Game Birds (Cage Breeding) Bill [HL]

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Randall, for tabling this Bill and for his comprehensive introduction of its purposes. He is right to pursue the issue. It is a reminder that, although we have good animal welfare standards in the UK, our work is never done and there will always be categories of animals and birds that get left behind when we draw up legislation.

This seems to be the case when it comes to breeding pheasants and partridges. It seems an anomaly that they can be kept in battery cages when their use for hens laying eggs for human consumption has been banned in the UK, along with the rest of the EU, since 2012. It seems that game birds have a particularly dismal life on two counts. They are condemned to live in unsuitable conditions and produce offspring for the sole purpose of being shot for “sport”. I am grateful to the League Against Cruel Sports and Animal Aid for providing distressing accounts of the continuing suffering still being experienced by game birds in battery cages. Some of their evidence was reflected in the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Randall, who illustrated well the scale of the problem and the disgrace of some of the provision that still exists.

As the noble Lord acknowledged, we understand that the Government are looking to issue a call for evidence later this year to examine the case for further reforms to the welfare provisions for game birds; as he said, this is the minimum we should expect. It would be helpful if the Minister could offer further details of the scope and timescale for this review because, with the best will in the world, this commitment seems rather vague. Sadly, this has been a mark of this Government’s approach to animal welfare legislation—a policy of stop/go, and the more recent abandonment of the legislation on banning trophy hunting and the importing of fur and foie gras, show that they succumb all too easily to pressure from the powerful lobby groups among their membership. To be clear, these are all issues that a Labour Government intend to tackle when we come to office.

Of course, the provision for game birds should have been covered by the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which makes it an offence to cause unnecessary suffering to animals. However, if neither that legislation nor the statutory code of practice provides sufficient guarantees that game birds will be housed in appropriate accommodation, clearly, more action is necessary. As the league points out, it is difficult to imagine how the current arrangements conform to the five freedoms that are the basis of UK animal welfare law.

The current code of practice sets out explicit conditions to provide the basic health and welfare that we would all expect to be provided, so there has obviously been a failure of oversight and enforcement if breaches of the code continue to take place. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, in asking for more information on the statistics on the numbers of inspections that have taken place and enforcement actions that have been followed up.

As the years go by, our expectations of animal welfare standards rightly continue to rise. We have still not banned enriched cages for laying hens, which are glorified battery cages. What consideration is being given to such a ban? Does the Minister agree that this should apply to pheasants and partridges too?

Finally, the British people now expect their laying hens and chickens to have a decent quality of life; this means the ability to roam about, as free-range chickens are enabled to do. We all understand why the current threat of avian flu has required hens to be kept indoors, with the loss of eggs described as free range in the supermarkets. However, now that spring is coming and the birds will be increasingly anxious to get outside, can the Minister update us on when the ban on outdoor access is likely to be lifted?

Sadly, parliamentary time means that this Bill is unlikely to jump through all the hoops before the end of the Session. However, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Randall, will work with us to pursue these issues in the coming Session, and I hope the Minister will be able to commit to giving it government support if he does so. I look forward to his response.