United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 (Exclusions from Market Access Principles: Glue Traps) Regulations 2025
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, the regulations the Committee is being asked to consider were laid before the House on 1 December 2025. The instrument makes an exclusion to the market access principles of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020—also known as the UKIM Act, for convenience—for legislation prohibiting the sale of glue traps. I will first set out the background of what the UKIM Act does, as well as what a glue trap is, before turning to the reasons why it is necessary to bring forward this statutory instrument.
The United Kingdom Internal Market Act aims to create a seamless internal market across the UK by removing trade barriers to ensure that goods and services can move freely. This is facilitated by the UKIM market access principles: the mutual recognition principle and the non-discrimination principle. It is the former that concerns us today. The mutual recognition principle means that goods that meet one UK nation’s rules can be sold in the other nations without having to comply with any additional requirements that would otherwise apply to the sale. Excluding glue traps from the market access principles means that those principles will not apply to any legislation that prohibits the sale of glue traps.
For the sake of clarity, a glue trap is a board, often made of cardboard or plastic, on to which a non-drying glue is applied. It is placed on flat surfaces so that small rodents, such as rats or mice, will walk on to them and become unable to escape as their fur or limbs get stuck to the glue. They may then suffer from torn skin, broken limbs and hair removal, and they die a slow and painful death from suffocation, starvation, exhaustion and even self–mutilation. Despite concerns that glue traps are inhumane, until recent changes to legislation in 2022 in England and in 2023 in Wales, glue traps were commonly used across Britain to catch rats and mice in households and commercial premises.
In the UK, we are committed to high standards of animal welfare, but we recognise that devolution means that each Administration may pursue shared goals in different ways. For example, in Wales, the use of glue traps is strictly prohibited. In England, the previous Government regulated glue traps so that they may be legally used only by pest controllers under licence to preserve public health or safety when there is no other satisfactory solution, such as in hospital theatres or inside aircraft. In Northern Ireland, there are no restrictions on using glue traps, and we are not aware of any plans to change that.
In 2024, the Scottish Government legislated to ban the use, possession and sale of glue traps in Scotland via the Wildlife Management and Muirburn (Scotland) Act. However, unless glue traps are added to Schedule 1 to the UKIM Act, to exclude them from the application of the UKIM market access principles, the Scottish Government’s ban on the sale of glue traps in Scotland will not be fully enforceable. This is because glue traps produced in or imported into England, Wales and Northern Ireland will continue to benefit from the mutual recognition principle and could still be sold in Scotland.
Let me turn to why the exclusion has been agreed. The previous Government decided that banning the sale of glue traps would not be substantially more effective than a ban focused on their use and possession. However, this Government have carefully considered the impact of an exclusion for glue traps and concluded that this will have minimal economic impact on trade within the UK, further to the Scottish Government’s ban on the use and possession of glue traps in Scotland. Ministers from the Welsh and Scottish Governments, as well as the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, have consented to the making of these regulations.
This instrument therefore delivers on this Government’s commitment to implement a UKIM exclusion, as announced in December 2024, in response to the Scottish Government’s request for an exclusion relating to glue traps. This underlines our commitment to taking a more collaborative approach to the management of the UK internal market and developing both closer working relationships and increased transparency between the UK Government and the devolved Governments on UK internal market matters that impact significantly on devolved responsibilities. Given all this, I beg to move.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I will speak briefly. First, I commiserate and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Katz, because, for the past two months, he has sat diligently on the Government Front Bench and listened to about 30 speeches I have made on amendments to the crime Bill; admittedly, he rejected every single one of them, but he did so graciously. Yesterday, on our 11th day, I said that I had no more speeches to make on the Bill. Noble Lords ought to have seen the sheer delight on his face when he heard that he would not have to reply to me any more—yet here we are again; I commiserate with him for that.
I also congratulate him on moving on to greater and, at least, nicer things. For the past two months, we have debated terrorism, knife and machete killings, child abuse, stop and search, vile online abuse and pornography, and animal sexual abuse—all thoroughly unnatural things—so it is good for him to speak today about nature and removing one other aspect of animal abuse, albeit admittedly a very small one. At the outset, we recognise that this instrument is narrow in scope and technical in nature, but it touches on matters of animal welfare, public health and the operation of the internal market, all of which merit careful consideration.
Glue traps are quite simply cruel devices. As the noble Lord rightly said, they cause prolonged suffering through starvation, dehydration, torn skin, broken limbs and, in some cases, self-mutilation. They are also indiscriminate, frequently trapping non-target species, including birds and domestic pets. Few who have seen the consequences of these traps can reasonably describe them as humane.
Lord Katz (Lab)
Follow that. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for his comments. He is right that there is a searing inevitability, having finally disposed of his many amendments, particularly around cycles, in Committee on the Crime and Policing Bill that we should encounter each other the very next day—but it is always a pleasure to debate with him. I am grateful for his gracious comments about the Committee on the Crime and Policing Bill.
Let us turn now to this instrument. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s support. The UKIM Act is there to protect, rightly, the internal market of the United Kingdom, which is vital to every nation within it and plays an integral role in their economies. Today’s debate demonstrates that we are able to respond to requests, such as that from the Scottish Government, to make exemptions. That shows that the current Act works and that we can be flexible, implementing exclusions on a case-by-case basis as appropriate.
The UK Government are determined to continue to lead the way in protecting animal welfare and we will continue to work with the devolved Governments to achieve this. Where there are grounds for divergence, which in this case is primarily about the best way to achieve similar goals, and where that divergence is expected to have minimal economic impact on trade within the UK, we will work together to ensure flexibility where we can.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about the UK Government actively considering banning the sale of glue traps in England. Once a Scottish ban is in effect, a wider ban on sale may become a feasible option for reducing illegal use, should there still be a need, if Ministers wish to bring in further legislation to do this. However, it is not something we are actively pursuing at this time, for two main reasons.
First, licensed pest controllers are still permitted to use these traps when they are necessary for preserving public health and safety. The noble Lord posed a question about the number of licences that have been given. I do not have that number to hand but, to save him the trouble of tabling a Parliamentary Question, I am very happy to follow up and write to him with that detail. Although these circumstances are very limited, they do exist. It is therefore not as straightforward as simply implementing a blanket ban on sale.
Secondly, since the Glue Traps (Offences) Act 2022 was passed, market-leading suppliers have been removing glue traps from sale and promoting more humane alternatives instead, giving confidence that the number of these devices deployed across England has been significantly reducing. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recognises that stopping illegal use does not end simply at the point of passing legislation. The department has reached out to retailers to call attention to the fact that amateur use is now banned and that alternative forms of DIY pest control should be considered instead.
Indeed, to respond to another point the noble Lord made, we are exploring how we can work with online retailers to similarly raise awareness. The Government recognise and appreciate the good work that professionals do to keep the public safe, and we will work closely with them on future changes.
To conclude, I trust that the noble Lord understands and accepts the need for this instrument. It makes an exclusion to the UKIM Act for legislation in respect of glue traps, which means that, where they are produced in or imported into other parts of the UK, they cannot be sold in a country that has banned them, regardless of whether an equivalent ban is in place. Scotland will therefore be able to bring in an effective ban on using and selling them.
I am afraid I have to tell the Committee that I cannot possibly begin to match the poetic oratory with which the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, concluded. However, as we have been discussing throughout the debate, we are ending on a particular Scottish note. Ahead of Burns Night, I will not talk about the variety of mice that the noble Lord mentioned, but I will talk about another beast—my preferred beast, the haggis. In Burns’s “Address to a Haggis”, he rightly calls it:
“Great chieftain of the pudding race!”
I very much hope the noble Lord will be joining many people, including me, on Burns Night on Sunday in a wee dram and a healthy slice of haggis. With that, I beg to move.