Windrush Compensation Scheme
Baroness Verma Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Verma (Con) [V]
My Lords, the Windrush scandal identified a number of serious failings: institutional ignorance and institutional racism. I praise the Home Secretary’s decision to implement in full the recommendations of the independent review; she has demonstrated her commitment to ensuring that she responds to a challenging hostile environment. However, will my noble friend ensure that, alongside financial compensation, there is also mental health support, and that both are delivered speedily? Will she ensure that, as she rightly said, all departments review their processes and policies to reflect on how they, too, respond to and approach such matters?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My noble friend is absolutely right to highlight the other issues. This is not just about money; it is about a whole-of-government approach to looking at the wider inequalities faced in society. That is precisely what the cross-government working group will seek to do. Not only will it provide strategic input into the Home Office’s response to Wendy Williams’s Windrush Lessons Learned Review, but it will support the design and delivery of a range of practical solutions to address the wider challenges that disproportionately affect people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. As I said earlier, they will include programmes on education, work and health and, as my noble friend said, the mental health issues that may have arisen out of some of the difficulties that people faced.
Terrorist Attacks
Baroness Verma Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, it is fair to say, certainly in this House and in the other place, that when events such as this happen, there is broadly a consensus on how we should deal with things. We conflate matters sometimes when we talk about extremism, radicalisation or indeed terrorism and get mixed up in various activities, but the point is that we all seek the same ends. When the extremism commission starts its work, it will seek to get the views of Parliament on its recommendations. I think we all seek the same ends.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend take back to all parliamentarians and to all those in positions of power that the rhetoric they use has a great impact on all our communities? In the past, we have seen divisive language from all sides, which needs to be looked at carefully if we are going to tackle this in a sensible, decent way. I suggest to my noble friend that she also takes back to her department that if we are to tackle extremist violence or extremist thought we need to start looking at it at a much earlier age and at how we can get into primary schools to create greater understanding between all communities.
Male Abusive Behaviour
Baroness Verma Excerpts(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to help men who seek support in addressing their abusive behaviour.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Verma and at her request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.
Equality Act 2010 (Age Exceptions) Order 2012
Baroness Verma Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
That the draft order laid before the House on 25 June be approved.
Relevant documents: 5th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 17 July.
Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2012
Baroness Verma Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 12 June be approved.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 12 July.
Equality Act 2010 (Age Exceptions) Order 2012
Baroness Verma Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Equality Act 2010 (Age Exceptions) Order 2012.
Relevant document: 5th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I am pleased to confirm to the Committee that from 1 October 2012 our intention is that it will no longer be lawful to provide inferior goods, services or facilities, or simply to refuse to provide them at all, because of a customer’s age. This includes public services such as health and social care. Unjustified age discrimination is already prohibited in the workplace. After extensive consultation and deliberation over recent years and by different Administrations, it is now time to complete the task and end such discrimination in the provision of services. We are doing this by implementing the prohibition on such discrimination in the Equality Act 2010, which had cross-party support during its passage through your Lordships’ House. Alongside the prohibition on unjustified age discrimination I am pleased to present this draft order, which contains necessary exemptions to it. With Parliament’s approval, this order will come into force on 1 October 2012, alongside the prohibition.
I turn now to the specifics. Harassment and victimisation related to age will be banned without exception. However, concerning discrimination itself, we need to ensure that the new law prohibits only harmful or unjustifiable discrimination because of age. It should not outlaw the many instances of justifiably different treatment. Nor should it have the practical effect of ending such treatment. The draft order therefore sets out a number of targeted exceptions to the ban on direct age discrimination. They add provisions to Section 195 of—and Schedules 3 and 16 to—the Act under the power contained in Section 197. Those exceptions specify particular types of age-based actions, measures and practices that we consider to be justifiable, beneficial or needed for sound public policy reasons. The exceptions will provide legal certainty for both service providers and customers. Extensive consultation on that issue in 2009, and again in 2011, has helped us to decide where exceptions are needed and what shape they should take.
I will now briefly run through the exceptions in order. The specific exception for immigration in Article 2 allows immigration officers to continue to consider age when determining a person’s eligibility to enter and remain in the UK. For example, it would permit the continuation of the youth mobility scheme, which allows young people aged 18 to 30 to come to the UK for a limited period to experience life here and perhaps earn some money.
Article 3 allows financial service providers, such as banks and insurance companies, to continue to use age to determine, for example, the products and prices that they offer. Financial service companies need to factor age into their products and prices, because people of different ages carry different risks. The most obvious example is that of insurance. However, the exception is qualified because it requires any risk assessments related to age to be based on relevant information from a source on which it is reasonable for the provider to rely. We know that some older people, in particular, are concerned about access to insurance, so we have also endorsed a voluntary agreement by the insurance industry to improve that. The agreement started on 6 April this year and commits insurance companies to signpost customers to different providers if they cannot provide cover. It also commits the industry to show how it prices products by reference to age.
On concessionary services, Article 4 is probably the widest ranging exception and one particularly welcomed by small business. It allows any service provider to offer a concessionary service based on age: for example, enabling a hairdresser or someone who owns a fish and chip shop to continue to offer discounts for pensioners.
Article 5 is an exception for age-related group holidays. It may be helpful to your Lordships if I touch on our overall approach to applying the prohibition to the holiday sector. We have taken the view that the provision of holiday accommodation, be it a hotel, chalet or rented cottage, should not be treated differently to the provision of other mainstream goods and services such as shops and restaurants. For example, while a hotel or cottage owner could offer discounted rates to pensioners, taking advantage of the exception in Article 4 which I previously described, they could not refuse to let rooms or their property to adults aged under 25 or 21 without showing sufficient reason—for example, evidence that their property had been damaged by younger people in the past. I refer to younger adults because the ban does not protect children, so hotels and restaurants can still lawfully have a “no children” policy from 1 October.
Our proposed treatment of some holidays, as opposed to holiday accommodation, is somewhat different for a particular reason. Rather than applying to holiday providers as a whole, the exception in Article 5 addresses the specific and limited circumstances of package holidays designed for people in certain age groups. In other words, it applies where mixing with people of a similar age is a key element of the product and its enjoyment. For example, when the product includes travel to the holiday destination, accommodation and activities during the vacation, this would qualify as a “relevant holiday service” for the purposes of the exception. Noble Lords may recall that this was an exception called for by several noble Lords in this House during the passage of the Equality Bill in 2009 and we have been convinced by those arguments.
Article 6 covers age verification schemes, which are used by retailers selling age-restricted products when they challenge customers where there is a doubt that they are not old enough to purchase the product. The exception allows this to continue so that retailers can, for example, ask for proof of age before selling products such as alcohol or cigarettes. This new exception was added following the last consultation.
Article 7 covers residential mobile homes in which people live as their main residence, but not holiday lets. This exception recognises that there is an important quality of life issue for people who want to live among others of a similar age group in contrast to the transient nature of holidays. It accordingly allows operators of residential park home sites to continue to include age limits in their park admission rules and other arrangements in respect of the sale and occupation of pitches and mobile homes.
Article 8 inserts a new exception into Schedule 16 to the Equality Act allowing, for example, golf clubs to offer concessions to members above or below a certain age or based on length of membership. Article 9 permits the use of age restrictions in sport, where many events are classified according to age bands at local, regional, national and international level. It obviously makes sense to allow such age banding to continue.
As well as the specific exceptions in this order, the Equality Act contains a statutory authority exception, which allows differential treatment based on age where this is required or allowed by statute. For example, exceptions to charges for prescriptions and eyesight tests based on age are provided for in legislation, as is the age of entitlement for the state pension and things such as free bus passes.
Exceptions are not the only means available to service providers wishing or needing to treat customers differently on the basis of age. Under the Act, it will be possible for service providers to justify treatment that would otherwise amount to direct or indirect age discrimination. They can discriminate where they can show that it is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. That is the legal wording but, less formally, this test is known as objective justification.
I gave an example earlier of a holiday cottage owner not wishing to rent to very young adults because their cottage had been damaged by such people in the past. Another example of objective justification might be a car rental company that has had several of its cars written off by drivers aged under 25 or over 75. It could decide not to rent cars to people in those age groups or perhaps to charge them a little more. It could seek to justify that by pointing to the need to reduce road accidents generally and particularly those caused by its clients. It might also, for example, argue that it needed to run its business efficiently. Whatever case the company might make, it would need to demonstrate how the remedy adopted was proportionate to the aim. If someone then took the company to court for not renting them a vehicle or offering them a vehicle on less favourable terms, the court would have to decide whether the company’s actions were legitimate in all the circumstances.
There is widespread acknowledgement that we need to do more to address the growing evidence of poor or inferior treatment of older citizens by the health service and in social care. That is not of course to say that all who work in these sectors are discriminating in this way, but a series of recent reports have exposed existing shortcomings. Therefore, there are no specific exceptions from age discrimination for health or social care.
The ban is not the whole answer. The NHS and the social care sector are making great strides to improve the experience of older customers, in particular, but where things continue to go wrong the ban will provide a valuable new means of redress for patients. Therefore, whenever different treatment is proposed or provided for patients because of their age, the health or care provider will have to objectively justify it, if challenged. I believe that this meets our intention to eliminate harmful age discrimination in an area where the greatest concern has been expressed. At the same time, we are preserving the ability to use age factors where it is right to do so; for example, in targeting cancer screening on the age groups most at risk.
This legislation is targeted, fair and proportionate. We have consulted extensively on it. The vast majority of businesses and organisations will be able to continue to operate as usual, and certain areas will be exempt from the ban altogether. The new law prohibits only harmful or unjustifiable treatment that results in genuinely unfair discrimination because of age. It will not outlaw the many instances of different treatment that are either justifiable or do not give rise to harm. I commend the order to the Committee.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their warm welcome to the order and for giving it reasonably easy travel. However, a number of points have been raised so I will deal with those first. If I do not manage to satisfy noble Lords today, I will undertake to write a fuller response and get a copy placed in the Library.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked how the Government were preparing service providers for implementing this order from October. There is going to be tailored guidance, which is prepared by the Home Office and the GEO, and we hope that it will be published within the next week or so. It will be tailored to specific sectors. The Department of Health will be providing its own guidance to the health service and to its employees, and Her Majesty’s Treasury will issue guidance related to the financial services sector.
The noble Baroness asked about dual discrimination and other delays. At this moment, we do not have plans to implement dual discrimination. This position, and its feasibility and potential burden on businesses, has been and is being reviewed in the course of our Red Tape Challenge initiative. GEO will be leading on this implementation plan, so we will be the lead within the Government taking this forward.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked if the EHRC had concerns about Article 4 on concessions. We do not believe so. We have simplified the exception, but on the basis that it would not undermine access to the service for age groups not the subject of a concession. We consider it highly unlikely that providers would introduce a warped pricing system just to exclude a particular group. After all, shops, cafes and places like that are there to maximise their take on monetary value and are hardly likely to deprive themselves of valuable customers in that way. She also asked whether we had discussed Article 4 with the EHRC and my noble friend Lady Hussein-Ece clarified that position—yes, we did. We have had discussions on the consultation with the commission throughout, as with other groups. We have not had any recent discussions with it but we have not been made aware of any opposition that it may have to the order.
My noble friend raised the point that the financial services exemption was too broad. I suspect that my response is not going to satisfy her on the question of credit cards, and we may have to come back with a bit more detail on that one. However, in most cases the problem is not that people cannot access insurance; it is that they do not always have the information about other alternatives. That is why the insurance industry has entered into an agreement with the Government to improve signposting and transparency to ensure that no one is left without access to an insurance service. However, they need to comply with responsible lending practices as well. Their entire business or individual services may be part of the market in which they have particular expertise. The example that comes to mind straightaway is Saga.
On the whole, the order covers most of the concerns raised by noble Lords. We agree on principle that older people—indeed, people of all ages—have to be treated fairly and that there should be no deviation from that principle. Equally, however, we know that we want some preferential treatments, such as free bus passes and discounts for older people, to continue. On that basis, we are confident that the combination of these exceptions and the discrimination ban will keep a balanced approach in what the Government are trying to do.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Verma Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
My Lords, in the traditional manner, I remind noble Lords that this is a timed debate and that except for the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and my noble friend, all speeches are limited to 12 minutes. When the clock shows 12, time is up.
Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2012
Baroness Verma Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2012.
Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.
Baroness Verma
The Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2012 amend the Local Authorities (Mayoral Elections) (England and Wales) Regulations 2007, which I will refer to as “the 2007 regulations”, to provide for a revised set of statutory forms and notices to be used by returning officers for the conduct of mayoral elections in England and Wales. The updated forms and notices reflect the Government’s commitment to improving the quality and design of voter-facing materials, with the aim of assisting voters to effectively engage and avoid errors in the completion and casting of their ballots.
The key reason for making the changes now is to ensure that the forms and notices for mayoral elections are consistent with the ones that the Home Office developed for the first elections for police and crime commissioners that will take place on 15 November this year. The voter-facing forms and notices that the Home Office has developed and user-tested for use at these new elections are different in design and content from the forms and notices specified in legislation governing the conduct of other elections, and are intended to be clearer and more accessible to voters.
As a mayoral election is scheduled to be combined with a PCC election in Bristol on 15 November, these regulations will amend the 2007 regulations to ensure that the forms and notices are consistent with those set out in the draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections Order 2012, which was debated in another place on 26 June. The need for consistency is particularly important here, due to both mayoral and PCC elections being run under the same supplementary vote system.
The Committee may be interested to know that, in common with other legislation governing the conduct of elections, two sets of forms and notices are prescribed in the 2007 regulations: one set to be used when a poll at a mayoral election is taken alone and another to be used when a mayoral election is taken in combination with another poll. Schedule 1 of the regulations before us contains new forms and notices for stand-alone mayoral elections, and Schedule 3 deals with the materials that should be used when a mayoral election is combined with a police and crime commissioner election.
The changes that we have made to the election materials for the mayoral elections are supported by and consistent with recommendations that have been made by the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and Scope. Further, we acknowledge the work undertaken by the commission in producing and undertaking valuable user testing on the statutory voter-facing material for last year’s referendum on the voting system, and we believe that it is important to keep up the momentum in improving standards in this area.
The first steps that we have taken to achieve this have been to develop the electoral materials for the PCC elections and to revise the forms and notices for mayoral elections. We will continue this work by looking at the statutory voter-facing material in respect of other scheduled elections and will continue to work with the Electoral Commission, electoral administrators and other stakeholders, such as those representing disabled people, in taking this work forward.
While the main purpose of the regulations is to amend the mayoral forms, we have taken the opportunity to rectify textual errors which have been identified in the 2007 regulations. Rule 5(3) of Schedule 1 and Rule 5(3) of Schedule 3 to the 2007 regulations are concerned with the deadlines for applications to vote by post and proxy which must be included in the published notice of election. Currently these rules make reference to the returning officer when voting registration is, of course, a matter for the registration officer, so we are amending these rules accordingly.
In conclusion, these regulations represent a small but none the less important step in improving the experience of the elector by providing for forms and notices that are up-to-date, clear and easier to use than those prescribed in current legislation. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I thank the Minister for introducing this draft statutory instrument. Of course, these forms are essentially just for the lucky people of Bristol who on 15 November will have the chance to make themselves more like a US town with a vote for the head of the police and the local town sheriff—sorry, mayor. And apologies to the city of Bristol—and it is the city of Bristol, which I fondly remember from my schooldays there at Downend Infants. However, it will be a first in our country, with an elected mayor and a police commissioner—who we must hope will get on rather better than some other cases closer to my current home—to be selected by the good citizens of Bristol on the same day. Our rather strange UK set-up means that the mayoral elections are the purview of one department, the DCLG, and the police commissioners of another, the Home Office, with the Minister’s department holding the ring and seeking to ensure some consistency. We are delighted that she and her colleagues have done as well as they have in producing this statutory instrument, but I have a few questions and a couple of comments.
First, I note that Scope and the electoral administration officers have quite rightly been consulted and involved in the design of the forms but there is no mention of political parties. Given their extraordinary experience and expertise in this area, why have they not been asked for any input? Like other party activists, I have helped umpteen people fill in forms for proxy and postal voting, guided people into polling stations and chatted endlessly, especially on quiet election days that I rather fear 15 November will be, to both voters and fellow tellers from the other parties about the whole business of voting. As I am sure she knows it is the one day we all get on well together. It seems a real shame if none of us—as the real activists who know the use of these forms really well—has been involved. I am sure that some of these people would have commented on the contrast between the extremely clear ballot papers on pages 3 and 4 and excellent directions for the guidance of voters on page 11 and the horribly confusing postal voting statement on page 8, to say nothing of the type size—which is too small for my 62 year-old eyes, so I am sure that it will beat those of an 82 year-old. So my question is: are party activists and agents at all involved in the design process?
Secondly, why are there two such different systems for getting candidate information out to voters when the aim appears to be, particularly in Bristol, to make this one seamless election day? Information on the police chief candidates will be on the web but information on the mayoral candidates will be in leaflets distributed to the electorate. Does this reflect the Government's lack of interest in the election of police commissioners or their lack of concern about those without access to the internet? Even if people have access to the internet, they often do not have access to a printer to be able to print off such documents to look at them at home or with colleagues or family. For the very first of these elections in particular, have the Government so little interest in ensuring real community engagement? The issue was of such importance to the coalition that it three-line whipped it through Parliament. Given the importance of policing to the elderly, the disadvantaged and the young, is this really the best way of promoting interest?
Thirdly, as well as being a new voting system, it is an election for two new posts. Is the Minister confident that everyone eligible to vote will both know about the elections and what the two new postholders will do and be clear about the choices that will face them as they enter the polling booth?
Those are my three questions. I turn to my comments, to which the Minister may not wish to respond. First, I wonder whether the case for a threshold in these elections should be considered. What if turnout for the police commissioner elections was only 8%, or that for a mayoral election was as low? Is there a level at which the Government should ask whether this is really more representative and accountable than what went before? Secondly—the Minister will be used to my counting by now—I assume that the Minister’s department has now stood down its work on equivalent forms for the election of Senators in May 2015.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, for her words in support of the regulations. Like her, I have spent many elections as a teller and in weathers of all sorts. Perhaps I may first put her mind at ease on the question of information on PCC elections being available only on the web. I reassure her that such information will be available and not only on the web. Voters will be able to access hard copies if they so wish by calling a freephone number. People who find using internet services difficult will be able to utilise that.
The noble Baroness asked why booklets would be available for mayoral elections. PCC elections will be nationwide, whereas, in this instance, the mayoral election will be in only one place. The Electoral Commission will make sure that an effective campaign is conducted so that voters are fully informed about elections in their areas.
The noble Baroness raised quite a complex issue in relation to postal voting. If she will allow, I would rather take that question away and perhaps give her a more in-depth response in due course. A number of questions will need to be asked of postal voters which are perhaps better set out in a written response.
The noble Baroness asked about turnout. Of the 1 million people who responded in referendums on mayoral elections, nearly 430,000 said that they wanted a mayor. On the basis of those numbers, I think that there is an appetite. If the people of Bristol have decided that they want a mayor, it is likely that they will turn out to vote. The reason for making the ballot papers similar is to remove confusion, because it will be the first time that supplementary voting takes place. As a Government we have tried to make this task as easy as we can—I know that the noble Baroness accepts and acknowledges that—to ensure that the voter has the information at hand.
The noble Baroness asked about the consultation with political parties. We consulted actively with the Electoral Commission and others on voter-facing forms. I suspect that that would have been undertaken across a lot of people although not aimed specifically at political parties. We note the value of that for the future, in the light of the comment made in the Chamber earlier. Of course it does not prevent us looking at how these elections fulfil the obligations to ensure that we have greater participation by the voter, and there will always be lessons to be learnt.
On that note, I am pleased that the noble Baroness supports the regulations. If I have not answered her questions, I hope that she will allow me the opportunity to write to her.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Perhaps I may ask a question which I should have asked previously. Are these two elections coterminous? Is the election for the PCC in Bristol exactly the same as the one for the mayor? My only other comment is to ask whether she would take back the idea of early engagement with political parties. Sometimes there is a reluctance, even in the Electoral Commission, to understand the role that political parties play in the democratic process. That is more a message for the noble Baroness to take back than a question for her to answer now.
Baroness Verma
The answer to the noble Baroness’s first question is yes. Of course, as with all things, it is always best to review things after the event.
Equality Act 2010 (Age Exceptions) Order 2012
Baroness Verma Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Horses: Transportation
Baroness Verma Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Mallalieu
My Lords, I first declare a personal interest as the president of the Horse Trust and the chairman of the All-Party Group for the Horse. I am also a member of the Humane Slaughter Association. Secondly, and most importantly, I thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, on securing this debate which is particularly timely in relation to the Commission, for reasons I will come to.
At the age of 11, I came across a leaflet written by Ada Cole, the remarkable woman who founded the charity which is now called World Horse Welfare. It was about the export of live horses from Ireland, taken by sea for slaughter on the continent. There was one photograph which I can still remember in every detail. It was of a carthorse with a kind eye and a crooked white blaze, barely able to lift its head from the position in which it had collapsed on the dockside in Antwerp. It looked totally exhausted and a picture of misery. After, no doubt, a lifetime of work, its last days should not have been spent at sea in terrible conditions. The caption beneath that picture, which I have never forgotten to this day read, “A victim of man’s greed”.
That terrible trade in old and unwanted horses from Ireland to France and Belgium by sea has gone. It was killed, in part, by public outcry when, on one occasion, some 12 dead horses, which had collapsed during the journey and been thrown overboard, were washed up on a genteel English seaside beach. The fact remains that, after 50 years of so-called progress, some 65,000 horses still make long, gruelling and almost wholly unnecessary journeys to their death within the European Union each year, with the sanction of the Commission which is frightened of restraining trade. About 15 years ago, we had a debate on this subject and I can still remember one speech from that evening. It was made by Lord Slynn of Hadley, no longer with us, who described his own experience of stopping at a continental motorway service station and looking through the vents of a huge lorry standing in the car park. It was crammed with horses, some visibly injured, all utterly exhausted, standing in total silence. They had, he found, been on the lorry like that for two days and had two more to go before arriving at their eventual destination for slaughter in southern Italy.
There has been progress, but it has been painfully slow and inadequate to prevent what is a wholly unnecessary suffering. I have recently visited Transylvania—part of Romania—where tractors are still a rarity and the work is done, as it was 150 years ago, by horse-drawn vehicles. The population of working horses in eastern Europe is still huge yet, despite the fact that no horse there is more than 12 hours from an abattoir in which it could end its days after its working life finishes, many will instead make a journey of two to four days to Italy and Spain in vehicles which are, as the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, said, far removed from the sleek racehorse transporters which we see on our motorways. Those horses are overcrowded, sometimes quite unfit to travel and with wholly inadequate checks made to monitor journey times and rest periods or on whether water is actually provided. Ironically, the comparative cost of slaughter near the point of origin and refrigerated transported is, I am told, very little different from the cost of transporting these animals across a continent in these conditions. The majority of the meat is processed in any event, so arguments about consumers demanding fresh meat are largely irrelevant. In reality, the trade continues in this way because that is how it has been historically and because the Commission lacks the willpower to deal with it.
I cannot help but feel that, if the public in Spain and Italy had the same degree of awareness of what is involved as people in this country, 1 million of whom signed a petition to limit journey times, then demand would drop. This would bring changes more quickly than anything else. There is still no overall limit on the duration of those journeys, despite the recommendation of the European Food Safety Authority, whose research has shown that above all other species—and there are differences between species—horses suffer severe welfare problems in journeys over that time. Our MEPs have shown their support, the European Parliament has supported the change, yet still—and inexplicably—the Commission so far prefers to go down the line of guidance and enforcement of existing regulations, which are currently not adequately enforced.
We are moving into the Cypriot presidency, during which, I suspect, this issue will have very little priority. However, I understand that Ireland takes over immediately after that and I very much hope we will then see adopted the proposal to reduce the journey time for horses to 12 hours, at the very longest. I hope that the Minister can assure us that pressure will be stepped up. I should like to pay tribute to the Minister, Jim Paice, who on 15 June released an intervention calling for the introduction of that limit, as recommended by the EFSA, and it was accepted by the Council of Europe.
The long journeys from eastern to southern Europe are not, however, the only disturbing feature of what is going in relation to horse transport in Europe. For different reasons, we should all be concerned about the shipments of surplus horses, mostly of very low value, currently taking place between Ireland, France and the United Kingdom. During last year, the provision of abattoirs in Northern Ireland was insufficient to meet the demand for the slaughter of unwanted horses that were, having been bought by UK meat dealers, sometimes waiting for up to six weeks in unsatisfactory conditions before there was the capacity to ship them to England for slaughter. The Horse Trust and other charities did what they could to assist the very limited provision of equine welfare over there, but the volume of abandoned and malnourished welfare cases, which is a combination of the recession and chronic overbreeding, means that humane slaughter on the spot was often the only option.
Low-value horses come every week to the UK from Ireland and France, and go out again. They are not routinely checked at ports of entry and, on occasions, are unfit to travel, or they introduce disease, as the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, pointed out. What on earth was the horse that brought the disease coming here from Romania for? Given that African horse sickness is knocking on our door—with its potentially disastrous consequences for our £3.8 billion equine industry, should it reach us—it is a state of affairs that should worry us all, and every Government.
What this international trade is all about is unclear. There are meat dealers in this country who own literally hundreds of horses of little value, and many of those horses were in a very poor state last winter. It is on a scale that has the equine charities and local authorities that have to deal with the consequences of abandoned horses, fly grazing, welfare cases and escapees, tearing their hair out. These dealers treat the horses as commodities to be sold on, if and when there is a market, but most are poor specimens of little value and no use, save perhaps for meat at some future point. They are the result of indiscriminate breeding, both here and in Ireland. In time of economic difficulty, the numbers are such that all the rescue organisations put together could not begin to take even the worst cases. I have heard reports of local authorities and, indeed, major charities considering that their budgets would not stretch to prosecuting even the worst offenders.
Somehow, people have to be educated, here and in Ireland, not to breed horses unless they have a job for them—and then only to breed from the best—and when they reach the end of the road to do the right thing and put them down at home, not sell them on to the dealer who promises to find a good retirement home. These are the horses that end up on a transporter, being shipped hither and thither to an uncertain end.
What needs to be done right now? The Commission needs to pressed, as it already has been by our Ministers, and pressed and pressed again, until it implements the 12-hour limit. Better guidance and inspections en route, which have been accepted by the Commission, must be implemented. Consumers must be told how the meat has reached their plates in Italy, Spain and parts of France. That is something that I understand World Horse Welfare proposes to do. Horses should bee seen and treated as sentient beings, not mere market commodities. If they are to be eaten at the end, so be it; but it is surely our duty to ensure that in life they are treated with respect and consideration, as should be all our food animals. Despite all the advances and all the talk over the course of my lifetime, too many horses remain the victims of man’s greed.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate and when the clock shows “10”, the 10 minutes are up.