Humane Trapping Standards Regulations 2019
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
That the Grand Committee do consider the Humane Trapping Standards Regulations 2019.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My Lords, the regulations amend the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to implement trap welfare requirements contained in the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards—AIHTS—in Great Britain. The EU is a party to the agreement, but there is no implementing legislation at the EU level. Under EU law, the UK is therefore obliged to implement the welfare standards directly.
Council Regulation (EEC) No. 3254/91, commonly known as the Leghold Trap Regulation, prohibits the introduction into the EU of wild-sourced pelts and manufactured goods incorporating such pelts originating in countries that catch animals using leghold traps or trapping methods that do not meet international humane trapping standards. In 1997, the EU concluded two international agreements—the agreement with Canada and Russia and an agreed minute with the USA—to establish humane trapping standards and facilitate trade between the parties in wild-sourced pelts and manufactured goods incorporating such pelts.
The agreement requires that: the UK establish appropriate processes for testing and certifying traps in accordance with the humaneness standards and procedures set out in the agreement; manufacturers identify certified traps and provide instructions for their appropriate setting, safe operation and maintenance; and trappers be trained in the humane, safe and effective use of trapping methods. In the UK, the trapping standards apply to five species: badger, beaver, stoat, pine marten and otter. Of these, only the stoat is regularly and widely trapped in the UK; it is also the only species for which lethal traps are commonly used.
A UK-wide consultation on implementation of the agreement took place in March and April 2018. While stakeholders were broadly supportive of welfare improvements, most trap users opposed the implementation of the agreement because they believed that there would not be sufficient numbers of compliant stoat traps available in time. In response to these concerns, the Government agreed to delay implementation specifically in relation to stoats for a further year, until 1 April 2020. This is a pragmatic step that provides a clear signal to manufacturers and trap users that they must transition to compliant traps for stoats, while recognising that they will need time to do so.
Implementation will impact primarily on those who sell, manufacture, import or use stoat traps in the UK, as most stoat traps will need replacing. The total cost on business is calculated to be £1.2 million. We have existing legal mechanisms in place for regulating the use of traps. The agreement simply improves the standards with which traps must comply before they can be used, and extends the scope of existing trap offences to two additional species; namely, stoats and beavers.
Implementation does not require the introduction of new offences or penalties, and the existing licensing mechanism would allow compliant traps to be used. Licences are already required to trap all UK species covered by the agreement, except for stoats and beavers, and we propose that the trapping of stoats using compliant traps should be permitted under a general licence. This will result in negligible costs to the licensing authority and will provide the least burdensome approach for trappers.
The Government are committed to the highest standards of animal welfare. As the Prime Minister has set out, we will make the United Kingdom a world leader in the care and protection of animals as we leave the EU. This agreement contains minimum trap humaneness standards and rigorous trap-testing procedures, creating an internationally recognised benchmark for trap welfare. It is important that we implement these standards in Great Britain. I beg to move.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing this statutory instrument so comprehensively, and for her time in providing a briefing. I note that the only animals covered by this SI are stoats and that badgers, beavers, pine martens and otters are excluded.
It is reassuring that in Part 3 of the SI, under the amendment of the Pests Act 1954, leghold traps are not permitted and have been banned for some considerable time, as the Minister said. The EU prohibits the use of leghold traps and bans the introduction into the EU of pelts from countries which catch animals by means of leghold traps or trapping methods which do not meet international human—humane, sorry—trapping standards. It is essential that these standards are maintained in the UK once we have left the EU. I am encouraged that the Government consider that reliance on the spring trap approval system for the purposes of implementing Article 2 should be made more transparent, and that to improve clarity, the regulations amend Section 8 of the Pests Act 1954 and Section 50 of the Agriculture (Scotland) Act 1948 to make it clear that the Secretary of State and the devolved Minister would not approve or authorise the use of a leghold trap.
However, paragraph 6.7 of the Explanatory Notes indicates:
“In exceptional circumstances, the use of non-AIHTS compliant traps is possible under Article 10 of the Agreement … on a case by case basis”.
This case-by-case basis is allowed by means of a licence. As the Minister said, the agreement covers the EU, Canada and the Russian Federation, and a total of 19 species, only five of which occur in the wild in the UK.
Existing stoat traps do not meet the AIHTS and the Government are proposing that they will not implement the more humane traps until April 2020. This is too far away; the regulations could be implemented much sooner. Consultation has been ongoing for some considerable time, starting with several years of informal consultation with key users, followed by, as the Minister said, a UK-wide six-week public consultation, which ended on 30 April this year.
As has been said, stakeholders were broadly supportive of welfare improvements but opposed the agreement because gamekeepers and trappers did not believe that the compliant traps would be sufficiently available in time. There was also general disagreement with welfare groups over the perception that the agreement facilitated the wider use of traps and the international trade in fur.
Had the Government begun the implementation as soon as the consultation in April this year closed, with a view to starting in January 2019, there would have been time for the industry to ensure that it had a sufficient supply of compliant traps for gamekeepers and trappers. It is simply not acceptable to allow non-compliant traps to be used for a further 15 months, causing unnecessary suffering to stoats. I am not in any way defending the stoat, which is a pest and eats both eggs and young birds that have been bred for shooting, but it is important that they are dispatched in a way that causes minimum suffering. While there is a cost to gamekeepers of changing their traps to comply with the legislation, it should be borne by those engaged in the shoots.
Paragraph 14.1 of the Explanatory Notes indicates that monitoring and compliance will be done by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service. I fear this is extremely unlikely. Police budgets, much like those of local government, have been systematically slashed over several years to the point where the police prioritise crimes against the person and property. It is simply not feasible to expect our overstretched police forces to monitor and ensure gamekeepers’ compliance with the legislation.
Defra has indicated that a list of traps certified as meeting the new standards will be publicly available on GOV.UK. When is this likely to happen? Given that monitoring of the new agreement is likely to be minimal at best, the sooner the standards are publicly available, the sooner gamekeepers and trappers can begin the process of changing over.
There is no mention in the Explanatory Memorandum of who the licensing authority will be, which it states will incur negligible costs. Who issues such licences? Do they cover a specified area of land? Are they limited to a certain number of stoats or are they unlimited?
I also note that new Section 16 (3ZD)(e) of the Act indicates that an authority in another country or territory designated for the purposes of the international trapping standards agreement could be a certifying authority. Can the Minister throw some light on exactly what this means? I look forward to her response to my questions.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation. Of course, anything which improves animal welfare and protects animals from inhumane and cruel trapping is to be welcomed. However, I have some concerns about the Government’s implementation of the EU agreement on human—humane—trapping standards. When I first read the SI, I thought that it said “human trapping standards”, which I thought was the badgers’ revenge, but that is beside the point. There are some points of detail that I would like clarified.
First, all EU member states were obliged to implement the requirements of the AIHTS. The deadline for implementation was 22 July 2016. Can the Minister explain why the UK missed that original deadline? She will be aware that, a month before that deadline passed, the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. However, until exit negotiations are concluded, the UK will remain a full member of the EU and all the rights and obligations of EU membership remain in force. Why are the Government only now implementing the regulations, over two years after the deadline and just months before the UK’s departure from the EU?
Secondly, the Minister will be aware that many animal welfare organisations opposed the implementation of the agreement because they thought it would facilitate the wider use of traps and the international trade in fur. What steps are being taken to ensure that all fur imported from other countries in the EU—as well as Canada, Russia and the USA, which signed up to the new agreement—will meet these supposedly more humane trapping standards to which they have signed up? Have all the other EU countries bound by this agreement introduced the ban into their domestic legislation? If any have not done so, should we be refusing to allow fur imports from those countries?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Jones, for their contributions. It was my pleasure to meet both of them beforehand so I had some sight of some of the questions that would arise, but not all of them. I can cover some of the issues now, but I know that I will have to write on at least one of them. I will probably write to both noble Baronesses but I am afraid that particularly the last point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, went over my head.
The species included in the standards are the ones most commonly trapped for their pelts. There are numerous regulations around trapping and snaring and so forth, but we are focused solely today on those species that are predominantly trapped for their pelts, which is why this agreement was reached in the first place. That is where the 19 species come from. Foxes are not included because they are not commonly trapped for their pelts. Foxes are usually controlled for other reasons, such as pest control. Only a small number of those 19 species exist in this country, which is why the regulations we are talking about today cover those species.
I was asked about the two different types of badger, which may have to go into my letter. Actually, I have a response. The European badger is the same as the UK badger. They are protected. It is very rare that a licence would be granted for those badgers.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned leghold traps. They are banned—they have been banned since 1950—so we will obviously make sure that we do not have those sorts of traps in this country.
The non-compliant element—Article 10 of the agreement—is an issue that both noble Baronesses raised and deserves more focus. In exceptional circumstances the use of non-AIHTS-compliant traps is possible. It permits derogations to be granted only on a case-by-case basis. We do not expect that to happen often, and only if they are not applied in a manner that would undermine the objectives of the agreement. Indeed, if we were to agree a derogation, we would have to notify the agreement’s joint management committee, so it is quite a serious issue. An example of where we might grant a derogation would be where no certified live-capture trap design was available and one needed to be tested, or someone wanted a trap design to be considered for certification for a particular species.
Related to that, the noble Baronesses mentioned home-made traps. Again, that is not something that we expect will be particularly common, but it might occur. However, those home-made traps will have to meet the same standards as other traps. They will need to be certified by the relevant competent authority.
I will partly take the point about timing on the chin. There has been a delay in implementing this. When these standards first came into play, it was not clear whether or not the EU would make legislation around this area. When we realised that the EU was not going to do that, a number of legislative options were available to us, and we considered them all. Then there were various breaks in Parliament, as noble Lords will know. Also, within that time there has been research into compliant stoat traps and an evaluation of how the stoat is finally dispatched. We certainly wanted to examine all the research and evidence. We needed to speak to the stakeholders, but it is not our intention to overregulate the countryside and to force people into changes that they simply cannot make because the traps are not available. Therefore, we felt that the year’s grace was appropriate.
The spring trap regulations come into force in January so obviously they will be available. We aim to get a list of the traps, which will be updated as new traps are certified, on to the GOV.UK website as soon as possible thereafter.
On the licensing authority, there are two types of licences for trapping. The general licence is for people involved in low-risk activities such as conservation and the welfare of protected species. Those people need nothing more than a general licence, but if they have that licence obviously they must meet the conditions and comply with the terms of the relevant licence and therefore the law. The class licence is for activities that require a specific skill or experience to avoid any risk to the environment or the welfare of the protected species. A number of concerns were raised today around that area.
Again, you do not have to apply for a class licence. However, to act under the authority of a class licence, you must first register with the licensing authority to show that you have the required skill. Of course, that can be enforced—people can check that you have the required skill to operate a class licence. In England, the licensing authority is Natural England; in Scotland, it is Scottish Natural Heritage; and in Wales, it is Natural Resources Wales. They already issue these licences in other regards and we do not expect there to be a significant increase when it comes to extending these to stoats.
Moving on to fur, this SI is not about all fur; it is about trapped fur. The regulations within the EU extend to all different types of imported fur. It is expected that importers comply with those regulations but that is beyond the regulations we are talking about today. The noble Baroness also mentioned fur farms, which we have banned in this country. Certainly, as we leave the EU, an opportunity will arise for us to consider any further action that we may wish to take. Obviously, I would not dream of making a commitment at the Dispatch Box today.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I asked whether all the other countries in the EU have implemented this domestic legislation, as obviously that will affect whether we accept imports from them.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
Yes, I believe they have, as have Canada, Russia and the US. I think we are slightly behind the curve on this one.
I would like to cover the issue raised by the noble Baroness about how stoats die. I knew that she was going to bring that up so I had a little look. These traps are more humane because the time to death is shorter and the force of the death action is stronger. These lethal traps most commonly use the power of a coiled spring, which asserts a striking force on the trapped animals, usually on their heads. It is usually administered by a strike bar that crushes the head. Prior to that, the animal has stepped on a plate in order for that action to happen. Some other modern traps use new technology, such as carbon dioxide or electricity, to dispatch the animal; furthermore, they might use captive bolts or impalers. I would like to get across to noble Lords today that modern lethal traps are effective within seconds. The animals will not be left languishing for many minutes while death occurs—that is one of the reasons why we feel that these regulations are so important. While stoats may not always be our friends, the traps dispatch them in a friendly fashion.
Finally, the noble Baroness discussed training. I do not want to overregulate the countryside on this one. The people who will be subject to these regulations are already gamekeepers and trappers—they know how traps work. All we are asking is that the manufacturers provide instructions that allow a gamekeeper to understand what the trap does and how it works. Many of the traps are species-specific and there will be different requirements for where you put the trap, such as in a tunnel, and all sorts of different things. In our view, it is sufficient for the manufacturers to provide instructions. They will be available at the time of purchase, as well as online. The instructions must be available for the life of the trap, and these traps last quite a long time. We have spoken to the manufacturers and the retailers and they are happy to provide this information. Of course, we will make sure that they do when we certify their traps for inclusion in the list.
I think that brings us to the end of this statutory instrument. It is an important one in terms of improving our animal welfare and I beg to move.