EVEN before the foot-and-mouth epidemic the countryside was in crisis. Since 1997 farm incomes had fallen by three-quarters to their lowest level since the 30s, farmers' profits were at their lowest level since the Deloitte and Touche farm surveys began 11 years ago and in both 1999 and 2000 more than 20,000 people lost their jobs in the farming industry.

On top of this came the worst foot-and-mouth epidemic the world has ever seen. For many farmers it has signalled an end to their livelihood; for many others it will mean a constant struggle for survival for years to come.

The epidemic has also seriously damaged the tourist industry, the food processing industry and many other small businesses in infected areas. In Wensleydale, in my own constituency, small businesses of every kind are seeing massive reductions in their turnover and the government now estimates that the total cost of the crisis could reach £4bn.

Given the impact of the crisis, the government should now have taken all possible steps to prevent a recurrence of the disease but, even though farmers have been labouring for months to clean and disinfect their premises and have destroyed thousands of their animals, Britain's doors continue to be wide open to re-infection.

Such complacency from the government is not new. Over the past three years, it has repeatedly been warned about the dangers of foot-and-mouth but has done nothing about it. The United Nations, the EU and the Italian government have all warned of the increasing risk of a serious outbreak. There have also been outbreaks of other diseases caused by the import of substandard agricultural produce, such as classical swine fever, Newcastle disease, enzootic bovine leukosis, brown rot and rhizomania.

These outbreaks should all have served as important warnings but, even now, virtually nothing has been done to prevent illegal imports.

Eighteen months ago, Clive Lawrance, the managing director of a freight handling company, wrote to tell the government that thousands of tonnes of meat were being illegally imported into Britain. He received no reply.

Last year the government estimated that more than 1,750kg of illegal meat was confiscated from travellers. Recent examples include cargo declared as vegetables containing 15 dead monkeys, one anteater and tortoise legs. One cargo contained a freshly-slaughtered deer and maggot-infested fish.

I find it incredible that it is legal to allow people to bring into Britain up to a kilo of bushmeat from third world countries.

Many people may be unwittingly breaking the law. In a survey of travellers' understanding of food imports, the NFU found that more than half the population of Britain was unaware of what products could legally be imported into the UK.

When did you last see guidance on a plane or in a foreign departure lounge about what imports are permitted in the UK? What is the point of British farmers adhering to some of the toughest hygiene regulations in the world only for the UK to import cheap food and products that do not meet our own high standards?

If Britain is to avoid a reoccurrence of foot-and-mouth, measures must now be put in place to tighten controls on the import of dangerous meat. This was just one of the recommendations in the report into the 1967 foot-and-mouth outbreak, but it appears nothing was done. That is why we need a public inquiry. Before the election, the Environment Minister Michael Meacher promised an independent public inquiry. Now we have a promise of three separate inquiries, none of which is either public or independent. This is unacceptable.

The scale of the epidemic makes it essential for a full public inquiry to establish how the disease reached Britain and why the government reacted so slowly and incompetently. We must ensure that the carefully-arranged private inquiries are not allowed to cover up the real truth.

The government must also take action now. Given the extreme importance of autumn to our local hill farmers, we need the government to ease animal movement restrictions, as appropriate, with an efficiency and fairness not seen at earlier stages of the crisis.

It must also ensure that it helps rural areas such as North Yorkshire to recover. Last Friday, Lord Haskins recommended that the government should inject an extra £40m into the business recovery fund; instead the government has come up with just £24m, of which £10m is being pulled from other projects. If the government were serious about helping the farming community, it would now claim the £57m-worth of outstanding agrimonetary compensation to offset the costs of the weak euro.

The handling of the crisis has been one of the worst cases of government incompetence in the modern history of our country. I call on the government to lift movement restrictions efficiently and fairly, to tighten controls on imports and to hold the public inquiry our farmers and tourist businesses deserve