Agriculture, Fisheries and the Rural Environment

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a hands-on small-scale sheep farmer on the top of Exmoor and therefore in receipt of single farm payments. I have also been president—just once—of the Countryside Alliance.

This House is sometimes said to be a House of experts but the press usually focus on how often a Peer speaks, asks questions or votes. But of possibly greater value, in my view, is the Peer who is always ready to share his expertise, answer questions and give his take on an issue. Throughout my time in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, has been my first port of call when I need facts, guidance or a steer on agriculture, and I see others doing that constantly. He is never too busy. He is always full of humour, wisdom, patience and generosity. I will miss him and so will this House.

Five minutes is totally inadequate to even list the many important issues raised by the well-timed and well-chosen debate in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Lindsay. In the four minutes I have left, I will confine myself to one: the future of small and medium-sized family farms, which still exist in the remaining and besieged rural areas of our country, which are themselves already changing very quickly.

For many small farms, the single farm payment represents the difference between break-even and loss. For many tenant farmers, who usually receive those payments directly, the current rents they pay are based on that fact. Without replacement in some form, either those farm rents must fall in compensation or those farmers will no longer be viable, the farms will be untenanted and eventually they will be swallowed up into larger and larger units. Yet if we want small-scale farming, which has shaped—indeed, created—our landscape and keeps our landscape as it is, and if we want to retain the cornerstones of their local communities, which those farmers and their families are, we have to find ways in which future funding continues. It should be based not on acreage, as at present, but on incentives to innovate; to promote animal welfare, which is increasingly a marketing tool in itself; to compensate them for environmental improvements which they are often required expensively to make; and to maintain and enhance a landscape and what it offers to the wider public. It is a challenge but it is also a brilliant opportunity, and I believe that the next generation is already up for it.

The pace of change is already fast. Twenty years ago, there was little shooting where I live on Exmoor. Now, commercial shooting is vast—some would say too big—and has a worldwide reputation. The most recent survey shows that it contributes £32 million a year to the local economy there, up from £18 million a year in the national park survey just five years ago. Two visitors who came into the House on Tuesday told me that they had received an EU grant without which they could not have converted their redundant farm buildings to small business units. They have been full ever since and have brought much-needed new employment as a result. I recently asked someone from Cornwall what she did on her farm and the answer was, “Sheep and solar”.

The Countryside Alliance’s rural retail awards show every year what is happening up and down the country, with small businesses, specialist foods, new land-based businesses and some truly inspirational environmental projects, often with education as a part of them. So the pace of change is rapid, at least for some, but all this needs good communications and, especially, fast broadband. We have that across most of Exmoor, thanks to the national park, but my noble friend Lord Hollick, who lives in the New Forest, was complaining the other day that he could not even get a mobile signal let alone fast broadband. Surely that must be the most important infrastructure project of all at present.

Why was it that so many people voted in rural areas to leave the EU? I believe it was because of the dead hand of bureaucracy and regulation, which lies particularly heavily in those areas, and the EU, usually rightly, gets the blame. We used to be able to bury a dead sheep; now we are not allowed to and I have to pay £21.60 plus VAT for each one. The New Zealanders do not incur those charges. I also have to get a licence to burn my hedge trimmings and have to go on courses, at £250 a go, to go out with my knapsack sprayer or to buy a tub of effective rat poison. All those things may well be good things, but every time it is the farmer who has to pay for it. Driving across Exmoor at sunrise this morning the landscape, made up of small farms, was so beautiful it makes you cry. We must not lose it or them. That is the danger, that is the challenge and that is the opportunity.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I have few jobs in this debate, one of which is to keep your Lordships to time and I am failing. Perhaps noble Lords could wind up in their fourth minute so that when the clock says five, that is the end of the speech.

Equine Welfare Standards

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, notwithstanding the helpful way in which the noble Baroness opened the debate, I am sorry that we do not have the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, here to thank him both for initiating it and for a lifetime of work on his part to improve animal welfare, particularly that of horses.

I am a horse owner of some 60 years, and the one sure thing I know is that the more you think you know about horses, the less you really do. That was clear to me from the report to which the noble Baroness drew our attention, because I learned an enormous amount from reading it. The first and most important point is that equine welfare is largely compromised by ignorance and not just by those who are irresponsible.

I should declare my interests as president of the Horse Trust and of the Countryside Alliance, and as a trustee of the charity Racing Welfare and of the union for stable staff in racing, NASS. It is a great pleasure that today the British Horseracing Authority has shown that it appreciates the importance of this area by announcing the appointment of its first director of equine health and welfare.

In my four minutes I will concentrate on just four things that I think the Government could do right now to make a real difference. First, the code of good practice for the horse, currently on the statute book, is out of date. Over a year ago, the Equine Sector Council consulted widely, then approved and, in March 2006, presented to Defra a ready-to-go, up-to-date code of practice, since when there has been silence. Would the Minister be good enough to undertake to take it off the shelf and bring it into force? The industry would prefer it to be statutory but, if that cannot be done at once, then I ask that it at least be given Defra approval until it can be.

My second point concerns the retrospective issue of horse passports and microchipping. Many horses—many of them elderly—are without passports or microchips. Their owners cannot apply for them as the deadline has long passed, so they cannot enter the food chain. There is a real welfare problem at end of life with horses of no economic value. It is expensive to put them down. Too often as a result, suffering is unnecessarily prolonged as the owner cannot face giving, or afford to give, the order or, worse, the horse is passed on to who knows where or is abandoned. The Government have the option to seek a derogation to allow retrospective microchipping and then to set up our own database. The digital system is ready to go—it has been fully developed. What is needed now is positive encouragement at Defra to get the consultation under way and to get this up and running. Post-Brexit, we will be able to do it anyway.

My third point concerns phenylbutazone, or bute—a common painkiller and anti-inflammatory drug widely used for horses. However, no horse in this country which has ever been given bute can enter the food chain. According to Defra, a vet has to mark the passport at the dead of night before he treats a horse, which is absurd. It is supposed to be a protection for human health but the EU allows imports of horsemeat from third countries, notably from Mexico and Canada, where considerable numbers of United States thoroughbreds—ex-racehorses—are sent for slaughter, many of them after very long journeys and many of which have had bute. A derogation for a withdrawal period of six months for our horses ought to be sought. There is no evidence of danger to human health after such an interval, as the EU tacitly recognises by accepting those overseas horses. Therefore, a consultation could be started on this now. After Brexit we will be able to make our own rules not just on this but on live exports, for which the welfare restrictions we have wanted have not always been approved in Europe.

Fourthly, and lastly, the Government could require CCTV to be installed at key points in all licensed horse abattoirs which do not currently have it. That would go some way towards giving an owner confidence that their horse would be put down efficiently and properly at the end of its life.

Control of Horses Bill

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Mallalieu]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

I declare a number of relevant interests as president of the Horse Trust, president of the Countryside Alliance, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Horse and a member of the RSPCA.

I am very pleased to introduce this simple but important Bill, which has come to us from the other place. I am grateful to the honourable Member for York Outer, Mr Julian Sturdy, for inviting me to take this Private Member’s Bill through this House and congratulate him on obtaining solid cross-party support for it.

In essence, the Control of Horses Bill proposes several small amendments to the Animals Act 1971, which are intended to help people to deal more promptly and effectively with horses that are unlawfully on their land. During the Bill’s passage through the other place, it received strong support from the Minister, Mr George Eustice, and from the Opposition in the form of the Member of Parliament for Penistone and Stocksbridge, Mrs Angela Smith. Indeed, the Minister, together with Mr Sturdy, made some amendments to the Bill to extend its scope to cover both private and public land. The Bill before us reflects these changes, having been amended in the Commons, and is now extended to apply the same remedy for fly-grazing to all land in England. It does not apply to Scotland or Wales. Indeed, Wales has its own Act covering this devolved matter. It is not perhaps common for a Private Member’s Bill that has come way down the list in the draw to get this far, especially within this rather condensed legislative period before the general election, but this perhaps underlines the urgent nature of a Bill to tackle this problem, fly-grazing.

In England alone, more than 3,000, probably nearer 4,000, horses are being fly-grazed, many in poor condition. Fly-grazing is defined as the practice of deliberately placing or abandoning equines on someone’s land without their consent. This includes not just horses and ponies but donkeys, mules and hinnies. The welfare organisations have obtained evidence that this practice has become increasingly significant in recent years and has become a widespread problem. In some places, it has never been heard of. In others, there are real hotspots, but by and large it extends the length and breath of the country and is not confined to rural, urban or suburban areas—it is everywhere. It has unfortunate problems not just for animal welfare but for public safety and the well-being of the communities that are blighted by it.

There are many cases of horses being abandoned and neglected. They range from situations in which owners who have struggled to cope have given up because of the cost of keeping a horse, to irresponsible breeding or when people just look for opportunities to graze or easily dispose of horses they cannot sell. There is some evidence that the increase in fly-grazing is linked to the weakness in the price of lesser-quality animals and to the recession. Many horses are now effectively of no value whatever.

The Animals Act 1971 needs amending for that reason, and the existing provisions are no longer valid. They were based on a time when there was a value to the horse. The current problem does not, therefore, meet the current legislation. The person who detains a horse on his land and goes through the procedures under the 1971 Act must then put it up for sale. The expectation when the Act was passed—and the relevant section covers all sorts of other animals that still have a value—was that the person who detained and possibly suffered damage as a result of fly-grazing would be able to recoup some money by selling the animal. However, that is not now the case.

There is increasing evidence that some unscrupulous dealers allow the horses to be detained and do not claim them. The horses are then taken, given a passport, a microchip, which very few of them have, possibly some veterinary treatment, are put up for sale and then bought back at a knockdown price by the very people who have effectively dumped them. They have acquired back a horse of considerably greater value, because with a passport and a chip it is likely to have some sale value, albeit for meat. As Julian Sturdy said of the Bill at Third Reading in another place:

“Our ability to protect horses from a life of neglect on both private and public land will be greatly enhanced”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/1/15; col. 1158.]

The timing of the legislation is to some extent dictated by a crisis that goes wider than simply fly-grazing. Against the background of between 3,000 and 4,000 horses that are being fly-grazed, it is estimated by the equine charities that a further 3,000 horses that are in a very poor condition at this moment, but are kept lawfully on land that people are entitled to use.

I turn to the details of the legislation. It is short, has just five clauses and proposes some modest but none the less important changes to the Animals Act to carve out a specific regime to deal with horses put on land without lawful authority in England. It leaves the Animals Act unchanged as it applies to other livestock and all the Act unchanged as it applies in Wales, because the matter is devolved. The Welsh are ahead of us: they enacted not identical but similar legislation in 2014. Ireland is ahead of us still. Southern Ireland brought in legislation of this type as long ago as 1996. It has been an enormous success, with a very large number of horses being detained and dealt with under that Act. In the first year of the Welsh legislation’s operation, some 480 horses passed through this system that would otherwise still be fly-grazing, unless they had died of neglect, which is sadly all too common.

Focusing on the central clause, Clause 3, the Bill enables local authorities, and private owners and occupiers of land, to deal with fly-grazing horses much more quickly than at present. It permits the disposal of horses after four working days from detention, rather than the 14 days currently prescribed under the Act. In addition, in the event that a detained horse is not claimed by the owner, the Bill provides more flexible options for disposal of horses. Instead of having to go through a sale at market or public auction, the Bill allows disposal by any means—humanely, obviously—that the detainer thinks fit. He can give the horse away, whether to a charity or a suitable individual, offer it for private sale, rehome it, or, in some cases where there is no alternative—this is the case with quite a significant number of these horses—arrange for humane euthanasia.

The current detention time under the Animals Act has been said to be unnecessarily long because there are considerable expenses attached to it. I believe that the proposed reduction to four working days strikes a good balance. It allows time for a responsible horse owner to claim their missing horse, while it reduces the expenses imposed on the local authority or person who has detained the horse and has to care for it properly on his own land. The Defra code of practice for horse welfare says that a horse should be seen at least once a day. That is what a responsible owner would do, so he would be alerted to any horse missing in very good time.

Fly-grazing is an extremely expensive problem. For each day that a horse is detained, there are requirements that it be properly cared for, fed and watered, and given shelter. Sometimes transport, housing and veterinary attention are necessary. We know that at least one council spent more than £100,000 to address the problem over the course of the year. The new measures proposed in the Bill have the potential to provide swift resolution to cases of fly-grazing and to deter others. This would also help to reduce the significant demand on resources that are usually required to tackle fly-grazing incidents. The reality is that many of these horses have little or no monetary value.

I also draw noble Lords’ attention to the safeguards in the Bill for what I would call responsible horse owners. I think we all accept that no matter how well fenced, there are occasions when horses accidently stray, very often through no fault of the owner, through a gate being left open or something of that sort. The Bill includes procedural protections to ensure that responsible horse owners can track down and reclaim horses that have accidentally strayed and are wrongly presumed to be fly-grazing. Those procedural protections would be overseen by the local police, who, under the Bill’s provisions, have to be notified within 24 hours of any detention, or that detention may not carry on. On this basis, a horse owner who contacts the police about a missing horse will enable the police to reconcile that report with a notice given by a person detaining a fly-grazing horse. One hopes that they would be able to reunite the horse with its legitimate owner, once settlement is agreed over the costs of any care provided during the detention period. The police already operate a call and command computer system, which is often shared with the local authority and other police stations. Hopefully, once this measure is in place, that can be polished up and extended.

Unfortunately, the owners of fly-grazing horses are often quite impossible to trace, or they do not wish to be traced as they have abandoned the horse. I have seen the results of that for myself at the Horse Trust, where I saw one of three nice horses that had been abandoned in a ploughed field. One was dead by the time anyone was alerted, the second was unable to be moved and was put down on the spot, and the third had what I was told was a condition score of nought. It was in fact a skeleton with some skin on it. Astonishingly, with incredibly good care, that horse survived, but many do not and many are found starving or worse. They have very rarely been properly treated for parasites and some are injured. Many suffer from malnutrition and exposure, and very often they have been grazing in areas with poisonous plants and have suffered long-term damage, for example from ragwort. In 2014, the RSPCA received more than 2,000 calls about more than 1,300 horses and donkeys that appeared to have been, frankly, abandoned. Therefore, animal welfare is one problem which this Bill is aimed at dealing with.

There are problems of other sorts, not just what I call the problem of starving horses. In recent years there seem to have been a number of incidents, one as recently as last week in Essex, of unwanted, unweaned foals being left on verges, abandoned because the mare had some value but the foal did not. Fortunately, in that case the RSPCA was able to pick up the foal and it is hoped that it will enable it to survive. I have come across a number of incidents of that sort and have seen some myself.

There is a further problem, which is the danger of horses fly-grazing not just on playing fields and school playgrounds but on roads, some of them major, on to which they have strayed. There are also some areas where unscrupulous dealers—I suspect they are dealers but who knows who they are—repeatedly put horses. On 5 January the RSPCA rescued eight horses that were fly-grazing near Leighton Buzzard. They were all in very poor condition and five of them died as a result of malnutrition, parasites and severe neglect. About 10 days later, on 15 January, eight more horses were simply put back into the same field. On that occasion it took four hours for a combination of the police, Blue Cross, the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare to round up the horses, none of which appeared ever to have been handled in any way and so presented considerable difficulties.

The dangers are not just road accidents but unfortunately sometimes very nearly fatal rail accidents. Last year, in November, 12 horses were killed on a railway line near Cambridge, having been caught on the track between two trains. As short a time as two weeks ago, some horses that had been wandering on the roads and had been put by well meaning people into a field had direct access to the railway line near Darlington and were killed. In both those cases, although the trains were damaged, fortunately the people in them were not seriously hurt. However, there are major accidents waiting to happen.

This is a case of not just health and safety but expense. The people concerned with this practice are going to have little or no concern for the inconvenience and expense that they impose on others through their actions. Indeed, the countryside and welfare groups estimate that this illegal practice costs millions of pounds each year, not just to farmers or landowners but to the police, charities and councils, and hence to taxpayers. Sadly, the major horse welfare charities are reporting that their rehoming centres are full to capacity of unwanted horses, and some of them have had to take on extra space to try to deal with at least part of the burden placed on them. This lack of resources is clearly unsustainable.

There is, I am glad to say, not only cross-party support for this measure but support from all those involved with the problem. The profile of what has been going on has been raised greatly in the last year by the campaigning organisations, which have made people aware of what has been going on. For many people, in this House and elsewhere, there is no conception of what is happening outside.

The bodies that have worked particularly hard include the RSPCA, Blue Cross, World Horse Welfare, HorseWorld, the British Horse Society and Redwings. They have joined forces with the Countryside Alliance, the CLA and the National Farmers’ Union. Together, that group produced a report on fly-grazing called Stop the Scourge. The strong consensus between groups that do not always agree on every aspect is an indication of just how important and how urgent this measure is. I am also aware that the Local Government Association is strongly in favour of the Bill, as are the police.

This Bill, short though it is, is good for animal welfare and public safety. It will ease the serious financial impact, not just on the police, charities and councils but on all of us through the taxes we pay. Above all, we have an opportunity to greatly enhance our ability to protect horses from the consequences of irresponsible ownership. In amending the Animals Act, this Bill will allow us to create a more practical and less burdensome solution to fly-grazing. It is not a total solution because that involves educating owners, but it would, I hope, ensure that local authorities and those who own land are in a better position to intervene when fly-grazing occurs and they are faced with the difficulties.

I should like to underline my debt to Julian Sturdy, who has campaigned on this issue for a very long time, for his commitment to this pressing issue. I would also like to add that the commitment from the Minister is also to be commended. I think he was determined to see that this Bill reached this House. He has assisted greatly with the passage of this Bill so far, as have his officials, to whom I also pay tribute. I strongly commend this Bill to your Lordships’ House. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister and to all those who have spoken. Each of the speeches has come from a position of knowledge and added to the strength of the arguments for the Bill, whether that was from a local government perspective, a charity perspective or from someone who runs riding stables or breeds horses. Those were all valuable contributions. A number of questions were asked, which I believe the Minister has answered fully. Perhaps I may underline the request made by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, that if it can be done—as I hope it will, as soon as possible—retrospective chipping should become the policy. That is the key to the equine database being effective in 2016.

I will pick up just one matter which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, when she asked about Gypsies and Travellers. I make it absolutely clear that the Bill is aimed at irresponsible owners, not the Travelling community. The Gypsy Council has made it clear that it has no objections to the Bill. Nobody should be using somebody else’s land to graze their horses without permission. That is the underlying basis on which it is proposed to make these changes.

As the Minister noted, we all hope that we can fit within the timetable by taking the Bill forward as quickly as possible and see it on the statute book within this Parliament. It is the case, as I am sure noble Lords will appreciate, that it would be a pity to lose the opportunity provided by the Bill. If it were to be amended in this House then, sadly, it would not have time to gain Royal Assent, which would be a huge shame. I very much hope that noble Lords will support the Bill in its present form and allow it swift passage through this House. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Bovine Tuberculosis

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The answer to the risk of bovine TB being transferred to humans is, as the noble Lord mentioned in his question, the pasteurisation of milk. Milk is pasteurised to make it safe for human consumption. We are concerned about the incidence of the disease, which is crippling for cattle and, of course, for badgers, but I think that I can reassure the noble Lord that the purpose of this programme is not the fear of its transfer to humans.

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords—

[Baroness Parminter]

My Lords—

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, we have time. Perhaps we may hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu.

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of the desperation of my neighbours on Exmoor, most of whom are under a restriction and are losing cattle at every retest? They are frustrated with science because year after year they have been promised that if they will only wait a little longer there will be an effective oral vaccine. They are still being told that. Is the noble Lord also aware of the welcome for the courage that has been shown by the Defra Ministers in this Government in finally starting to tackle this problem?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for those comments and I shall convey them back to my colleagues. It is correct to say that, in a 12-month period, in some of the worst areas nearly a quarter of cattle herds are under restrictions. Clearly, that cannot be tolerable. It causes immense stress to farmers, particularly in highly infected parts of the country.

Rural Communities: Prince’s Countryside Fund

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Thursday 7th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I declare an interest as both president of the Countryside Alliance and a small hill farmer living in a rural community. I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, for having the foresight to put his name down in the ballot for this debate. However, I have to upbraid him with the fact that this debate could have been sustained over five hours and we could all then have had the run of our teeth. We have all had to curtail what we would have liked to say because of the time restraints.

The first thing I want to say is: God bless the Prince of Wales. He is much criticised but thank goodness we have an heir who does not spend his time in waiting without giving a lead when he sees that something is seriously wrong. Something is seriously wrong because the greatest national asset that we possess—our countryside—is being eroded and falling away before our very eyes. I also say how lucky we are that supermarkets, which are so often criticised, have a leader in Mark Price, who has been instrumental in what has been done here. Both he and the Prince deserve great credit for bringing together such an impressive team of business leaders who also care about the countryside.

I do not know where we went wrong but somewhere along the line we stopped explaining to people why the countryside really matters, not just to those who live or work there but to every one of us. During the recent Labour leadership election campaign, I am sorry to say that not one of the candidates in any of the literature I received soliciting my various votes made any mention whatever of the countryside, yet all those people eat and drink, as do every one of us, and every mouthful they take is the direct result of the skill and effort of someone somewhere in the countryside rearing or growing that food, and living for the most part in a rural community. It seemed from the various addresses that there was very much concern about climate change, but the truth of the matter is that if the world population goes on growing a worldwide food shortage is likely to be the earlier of the catastrophes that strike us. Yet we seem to think that, as a rich nation, all we have to do is go out and get our food from somewhere else, and as a result year after year we produce less and less of what we need; I think that the present figure is down to some 41 per cent only.

Rural communities are suffering. The Prince provided us with figures at the launch. Last year farmers in the uplands made an average loss of £3,000 each, and even in the lowlands an average grazing livestock farm made a profit of £1,500, yet they produce superb food and work so hard. We need farms first of all for food. We need them now and will need them even more in the future. Then we need them above all for the landscape, which would not exist if farmers did not do what they do. Without those rural communities, living, working villages would be replaced by scrubland and ghost villages, shuttered and empty outside holiday times.

I agree with every noble Lord who has spoken in this debate, particularly those who spoke about housing, broadband and rural services such as post offices, shops and pubs. All those things are necessary but above all rural people need once again to have control over their way of life. However, in the long term the most important and urgent need that we have—I hope that the Prince’s Fund may be able to help with this—is for education. We are bringing up most of our children in this country with a layer of concrete between them and the earth. We must take the countryside into classrooms and we must get classes out into the countryside so that the next generation will understand better and value more what we have on our doorsteps, which, in my view, as I said, is our greatest national asset.

The countryside matters not just for food, recreation or its different way of life. Each of the leadership candidates spoke repeatedly about the need for change, but at least as important is the need for continuity, which nobody mentioned. The countryside is our continuity. The well loved places, the tranquillity, the feeling of going out there but feeling at home and finding our roots is what gives us a sense of belonging. The countryside is all our yesterdays. Unless we act now, it will no longer be there for the children of tomorrow.