European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

30: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“EU Protocol on animal sentience
The obligation on Ministers of the Crown and the devolved administrations to pay regard to the welfare requirements of animals as sentient beings when formulating law and policy, contained within the EU Protocol on animal sentience as set out in Article 13 of Title II of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, shall be recognised and available in domestic law on and after exit day.”

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this very amendment has been debated in the other House and was voted down by 18 votes. I think the Government were shocked by the public outcry at the amendment being lost.

EU law puts an obligation on the Government and devolved Administrations to “pay full regard” to the welfare requirements of animals when Ministers make decisions and implement policies. This means that Ministers have to think carefully about how their decisions might harm animals.

The British Government played a key role in making this law during our term of EU presidency. It has influenced more than 20 pieces of EU law, including the ban on conventional battery cages for chickens and the ban on cosmetics testing on animals. Certain lobby groups claim that protecting the animal sentience laws will be disastrous; for example, that farmers will not be able to control agricultural pests or to go out and shoot pigeons. This simply cannot be true. If it is not the case with the law as exists today, then nothing will change tomorrow if we retain it.

The Government’s stated intention in the White Paper was for the withdrawal Bill to bring all EU law into UK law and then only amend retained EU law in future legislation. I have raised this issue previously and find it rather offensive that the Government would make such a promise and then not honour it.

Ministers have admitted that these animal protections will be lost as the Bill is currently worded. I understand that it is unfortunate to have to make “single issue” amendments to the Bill, but unless and until we are able to fix the Bill properly to retain all EU law, I have little option but to propose this amendment.

As a compromise when the amendment was proposed in the other place, the Government said that a new Bill would be created to include protections relating to animal sentience—I am sure that they will claim today that my amendment is not needed because of that new Bill. However, the Government’s proposals are weaker than the EU law. They have changed the wording in the draft Bill and included a much broader list of exceptions. Ministers would have only to have “regard” rather than “full regard” for animal welfare, and there is a massive loophole whereby a Minister can make decisions harmful to animal welfare whenever there are other matters of public interest.

A legal opinion commissioned by Friends of the Earth concluded that the Government’s proposals make it far too easy for Ministers to ignore animals, and their decisions would be subject to legal challenge only where they were so irrational that no reasonable authority could have come to them. That is a rather broad exception. The Government’s proposals do a very good job of appearing to protect animal rights, while actually reducing them to near zero.

The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee looked at the Government’s draft animal sentience legislation and tore it to shreds. It basically said that it should be removed from the animal welfare Bill and kicked into the long grass. So it looks likely that, despite the Government’s best intentions, their draft legislation on animal sentience might never see the light of day, let alone reach the statute book. We need to keep this in the withdrawal Bill: it is essential that we retain the existing provisions of EU law. We cannot allow a gap in protections between Brexit day and the point at which the Government are able to provide a suitable animal protection Bill. Ministers have been telling various people that animal sentience is already protected in UK law and that we do not need my amendment. If so, why have the Government drafted their own proposal on the issue? The situation is very simple: this protection does not exist in UK law, it stems from EU law.

Without this amendment to retain Article 13, animals will lose these protections, there being only the vague hope that the Government might one day bring forward a Bill. Once it is retained, we can always go back to it and change it with a future Bill—I would be happy to work with the Government to improve these animal protections—but in the meantime my amendment will keep these animal protections once we leave the EU. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness—I am sure we will have another opportunity to consider the contents of her amendment—and to speak to my own Amendment 212, which inserts a new clause. I hope that I am not responsible for the typo in subsection (3), which refers to, “the Untied Kingdom”. It is not in my interest or that of the country to untie all the arrangements that we have in the United Kingdom.

The purpose of this amendment is to consider,

“border arrangements relating to animal welfare”,

and broaden it out to other themes as well. I am delighted to see my noble friends the Minister for Exiting the European Union and the Minister with responsibility for agriculture in their place to hear these concerns. As of 11 pm on 29 March 2019 the UK becomes a third country and will be treated as such until the new relationship and other arrangements are in place. In her speech on Friday the Prime Minister set out five tests, one of which is that any agreement on our future relationship must protect people’s jobs and security. I wish to consider these remarks in the context, specifically, of the border between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland.

In our debates on Amendment 18 in Committee last week we were told, including by the Minister, that the Bill represents a snapshot. That snapshot would mean that there are no checks at borders between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland because of the common travel area. Indeed, the first scenario that exists today is that the Belfast agreement of 1998 setting up the common travel area means that there are currently no checks on the border between Northern Ireland and southern Ireland. The second scenario assumes that there will have to be a border if we have either a free trade area or, worse still, WTO rules, in which case there will be border checks. I reminded the Committee that that border is 300 miles long.

In preparing for today I came across a rather useful piece which I found, I regret to say, on Twitter, and which I bring to the attention of the Committee. It is by Katy Hayward, whom I believe teaches and lectures at Queen’s University Belfast. She looks at the case of Britain being outside the single market and the customs union, either in a free trade agreement with the EU or under no deal, and it appears that agricultural products would have to be checked at the border. Assuming that animals are moving across the Irish border, I put to the Committee that this cannot be done by technology, either for this category or indeed for food, farming and agricultural products. Instead, there will have to be physical checks and inspections by veterinary surgeons and other enforcement officers. This will also be because we have very high standards of animal welfare, animal health and animal hygiene in this country—which I am immensely proud of—which mean that goods passing across the border will have to meet EU requirements going into Ireland and our requirements coming into the United Kingdom from Ireland.

I draw the Committee’s attention to what Article 5.1 of the draft protocol published by the European Commission last Wednesday, 28 April, says about agricultural trade:

“The provisions of Union law on sanitary and phytosanitary rules”—


please do not ask me what phytosanitary rules are because I have not had time to find out—

“listed in Annex 2.5 to this Protocol shall apply to and in the United Kingdom in respect of Northern Ireland”.

For the other 27 European Union member states, food and other agricultural products coming into Ireland from the UK, whether from Northern Ireland or Great Britain, will be in free circulation within the remaining single market. The remaining 27 member states will demand reassurance on standards, not least because some may seek economic and competitive opportunities from the Irish authorities in these circumstances.

The purpose of the amendment is to seek reassurance from the Minister that the Food Standards Agency will have the staff and resources it needs to ensure that these cross-border arrangements, when in place, will be policed properly.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope I have provided assurance to the noble Baroness and that she will feel content to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I would like to offer them all a hug but I fear I might be infringing HR regulations. I am aware that the Whips have been looking anxiously at the clock and I shall try to be brief.

The amendment would not change anything that exists in the UK at the moment—it is merely a safeguard. If the Government bring forth a Bill I will be incredibly supportive. I am not saying this is the best option for animal protection but it is as good as it gets. It is the best we have at the moment and I certainly do not want to see any worse protections.

Chickens have already been mentioned. I would like to add that mastitis is common in the States—it is an infection of the udder, which means that the milk produced has a high level of pus in it. Americans consume a lot of pus in their milk because of the way their animals are farmed. The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, might have seen cows with sore udders in Texas. We cannot have this in our country and the British public would not allow the Government to drop our welfare standards. If the Government are going to bring forth a Bill, fantastic—but in the meantime let us have the amendment to keep things as safe as possible.

I hope the Government do not come back to your Lordships’ House with a fudge. Many noble Lords are more knowledgeable about this issue than I am, and it would not be accepted. It is a mistake for the Government not to say, “We will have this until we can do better”. If they did, I would support them. I would love to not withdraw the amendment but, with your Lordships’ permission, I will.

Amendment 30 withdrawn.