THE Government's stubborn refusal to hold a public inquiry into the foot-and-mouth epidemic is entirely without justification.

Its announcement of three further investigations brings the number of separate public bodies examining the crisis to ten. Duplication will be unavoidable. The costs will be immense.

Increasingly, the Government's case, that a public inquiry will be too cumbersome and too expensive, is losing credibility. Indeed, it is difficult not to arrive at the conclusion that the Government's efforts are concentrated on avoiding at all costs a genuinely independent and public scrutiny of its role in the crisis.

Undoubtedly, there are lessons to be learned from the epidemic. We need to know how it started and why it spread so quickly. We also need to know whether the epidemic was controlled as effectively as possible.

We must never overlook the immense cost of the epidemic, not only to the Government through compensation payments, veterinary bills and slaughter costs, but also to the wider national economy. Rural communities have been ravaged, and the tourist industry has suffered.

The Government, the farming community and everyone else caught up in the crisis need to be called to account for their actions.

The only way that can be done is through a public inquiry.

Just as we have campaigned vigorously that the police should not investigate themselves, that doctors should not investigate themselves, we will campaign with the same degree of passion that the Government should not investigate itself.

Following so soon after the BSE crisis, foot-and-mouth has, understandably, had an impact on public confidence in the farming industry. It is in everyone's interest that confidence is restored, and restored as quickly as possible.

Putting a cloud of secrecy around much of the investigation and by keeping information out of the public domain will undermine confidence and increase suspicions that the Government has something to hide.

It bears all the hallmarks of a Labour Government persisting with its obsession for spin, presentation and control.