MAFF) was guilty of a "serious misjudgement" in assuming that the risks of an outbreak were low, and consequently failing to plan for the scale of problems it faced.

Mr Jordan said the main problem at the time of the crisis was that no one was prepared to make any damage-limitation decisions.

"MAFF were more concerned about headlines than controlling the situation," said the Inkberrow farmer.

"This report has confirmed what we knew already.

"They selected people who weren't capable of making decisions - they were spending a week thinking about things that should have been made in a day.

"The foot-and-mouth crisis caused a lot of aggravation and stress. A lot of people are only just getting over it now and the whole memory of it is going to haunt people for years.

"The Government didn't take any notice of what people were telling them from the last crisis. The whole thing snowballed out of control."

The Government, the report said, was too slow to impose a national movement ban on livestock; should not have allowed the blanket closure of footpaths for a lengthy period; should not have disposed of carcases on mass funeral pyres; lacked a clear-cut policy on whether and when vaccination should be used; and was too slow to call on the Armed Forces for assistance.

That last lesson was learnt during the 1967/68 outbreak but, said the committee, seemed to have "fallen out of the collective memory of the department".

The MPs also noted that the department's systems for paying compensation to farmers whose animals were destroyed featured inadequate cost controls.

Farmers received nearly £1,400m in compensation and other payments - with the assessed values of animals tripling during the crisis.

A REPORT analysing the Government's handling of the foot-and-mouth crisis has not provided any new answers, according to a Worcestershire farmer.

Richard Jordan, who was chairman of the Worcestershire National Farmers' Union at the time of the epidemic two years ago, said farmers already knew what the House of Commons public accounts committee revealed today.

The committee's report said that the then Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Foods (MAFF) was guilty of a "serious misjudgement" in assuming that the risks of an outbreak were low, and consequently failing to plan for the scale of problems it faced.

Mr Jordan said the main problem at the time of the crisis was that no one was prepared to make any damage-limitation decisions.

"MAFF were more concerned about headlines than controlling the situation," said the Inkberrow farmer.

"This report has confirmed what we knew already.

"They selected people who weren't capable of making decisions - they were spending a week thinking about things that should have been made in a day.

"The foot-and-mouth crisis caused a lot of aggravation and stress. A lot of people are only just getting over it now and the whole memory of it is going to haunt people for years.

"The Government didn't take any notice of what people were telling them from the last crisis. The whole thing snowballed out of control."

The Government, the report said, was too slow to impose a national movement ban on livestock; should not have allowed the blanket closure of footpaths for a lengthy period; should not have disposed of carcases on mass funeral pyres; lacked a clear-cut policy on whether and when vaccination should be used; and was too slow to call on the Armed Forces for assistance.

That last lesson was learnt during the 1967/68 outbreak but, said the committee, seemed to have "fallen out of the collective memory of the department".

The MPs also noted that the department's systems for paying compensation to farmers whose animals were destroyed featured inadequate cost controls.

Farmers received nearly £1,400m in compensation and other payments - with the assessed values of animals tripling during the crisis.