THERE should to be no dispute over the right to compensation for farmers who have seen their businesses destroyed by the foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Payments ought to reflect the value of the livestock they have lost and the cost of replacing them.

If independent assessments put that value at a million pounds or more, then so be it.

To label these farmers as "foot-and-mouth millionaires" is both erroneous and insensitive.

The level of compensation highlights the scale of the epidemic and gives an indication of what the final cost of the foot-an-mouth crisis to the taxpayers of Britain.

When compensation payments, veterinary charges, slaughter and disposal costs are taken into account the bill will run into many billions of pounds.

And this does not include the damage inflicted by the crisis on tourism and other business sectors.

The cost to the Exchequer and the economy as a whole makes the handling of the epidemic a matter of the utmost public interest. The need for a public inquiry is overwhelming.

The Government's insistence that a full public inquiry will prove too lengthy and costly has to be challenged.

Its preference for an investigation on its own terms has not been determined on the grounds of time and cost, but rather by the fear of what a genuinely independent and public inquiry may conclude on its handling of the crisis.

We need a dispassionate examination of how the outbreak started and how it managed to spread so rapidly and so far.

We also need to look at whether the culling of animals is the most effective means of containing foot-and-mouth.

Would vaccination not be a more efficient and economic method of control? It may well be that the policies adopted actually prolonged the outbreak and increased costs.

Undoubtedly there are lessons to be learned from the outbreak and the methods used in tackling it.

Only through an independent and public inquiry can we be assured that all the lessons are learned and are acted upon.

In the interests of the communities which have been ravaged by foot-and-mouth there must be no suspicion of a cover-up.