The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, for bringing the Bill to your Lordships’ House and for her detailed contributions on this very serious matter of equine welfare. I should also declare an interest as a thoroughly horsy person. I am not currently an owner, but I will not be outdone by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury, although I might not dwell on it at quite such length. I have also ridden under rules. In fact, I have someone else’s animals on my holding with, I emphasise, my full consent. I welcome the opportunity to confirm that the Government fully support this Bill. I equally welcome the support of everyone else who has spoken.
My honourable friend George Eustice expressed in another place our conviction that the Bill, if enacted, could go a long way towards improving the existing remedies to tackle fly-grazing in the Animals Act 1971 and, in the process, improve the state of equine welfare in this country.
As the charities have reported, and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, has said, several thousand horses are currently being left to graze on other people’s land without consent. This affects both public and private land and shows that certain horse owners show disregard for their responsibilities under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Instead, this duty of care is imposed, unsolicited, upon others, who have to care for fly-grazed horses on their land, often incurring substantial and sudden costs in the process.
It would be remiss of me not to join the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, in paying tribute to my honourable friend Julian Sturdy, the Member for York Outer, for bringing forward the Bill in another place and his handling of it there. As the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, rightly said, there was consensus in another place that the Bill offers a chance to introduce a fairer and more effective remedy against fly-grazing and horse abandonment. That consensus has been echoed here today.
As a horse lover and the Minister responsible for animal welfare, I have a strong interest in the issue of fly-grazed horses and how to deal with the problem.
Four key Acts of Parliament apply in this area. As well as the Animals Act and the Animal Welfare Act, which is relevant to horses in distress, there is also the new Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which gives stronger and swifter powers to deal with the owners of fly-grazed horses where those owners are able to be identified, and the Highways Act 1980, which gives powers to the police with respect to horses straying on the highway. We have acknowledged that making some relatively small but important amendments to the Animals Act would go a long way towards ensuring that the provisions in that Act work better for those trying to deal with fly-grazing. It would bring the legislation up to date and make the process more efficient and less burdensome.
In September last year, I attended a hearing of the House of Commons EFRA Select Committee on horse welfare. What was remarkable about that discussion was that, despite the wide variety of groups participating—from horse welfare charities to the RSPCA, the NFU, the CLA, local authorities and other community representatives—all participants agreed that action was needed to address fly-grazing. They were all keenly aware that the matter has a significant bearing on animal welfare. Following that committee, and after considering the telling case put by the coalition of welfare, countryside and farming interests, I am delighted to say that we were able to offer support for the Bill and help it progress to this stage in as smooth a manner as possible.
Several noble Lords asked questions. My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury asked whether anything can be done about the indiscriminate overbreeding of inferior-quality horses. Overbreeding of horses is of course a significant concern and a sign of irresponsible horse ownership and neglect. Part of the problem lies in the need for better education for owners and potential owners. They must ask themselves: do they need to breed from their horses? Do they have a market for their foals? Can they afford the costs of caring for those foals, including the costs of grazing or stabling?
The overpopulation of low-market-value horses may also be traced to the large number of abandoned animals that have been left to breed indiscriminately. The Bill could help improve the situation by introducing a remedy to allow landowners and occupiers to take swift action to deal with such horses if they stray on to their land. The remedy will ensure that the horses, once detained, will not be released back to their previous state of abandonment. They would be sold, rehomed, gifted or, ultimately, euthanized, depending on their condition and the opportunities available in each respective case.
My noble friend Lord Shrewsbury also asked about the application of the horse passport regime. Since February 2005, all owners of horses, ponies and other equines in the United Kingdom have been required to have a passport for each animal in order to comply with European legislation. Since 2009, in addition to being passported, all equines are required to be microchipped. Derogations from those requirements may apply to defined populations of wild or semi-wild horses. Derogated areas exist in England and Wales. In England, that applies to the Dartmoor, Exmoor and New Forest ponies.
The Government believe that the regime needs strengthening. A number of steps have been taken to address that at a national level—for example, by agreeing new operating standards for horse passport issuing organisations, which came into full effect on 1 April last year, and by giving clear guidance to owners and vets about their responsibilities under the legislation.
In addition, the EU adopted a revised EU-wide horse passport regulation last autumn. The key changes are: all member states to have a central equine database with greater sharing of information between member states; tighter controls over microchips and an option for member states to require chipping of older horses; a requirement to notify when a horse has been signed out of the food chain following medical treatment, with details recorded on the database; and new minimum standards for passport-issuing organisations, with stronger powers to allow Governments to suspend or withdraw approval to passport issuing organisations which fail to meet the standards. All those new rules come into effect on 1 January 2016—apart, in response to a question from the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, from the central database, which must be in place on 1 July 2016 for those member states which do not currently operate central equine databases, which include the United Kingdom.
The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, asked whether the Government will implement the power granted in SANCO 7063, the new EU horse passport regulation, mandating microchipping of all horses rather than only those born since 2009. At the outset, noble Lords may like to know that the UK was instrumental in securing that provision in the newly revised EU horse passport regulation, which, as I said, is due to come into effect from January next year. The original proposal contained no such provision, and I know that it is one which the equine sector has welcomed. It has congratulated the department on securing that small but potentially important change. My officials are now working closely with representatives of the equine sector council to develop the necessary analysis of the costs and benefits of making retrospective chipping mandatory. It is an optional provision in the revised EU regulation, and I hope that noble Lords will approve of the fact that the arguments and justification for doing so must be robust and make sense for horse owners and regulators alike. I am encouraged, however, by the way in which the sector has responded to the challenge to produce that analysis and we will continue to work closely with it on that.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, asked what safeguards are in place to ensure that a horse owner can protect his or her horse and recover it if it accidentally strays and is detained under the provisions. The primary safeguard to prevent a horse straying and being detained is, of course, responsible ownership. The Defra code of practice on the welfare of horses prescribes that persons responsible for a horse should check on it at least once a day—something that will have been drilled into the noble Baroness, as it was into me, from an early age. In addition, the Animals Act already contains a safeguard system, in that it requires that the police be informed and maintain a record-keeping system for any reports of detained and missing horses.
The Act also requires that notices be issued to the horse’s owner if this person is known. Information given to the police is retained through a call and command computer system, and in practice details are often shared with local authorities. The process should enable horse owners to come forward to claim their horse within the specified detention time. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, referred to that as four days; it is in fact four working days, which is slightly longer in most cases. This allows the owners to know with some certainty that if the horse has been detained, the police will have the details of the detention. The police will be able to advise the horse’s owners of their rights under the Animals Act. Under the Bill, the safeguard process would remain although the police would be required to receive details of a detained horse within 24 hours, instead of within 48 hours as at present. This enables horse owners to act more immediately, which is in the interests of all parties, not least the detained horse.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, also asked about the reason for fly-grazing, and alluded to the fact that it is probably complex, and indeed it is—there is a range of reasons. The reason that we are really focusing on here is the deliberate theft of other people’s grazing, often by large numbers of horses.
The Bill provides a tremendous opportunity to address what has become quite a widespread problem of fly-grazing, and to improve the legal protection afforded to abandoned or fly-grazed horses. I support this Bill and we thank the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, for taking it forward. I hope it will have a speedy passage on to the statute book.