Environment Bill

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 28th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

The Government have been involved in planting about 15 million trees, but we are determined to expand the programme because trees are crucial storage mechanisms for carbon and we will never get to net zero unless we plant a lot more.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

My constituents, who, like me, care about nature, are absolutely delighted with the Bill. I am thrilled to be able to support it, particularly for rural communities blighted by fly-tipping. However, will my right hon. Friend watch out for the water abstraction element? It seems uncharacteristically mean.

[Theresa Villiers]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his praise for the determination expressed in the Bill to protect nature and reverse the decline in biodiversity. We will listen carefully to his concerns and those of his constituents with regard to water abstraction to ensure that the Bill’s provisions are implemented in a way that is sensible, proportionate and fair.

TB in Cattle and Badgers

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ruth George]

Absolutely. That is a very sensible approach. It is costly, but so is culling badgers, which does not have a proven effect.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

We have heard the number of badgers that have been culled. What estimate has the hon. Lady made of the number of healthy badgers that are protected by the vaccination programme in her edge area?

[Ruth George]

The Derbyshire Wildlife Trust has vaccinated 192 badgers this year as part of its five-year programme, which covers an area of around 120 sq km, so healthy badgers are being protected by that vaccination programme. Just as the debate last November preceded the publication of the Godfray report, I hope this debate may be a prelude to the Government’s long-overdue response to that report.

We must focus on farmers. I pay tribute to the farmers in my constituency, many of whom I know personally, and across the country. For them, farming is not just a job but a way of life. They work very long hours in all weathers, caring for their animals—their livestock—and producing food for us. Farmers, possibly more than any other business, are at the mercy of events: of weather, prices, policy and disease. It can seem that they have very little control over the factors that influence their business.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George]

I will have to make some progress, as there are several more speakers to come in. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have a chance to make his point later.

It is acknowledged that the pattern of livestock markets facilitates the flow of cattle in Derbyshire from the high-risk area to the edge area and that the major risk to other edge areas adjacent to Derbyshire—Cheshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicester—is mostly via cattle movements. When we say we must look at all the reasons why cattle are contracting bovine tuberculosis, we must look at cattle movement and infection in a herd.

The size of the herd was also a major factor. Herds of under 50, which account for about half of all cattle herds in Derbyshire, had only a 3% risk of contracting bovine tuberculosis. That rose to 27% in herds of 200 to 350, and to 38% in the largest herds of 500-plus. It seems very odd that badgers would discriminate between small herds of cattle and large herds.

[Bill Wiggin]

Will the hon. Lady give way? I will explain why.

[Ruth George]

If the hon. Gentleman can make a short point on that.

[Bill Wiggin]

The smaller herds are beef suckler herds and the larger herds are dairy herds. The cows also live longer in a dairy herd.

[Ruth George]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I have beef suckler herds and dairy herds, and they both have plentiful badgers in the area.

Professor Sir Charles Godfray looked at all the evidence when he chaired a review of the Government’s 25-year TB eradication policy—a sensible measure to ensure that the strategy was on course. Sir Charles reported in November last year. His report emphasises the importance of improving testing and recommends the more sensitive test for high-risk and edge areas; biosecurity measures on farms to prevent contagion among animals with endemic disease; and reducing risk-based trading, because cattle movements, which increase risk, are comparatively high in the UK.

Professor Godfray states that the presence of infected badgers poses a threat to cattle herds, but he also acknowledges evidence of the perturbation effect from culling, and the impact on adjacent areas when badgers move further as territory becomes available and they become disturbed from their setts. The report states clearly that TB control efforts have focused too heavily on managing badgers, when most transmission occurs cattle to cattle. He therefore states that moving from lethal to non-lethal control of the disease in badgers would be highly desirable—something we would all agree with.

Culling is expensive—it costs more than £5,000 per badger, compared with less than £700 per badger vaccinated. It also involves trapping badgers at night and shooting them with a high-powered rifle. In 2013, the Government’s independent expert panel stated that at least 7% of badgers were killed inhumanely and took more than five minutes to die. That panel was disbanded in 2014, but its former chair, Professor Munro, and 19 other vets, scientists and animal welfare campaigners wrote to Natural England last month to say that of the 40,000 badgers culled before this year, a minimum of 3,000, and as many as 9,000, would have suffered immense pain from that process. The same proportion of the 63,000 badgers licensed for slaughter this year would equate to between 5,000 and 15,000 badgers suffering. I have been out with Derbyshire Wildlife Trust and seen the badgers in the traps, full after a night of gorging on peanuts and usually fast asleep and ready to be vaccinated. It is very hard to think of someone shooting them instead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

This is not a debate about wildlife lover against farmer; it is about healthy badgers being protected from a vicious and unpleasant infectious disease. It is all about stopping our healthy badger population dying from what used to be called consumption.

The genie is out of the bottle. The figures that my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) just gave show a 66% decline in TB in areas that were culled in Gloucestershire. We can never again expect a cattle farmer in this country to accept that culling does not work. It is proven to work, based on the science brought about in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by the meddlesome right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) when he was Secretary of State.

The story of TB in cattle is one of delay. The chief vet stopped the culling in the 1950s, and then TB took a grip. We must not stop the scientifically-based cull that we have going on today in areas of high infection. To do so will be to create illegal culling. We all know that the problem with badgers is the perturbation effect; the minute we have a perturbation effect, we will have a terrible spread of the disease, so the culls we have at the moment must continue. They are working, and the science that they are generating is critical to the progress we need to make in stopping this disease, which of course can infect people as well.

I have heard that there is now a new mustelid vaccine—it is being tested on ferrets, because testing is not allowed on badgers—that is more effective than Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, or BCG. There are new tests that show a variety of reactions in cattle, so that we do not need just one indicator. They may show eight different types of reaction to Mycobacterium bovis, so we will not have the number of false positives or false negatives that have plagued the skin test. There is tremendous science coming along. The OIE—the World Organisation for Animal Health—is approving some of the tests. We have had a new test for camelids.

My question to DEFRA is this: “What are you doing to ensure that this new science can be brought in? We are still in the European Union. We need these tests approved so that we are internationally compliant in our fight against TB. We must ensure that sufficient funds go into that research. We need you to keep going on the science that you are currently applying, because not only is it working, but it is bringing results home to farmers in my constituency who love their cattle.” More than that, they love badgers too. Once we have beaten this disease, we will know that the whole UK badger population is secure, safe and likely to continue to provide the entertainment that people get when they see them.

However, people such as me who love their cattle want to know that they are safe from this horrible disease—not least because of the risk to farmers when they are testing and testing and testing. No cow likes to be jabbed twice in the neck, and they react dangerously when they are continually tested. For me, the worst thing that can happen is an outbreak—not just because I lose my animals, but because of the risk to my family when we have to perform those compulsory tests to go clear. I say to the Government, “Please do all you can.”

Trophy Hunting Imports

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr Cameron]

As the hon. Gentleman may be aware, DFID has a presence in my constituency, and I am so very proud of the work that it does to eradicate poverty the world over. I believe that conservation is commensurate with the sustainable development goals, because it is not only about animal welfare; it is about helping the communities located where those endangered species are. It is about making sure that those communities have another source of income; that people and animals can cohabit. We must do everything possible on both issues, and I will be interested to hear from the Minister how the two can be married together. We must ensure that aid goes to the poorest and that no one is left behind. I have a particular passion for helping disabled children into school in developing countries, but I do not see a contradiction in helping the poorest communities and working on conservation and, in the main, I do not believe that colleagues across the House would either.

In November 2018 the Minister lodged early-day motion 1829, which was signed by 166 MPs cross-party, including myself. It asked the Government to commit to halting imports of hunting trophies as a matter of urgency. I am very pleased that the Minister is in his place today, and not just because of that issue. He also did a lot of cross-party work with the all-party parliamentary dog advisory welfare group on Lucy’s law, which will now become law not just in England, but in Wales and Scotland. We are extremely pleased about that.

As has been said, 86% of the public support a ban on trophy hunting. I pay tribute to the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, Born Free and Stop Ivory for placing these issues at the forefront of our minds, so that we can see what is happening. I had a look at the statistics. Although progress is being made on elephant populations and larger cat populations—not enough, but some progress—people are now reverting to hunting bears, cranes, antelopes, rhinoceroses and, would you believe it, crocodiles. Perhaps they have watched too many “Crocodile Dundee” films. Other species are up 29.2% as well; I am not sure what species those are, and it would be interesting to find out more, particularly whether any of those species are at risk.

Many trophy hunters use the rationale that they kill the old, the weak or the sick, and that they are therefore helping conservation. That is rarely proven by the egotistical photographs that are put up online, with the hunter standing next to the biggest, the rarest and the largest animals with the biggest horns. It is much more about ego than any effort towards conservation.

A current loophole allows hunters from the UK to import trophies of animals, many so rare that they have been declared extinct in the wild. For example, puffins are often hunted and the trophies brought to the UK, despite the UK Government’s efforts to save the species. Online websites are easily found offering these grisly puffin hunters trips costing around £3,000 to Iceland, where they have the chance to kill a bag of puffins and can boast of shooting up to 100 at a time. The species is classified as endangered in the 2018 “State of the World’s Birds” report, but is not listed for protection by CITES, the body that regulates the international animal trade. British people are bringing home puffin carcases in their hundreds and the puffin is at risk of becoming extinct, with uncontrolled hunting a leading cause.

I was proud to lead for the Scottish National party on the Bill that became the Ivory Act 2018. As a party, we welcome that historic legislation and the UK Government’s progress on tackling the illegal ivory trade and trophy hunting. Organised crime is often behind the individuals involved in that trade, as it offers big money, so we need to tackle it at the root. I was pleased—actually, emotionally quite overcome—to visit Sheldrick Wildlife Trust the day before the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire, I believe, with the International Development Committee. We were able to spend time with orphaned elephants there. Now, I have quite short legs, but the little elephants only came up to my waist, which shows how small they were. Some, only a few days or a few weeks old, were being bottle-fed, because the hunters were after their parents and left the little baby elephants behind, unable to survive on their own. This fantastic project goes out and saves them from otherwise certain death in the wild, but still, they will not have had the life they should have had. They should live with their herd, not be raised in those circumstances.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I missed the beginning of the hon. Lady’s account. Could she clarify whether the victims—the parents of those elephants—were poached or hunted for trophies? There is a huge difference.

[Dr Cameron]

I did not get the details of what had happened to all the parents. I imagine it was a mixture of the two, but mainly poaching, because organised crime is behind a lot of that activity. However, trophy hunting does not help when saving the species.

I believe that the Department for International Development could support this work, and there is no contradiction in that. It would help some of the most rural and impoverished communities. I would like some money to go toward training local people as wardens, giving them the opportunity of jobs and livelihoods. Finally, will the Minister reinforce and re-endorse his own early-day motion calling for a ban on trophy hunting imports as a matter of urgency?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Zac Goldsmith)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) on securing this debate. Over the past years we have stood side by side in so many debates on issues relevant to this one that I have lost track of how many we have shared. She has been a nature champion for all the time I have known her—indeed, this room is full of nature champions, and I wish there were a few more. It has been a joy to hear the contributions, including interventions, from all Members present.

My hon. Friend will know that this subject is close to my heart. Indeed, the last time I took part in a debate on this issue in Parliament—I believe she also took part—was on a motion tabled in my name, some time earlier this year. Last Saturday I was pleased to announce that the Government are launching a consultation on restricting, or banning, the import and export of hunting trophies.

Many questions have been raised, some of which I will struggle to answer because they relate to the details of the consultation. Hon. Members will understand that I must be slightly guarded and cannot go into too many details about a Government consultation, because I could end up jeopardising or compromising the process. Broadly speaking, however, we are not looking for any long grass. This is a serious consultation, and we intend to resolve the issue once and for all and not to waste any time. I will drive it through as fast as I possibly can, but in a proper manner.

I cannot answer the question about the threshold, were we to end up with the ban that we are talking about. My early-day motion broadly reflects the position laid out by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), which relates to not just CITES I and II, but the list from the International Union for Conservation of Nature. However, those details will have to come out in the consultation, and it would be wrong for me to pre-empt it.

I am grateful for and flattered by the remarks made about my appointment. I am an animal welfare and conservation advocate, and I was worried, before being asked to be a Minister, that I might have to go through a lobotomy and cast aside all my passions for such issues. That does not seem to have been the case—yet—so I am able to pursue issues that matter to me and to Members across the House. Over the next few weeks, I look forward to reading the feedback on this debate from people across the spectrum, but I know from correspondence I have already seen that some people will push back heavily against the proposal for a possible ban.

On a personal level, hon. Members know I believe that shooting a beautiful and endangered animal for fun is, to quote the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), obscene, and it is something I could never understand. Most people with whom I have discussed the issue are similarly sickened when they see images of so-called celebrity hunters smirking over the corpse of a lion, giraffe, rhino or elephant. It is something that most people regard as grotesque, and poll after poll shows that to be the view of the British people. There have been a range of polls, but they have consistently shown that between 75% and 90% of people are in favour of a ban on imports of hunting trophies.

To demonstrate quite how non-partisan this issue is, I was shocked and amazed last Saturday to read an editorial in the Daily Mirror—I have appeared in it a few times as a politician, and I have always put on my tin hat and hidden away for a few hours afterwards. This recent editorial, however, praised both me and the Conservative Government for initiating this process, because the issue goes way beyond the left or right of politics today. I thank the Daily Mirror for having pushed the issue up the agenda. It has run an incredibly impressive campaign, as have The Daily Telegraph and a number of key campaigners, such as Eduardo Gonçalves, who runs the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting.

Trophy hunting is not just a niche issue or a symbolic part of the conservation story. A 2016 report by the International Fund for Animal Welfare estimates that around 1.7 million hunting trophies crossed borders globally between 2004 and 2014, and at least 200,000 of those came from species that are threatened. Some of those species face a horribly uncertain future, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire in relation to lion numbers. There could be only 15,000 lions, 415,000 African elephants—there were 3 million elephants a century ago—and 5,000 black rhinos left in the wild.

As I said from the Back Benches a few months ago, we must nevertheless separate the moral arguments from the scientific ones. The moral arguments do matter, and for many people the idea of shooting a giraffe for fun or with the idea that it might help protect the giraffe seems utterly perverse, but the issue is subject to a live debate between experts and even some conservation organisations.

[Bill Wiggin]

Many people who live in the Forest of Dean wake up in the morning to find that wild boar have completely destroyed their garden, and they then ring the Forestry Commission—in the Minister’s Department—which culls those animals. Is that right?

[Zac Goldsmith]

It is certainly right that wild boar are culled. There is a live discussion about whether there should be a protected season for wild boar, given that they are now prevalent throughout the country. I am not sure that my hon. Friend’s point is directly relevant to the issue of the positive contribution of trophy hunting to either the conservation or the denudation of wild species.

[Bill Wiggin]

It is very easy to attach a huge amount of emotion to animals that are attractive and beautiful, as the Minister described, but they are still managed, and the ability to manage populations is the difficult part. The Government have to take responsibility. I felt he was perhaps straying into pretending that it does not happen.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend pre-empts the point I was about to make. We have to separate the ethical arguments from the scientific ones. If the scientific evidence can show that trophy hunting contributes to conservation, we will be having a different debate. Although I cannot pre-empt the consultation, we will be flooded with evidence that will tell us one way or the other. I acknowledge that some conservation groups make the case for trophy hunting. I have seen the documents and been bombarded with letters, as we will no doubt be throughout the consultation. Some of the arguments that I have heard are—I think this term entered the English dictionary only recently—whataboutery. A number of different organisations tell us that trophy hunting is an issue but that it is not as bad as habitat loss or illegal poaching. Obviously, habitat loss is the big problem facing species across the world, and we have heard about the illegal wildlife trade decimating communities and bringing species to the brink of extinction, but whether or not that is true, it is not an argument for or against trophy hunting. It is an entirely separate issue.

The central argument that has been put forward in favour of trophy hunting is that these magnificent animals, through being hunted, generate money that is then ploughed into conservation. I have not seen much evidence of the funds being used to support local communities or to invest in conservation. It is not much use if the main argument of the conservation groups is based on generalising the best of the best practice—no doubt there are some best practice examples—throughout the world; if so, their argument is flimsy at best. We will see during the consultation whether there are more examples of best practice than perhaps I have implied.

There are other issues to examine. Unlike wildlife tourism, trophy hunting contributes a tiny proportion of revenue for African countries. There is a question whether we should instead focus our efforts on promoting the former. I will come to that point in answer to another question, which was raised by the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron). There is also the issue of cruelty, with reports that half the animals killed in the course of trophy hunting are not killed instantaneously but are wounded. Cecil the lion lived for another 19 hours, I believe—no doubt in hideous pain—after first being shot.

We must find out the impact of trophy hunting on the gene pool. If hunters prize the biggest and the best of the rarest, the most endangered and the most valuable species, does that not logically mean that the gene pool is inevitably going to be weakened over time? These are issues that, again, we are going to have to address.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire mentioned the issue of canned hunting. I forget which hon. Member described it as an obscenity, but it is. As far as I can see, these lions are bred for one purpose only and they are shot in such a manner that anyone would be able to finish them off, no matter how talented they are with a gun. It is no different from putting goldfish in a bowl and just shooting them. It is an extraordinarily grim practice. In answer to my hon. Friend’s question about whether the consultation will include measures to tackle canned hunting, I would say that it is one and the same. That will be explored in the consultation, and I hope the outcome will fully take into account the points she made.

The UK cannot ban trophy hunting overseas. We are not at liberty to do so, but we can ban the import of hunting trophies. Over the five years from 2013 to 2017, we estimate that up to 1,500 trophies were imported into the UK, with up to one third of those from the most endangered species. Perversely, elephant parts are the favourite import for British trophy hunters. I say that is perverse because we are the world leader now in stepping up our efforts to protect elephants around the world, not least through the ivory legislation that has already been commended today and much more besides. This consultation is critical, and it is going to have to provide answers to those very difficult questions.

I want to talk briefly about animal welfare and conservation more broadly. People in this country do care—very much—about the issue. As the animal welfare Minister, I clearly do too. I am proud of the progress this Government have already made. We introduced the ivory legislation I just mentioned. We introduced legislation to ban the use of wild animals in travelling circuses. We have legislated to ensure that CCTV is required in every slaughterhouse. Along with this consultation on the importance of hunting trophies, we are also consulting on mandatory cat microchipping, we are issuing a call for evidence on banning the keeping of pet primates and we are bringing forward proposals for consideration on ending the live export of animals.

I was proud that the UK played a defining role at the recent CITES COP, working under the radar, barely noticed by the rest of the country, to bring an end to the appalling practice of capturing wild elephants to be sold for captivity around the world. Without our negotiating team from DEFRA taking part in that debate, the motion would not have passed and it would still be possible for countries to capture wild elephants and pack them off to grim zoos in China and elsewhere. If they were here, I would pay tribute to them. In their absence, I will do so, all the same.

I am delighted that the Prime Minister announced at the United Nations that we are going to radically step up our contribution to tackling the wider environmental and climate crisis—and it is a crisis, no matter how you choose to interpret it. We know from scientists that a 1.5°˚ C rise in temperatures is going to be utterly devastating to humanity and nature. We heard just a few months ago, in what is the most comprehensive ever assessment of the state of the natural world, the report from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, that 1 million species face extinction, many of them within decades. We have heard that, since 1970, the populations of the world’s wild animals have declined by 60%—a staggering figure. We learned from the World Resources Institute that, last year, we lost the equivalent of 27 football pitches’ worth of forest every single minute. Incidentally, we also learned from the World Economic Forum that, by 2050, our oceans will have more plastic in them than fish, if measured by weight.

We recognise the scale of the challenge. We are determined as a Government to provide the leadership that is needed globally and to do our bit at home. I was at the General Assembly of the United Nations when the Prime Minister made his announcement that we are going to double our climate funding. I was there when he made the important point about the crucial role of biodiversity in nature in tackling climate change. That directly addresses the point raised by a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Strangford, my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) and no doubt others as well. The Prime Minister emphasised that much of that uplift in climate funding will be spent on nature-based solutions to climate change. We know that if we invest in protecting, saving and restoring forests, we protect the livelihoods of those hundreds of millions of people who depend on them for their livelihoods. We protect the harbour for 80% of the world’s biodiversity, and we also tackle climate change, given that deforestation is the second-biggest cause of emissions.

The same is true of our oceans. About 1 billion people depend on oceans for their main source of protein. Some 200 million depend on oceans for their livelihoods and on there being fish for them to catch. However, oceans are also a gigantic carbon sink, so the case for investing in nature-based solutions as a means of tackling climate change and helping to stop the extinction crisis, and also as a means of alleviating and preventing base poverty, is absolute and unarguable. I am thrilled that we are moving in that direction, and I do not sense any opposition from any party in this place to that shift. So that is where we need to go, and that is where I am thrilled to say we are going.

As a start to that package—these are just the things that have been announced in the past few weeks in relation to biodiversity—the Prime Minister announced a new £220 million fund. That includes a dramatic uplift to the Darwin initiative, which I am sure Members are aware of. That world-renowned programme has brought individual species back from the brink of extinction. We will see a major uplift in the illegal wildlife trade challenge fund, which is relatively new, but is already yielding incredible results, particularly on the continent of Africa, but elsewhere as well. It helps train local people to tackle poaching and create alternative livelihoods in areas most at risk, and it is having a significant and measurable impact.

We are creating a new fund. It does not have a proper name yet, but we are calling it the biodiverse landscape fund. It is a £100 million fund—a world first. It will tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss in large biodiversity hotspots around the world, focusing particularly on trans-frontier initiatives such as KAZA in southern Africa, which is a programme that five countries have signed up to to create wildlife corridors connecting their countries, their national parks and more. It is all based on helping local communities to create alternative livelihoods so that the viability of local economies is based and dependent on the health of the local environment and on flourishing biodiversity.

That is just a start. We are doing a lot, and I am thrilled that the UK has been given an opportunity to host the COP in 2020. We keep hearing about 2020 as a superyear for nature. It is absolutely the Government’s ambition to play a part so that 2020 will be the superyear for nature. We will host COP, and by the end of the year, in December, we aim to have aligned as many big countries in the world as possible with our ambition to step up our contribution to tackling climate change, to focus much more on nature-based solutions and to help turn the tide on this catastrophic extinction crisis, which is now beyond any doubt at all—it is happening right now on our watch.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire for bringing attention to this hugely important issue and for all the work she does as a parliamentary nature champion. I thank other hon. Members for their contributions too. We will crack on. We will get this done. We are not looking for the long grass. We will nail this issue as quickly as we possibly can.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

Indeed. The Government published their response to the consultation just the other day, and we have indicated again our support for continuing with the scheme. I know that people are impatient—I am impatient. I have now been to about seven countries to look at their deposit return schemes. It is complex. We have the biggest on-the-go market of any country in Europe, and we need to ensure that we have a system that works, alongside all the other reforms we are making, such as extended producer responsibility and the plastics tax. It is important to ensure that those are co-ordinated and will have the desired effect.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

7. What discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on helping to ensure that everyone has access to (a) safe, (b) healthy and (c) affordable food.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

Ministers and officials regularly discuss all aspects of food security, including accessibility. We have long-established relationships with industry and work collaboratively to ensure that the UK continues to have access to safe, nutritious and affordable food from a wide range of sources, particularly from British farmers. I plan to visit the Game Fair tomorrow, so I will make a plug for British game and the grouse that will be coming into our larders following the glorious twelfth.

[Bill Wiggin]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer, particularly because my newly appointed right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has not had a chance to speak to her Cabinet colleagues. The problem with safe food is that we need to be able to read on the label that it is safe. Natasha Ednan-Laperouse died because she ate food that was contaminated with sesame seeds, but the label did not make that clear. We still have a problem in this country with honesty in labelling. Can more be done, to ensure that the label says what it is?

[Mr Goodwill]

Clear labelling is vital, particularly when it comes to ingredients that may provoke allergic reactions. We have learned a very sad lesson from that situation, and the Government have responded.

--- Later in debate ---

[Theresa Villiers]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, such matters are in the hands of the Leader of the House and the official channels, so he might wish to raise the matter during the business question. I assure him that we wish to press ahead with these matters as soon as we are able to do so. This Government are getting on and delivering on their priorities, including the environment.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

T3. I am grateful for the answer that my right hon. Friend gave earlier. Grass-fed must mean 100% grass-fed, so that people with food allergies, and particularly those with a sensitivity to meat, know what they are buying.

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

My hon. Friend is right: people expect clear, honest labelling on their food, and if marketing terms are not used consistently, the Government should act. Clear labelling is important not just for pasture-fed livestock, but for organic food, which is trusted around that world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake]

I agree with that point. The hon. Gentleman may be aware that a staff team have been set up to look at the issue of independence and are considering the options. They have an independent challenge group, which will look at, for instance, the impact on parliamentary independence, the ability of Members of Parliament to operate, and ensuring that we have a system in which staff will have confidence.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

On that matter, if staff want to be treated as though this is a normal place to work, and therefore to be treated separately from the involvement of Members of Parliament, why not simply treat them as though they did work in any normal business and use the normal facilities of the law?

[Tom Brake]

I think that is a good point, and if the hon. Gentleman wants to submit his idea to the working group that is looking at the issue, it might want to take it into consideration when formulating responses.

Modern Farming and the Environment

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Colin Clark]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. We have to ensure that we have joined-up thinking in relation to beekeeping. There is an example from Scotland. Neonicotinoids have been banned, and the possible result is the use of other sprays. No less a supplier than one to Her Majesty the Queen at Balmoral considers that the flea beetle, which is now not controlled by neonicotinoids—that is a very difficult word to say—was potentially the reason for the destruction of an oilseed rape crop and therefore why he produced less honey. This is one of the questions that I want to ask my right hon. Friend the Minister: we must have joined-up thinking.

As custodians of the land, we see and manage the whole picture. That is really the point of policy as we go forward. Farmers and agriculture draw together the entire picture.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I meant to let my hon. Friend finish his point before I intervened, but I thank him very much for letting me in. I, too, draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. For me, the most important thing as we go into the future is that the food we grow not only will be top quality, but should be fed to people. I strongly support the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association, of which I am chairman, because we believe that grass should be consumed by animals. That does not work unless the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs changes the labelling so that people know that if it says “grass-fed” on the package, that means 100% grass-fed, so anything that my hon. Friend can do to support better labelling, better information for the public and therefore better support for our farmers would be most welcome.

[Colin Clark]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, but I have to say, coming from north of the border, where it is slightly colder and we keep cattle inside for several months—I am a cattle finisher myself—that Scotland clearly produces the best beef in the world by some measure. Cattle inside my buildings were fed silage, which of course is grass as well as cereal, so I do not disagree with the point that my hon. Friend makes.

Cattle Compensation (England) (Amendment) Order 2018

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 General Committees

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

It is very nice to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.

Preventing cattle from being brought into herds in which there is an infection that has not been cleared up is an excellent change to the rules, but I am really disturbed by and concerned about proposed new paragraph 5A of the schedule to the Cattle Compensation (England) Order 2012, which relates to compensation payable when

“an animal is presented for slaughter for reasons of tuberculosis, and…the official veterinarian at the slaughter house is of the opinion that the animal is not in a clean condition”.

I must declare an interest as an owner of cattle, as well as drawing the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am bothered by proposed new paragraph 5A because my cattle do not like being tested for TB. They get jabbed in the neck twice, and three days later the vet comes back to feel the bumps. The cows do not know what is going on or whether to expect another jab in the neck. They find the whole thing upsetting, and for a few days afterwards they are very jumpy. These are Herefords, which are the most calm, gentle and wonderful cattle—the world’s No. 1 beef breed.

That is enough plugging. Bearing in mind the pressure on abattoirs, the costs that vets incur and the pressure to make money all the time, there is an inherent temptation for vets to say that cows are dirtier than they would if there were no financial consequences. Equally, cattle cannot be clipped after they have been tested, because it is desperately dangerous. They are not happy animals, and they have four hooves that will smash your head in without meaning to. There is a genuine risk to human health if we not only insist that people have their cattle taken away against their will and with great sacrifice to their business plans when they face the misery that TB inflicts, but then say, “By the way, you’d better make sure they’re clean enough, or the abattoir will dock 50% of your compensation.” That is asking for trouble.

I am led to believe by the Government that at the moment only 20 cattle a year are deemed to be too filthy to be worth killing. However, I think the Government need to do considerably more to put my mind at rest that we are not voting in support of a change in the rules that will cause good farmers who are a bit worried to clip cattle, either before or after TB testing. We need to ensure that this is proportionate. For 20 cows a year, we are talking about £100,000 of compensation. That is not enough to risk one life; no amount of money is worth that. A terrible mistake is being made.

We need to find a different way to ensure that people give their cattle a level of care and welfare that keeps them clean. The suggestion made by the Opposition spokesman was a good one: the abattoir should receive a payment from the farmer to ensure that the animal is in a clean enough condition to be killed. If the vets are going to condemn an animal, they should have to photograph it. I would like to see some sort of appeal process so that when the system starts to proliferate, which it inevitably will, we can say to the Minister, “This is what we did today. What a mistake we made—perhaps we can revisit it.”

I would like to hear good things from the Minister about protecting farmers’ health and safety when they are going through the most traumatic and miserable thing that can happen on a farm in the course of normal business. I have been keeping cattle for quite a long time. There is not just one test a year; there are pre-movement tests as well. TB tests are not fun. My children dread them because they have to help, and we all get hurt—it is not all right. Farmers must do those kinds of things to fight this ghastly risk to human health.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

All I can say is that APHA does run certain programmes for that and picks up the animals as soon as it can. It usually happens within days; sometimes it can take a week.

I return to my initial point: typically, once an animal has become a reactor and tested positive to the disease, the farmer will keep it in isolation in a shed somewhere. Is it really too much to ask that farmers ensure there is full straw bedding in that shed for the week or so that it takes for the animal to be collected? My view is that it is not.

[Bill Wiggin]

I suspect it is because the Minister has such a kind heart that he is worried about the care shown to these poor condemned animals. However, it is an offence, which is properly legislated for, not to look after animals properly. The draft order is no substitute for proper animal welfare—it is misguided in that respect. Proper legislation is already in place. Will he think again about how he will handle the increased complaints that will inevitably follow when abattoirs work out that vets are under pressure to condemn more and more stock?

[George Eustice]

Vets have a very objective approach to condemning unclean animals. They do that already, whether it is for TB compensation or for commercial animals. It is worth noting that if a farmer sent a steer to an abattoir to be slaughtered for food consumption in the normal way and it was condemned as too unclean even to process, he would get no payment for that animal. Under this scheme, he would get 50% compensation.

It is important also to recognise that when an animal is condemned, it has no salvage value to the Government. At the moment, we pay full compensation to farmers for the value of their animals, and we try to recoup some of that cost through those animals’ salvage value. Where animals are condemned, there is no salvage value.

[Bill Wiggin]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but the wording of the draft order is not “the meat is condemned” but

“the animal is not in a clean condition”.

That is why I think he is wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

The CHeCS scheme is a United Kingdom Accreditation Service-accredited scheme that certifies that farmers are adopting proactive measures to improve their biosecurity. That could include, where necessary, putting additional fencing and protection on yards to stop badgers getting into contact with animals. It can involve adopting a particular risk-based approach to the way they trade. It can also involve investment in special drinking troughs so that badgers cannot get access to them, and so on and so forth.

I often hear from the hon. Gentleman and the Labour party that we should not be doing a badger cull and that we should be doing biosecurity, vaccination and other things. My answer is that we need to do all of those things. In the two areas where we first started the badger cull, we have seen a 50% reduction in the incidence of the disease, but that is not enough on its own. We also have to improve biosecurity and we have to continually refine our cattle movement controls. If the Opposition are serious about this, they must recognise that we must take biosecurity seriously too. That is what we are seeking to do.

[Bill Wiggin]

I am using this opportunity to check on the CHeCS. The Scottish Agricultural College does not appear on the CHeCS website, yet I believe it is a CHeCS-accredited scheme. The Department needs to have a little look at exactly how the scheme is working. I have been CHeCS-accredited from the beginning, and the tuberculosis bit does not really work. I hope that the Minister will have a little look at that. Could he also ensure that the 20 cattle that are condemned every year are photographed?

[George Eustice]

On the latter point, yes. I will ensure that that instruction is given to the OVs. I suspect that they would probably do that anyway for their own internal procedures.

On my hon. Friend’s first point, I do not think that is directly relevant to this set of regulations, but I am more than happy to have that discussion with him. The CHeCS system has worked well on other diseases, such as bovine viral diarrhoea. The TB version of it was launched in 2015 with the support of the National Farmers Union and others. It is something that we want to get behind and support.

Agriculture Bill

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

I note the selective quote from the hon. Gentleman. The NFUS also said that any such schedule should be one that comes from the Scottish Government. One could ask whether the DEFRA Secretary would be willing to accept Scottish Government amendments.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is very important that we hear from the SNP, because the Bill does pertain to Scotland. However, as the hon. Lady has just said, a large part of this area is devolved. Is it not then fair that the SNP abides, as we all have to, by the eight-minute limit, instead of taking twice that amount of time?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I appreciate the point made by the hon. Gentleman, but the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) is her party’s Front-Bench spokesman. She is therefore not subject to a time limit. I am quite sure that, being an hon. Lady and a good orator, she will not take more time than is suitable, but it is up to her to decide what that is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

I will just finish my point given that it is about the Secretary of State, and then, if I have time, I will respond to the question.

I particularly enjoyed the Secretary of State’s histrionics when challenged on convergence funding. I have never seen him so rattled. The question back to him is this: when will he do the right thing by Scottish farmers and give back the money that is due to them as soon as possible?

[Bill Wiggin]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I believe that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) inadvertently misled the House. He can look at the record and see that I definitely said that the SNP should be heard, and to say otherwise is obviously wrong. I hope that he will check that and put what he said right.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

It is open to any Member to check. Let us crash on now. David Warburton has six minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin). I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am the chairman of the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association, which promotes grass-fed as an alternative to grain-fed in our meat supply chain. I also keep a small herd of grain-free Hereford cattle at my home in Herefordshire.

The Agriculture Bill is a hugely important piece of legislation that will directly affect the majority of businesses in my constituency. There are over 2,000 businesses in Herefordshire in the agricultural sector, and 84% of the land in Herefordshire is devoted to agriculture. Farmers in Herefordshire welcome the reassurances that funding systems for farming subsidies will be slowly phased out over seven years, starting in 2020. That enables them to be sure of what lies ahead in the medium term and gives them the opportunity to have some input into how the system should work after the seven-year transition. There are issues with land values and the importance of subsidies over that period, but they can be dealt with.

The philosophy of public money for public goods is the right approach to take as long as we remember that the most important public good is health. That can be improved through the production of high quality, high welfare food for the British market. I am also supportive of increased environmental protections and higher animal welfare standards. I am, however, nervous of a system in which food production itself is not the main goal of agriculture.

There is a way to support agriculture that solves the productivity dilemma. As chairman of the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association, I have visited some of our members’ farms. I believe they provide an excellent model for how British livestock, or beef and lamb farming, should look in the future. The 100% pasture-fed model is one which is: better for the environment, through carbon sequestration; better for animals, coming top, according to Compassion for World Farming, of all welfare systems; better for the consumer, because of the high omega-3 fatty acids; better for the climate and our health; and, crucially, more profitable for the farmer.

In 2016, the PFLA produced a document called “It Can Be Done”. It demonstrates that the economic case for pasture-fed compares very favourably with more intensive farming models. A survey earlier this year showed that it is better for animals. Some 53% of PFLA farmers reported a reduction in the use of antibiotics, 51% a reduction in vet bills and 66% noticed an overall improvement in the health of their stock. It is better for the environment. Some 81% of members have made significant changes to their grazing management, with over 50% achieving a longer grazing season and 25% seeing a movement towards that. Some 32% have reduced their synthetic fertiliser use and 64% have reported an increased diversity in their grass swards and bird life on their farms. Some 55% saw an increase in mammal and insect life. In animal welfare and environmental criteria, nobody reported a single negative outcome. That is good for the consumer, who will get that high omega-3 fatty acid which leads to the manufacture of conjugated linoleic acid, the only substance in one’s body that can fight tumours. This is a really good way of helping not just the richest but the poorest sectors in our society.

There is one thing we need to do to make this work: we need to change the definition of pasture-fed. At the moment, it means that 51% of an animal’s life must be on grass. It needs to mean 100%. We on the Conservative Benches have been campaigning for honesty in labelling for a long time. Brexit offers us a wonderful opportunity to deliver it. I want grass-fed to mean 100% grass fed. I want to see the benefits for the people farming: putting less in and getting a better product out. That is the way for a better future for our agricultural sector.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Park keeper or food producer—whatever the future for farming is going to be, does my hon. Friend agree that it must be possible to earn a living out of farming?

[George Eustice]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, who has a lot of experience in these matters and an understanding of the industry. He is absolutely right. There will be parts of the country where some farmers choose to do more by way of delivering environmental outcomes, and in other parts they may focus more on food production. Either way, we want a vibrant, profitable farming industry across our country.

Leaving the EU: Live Farm Animal Exports

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy]

I cannot comment on the standard, as I have never looked into it, but I am happy to take the hon. Gentleman’s assurances—he is a fellow member of the Environmental Audit Committee. I was talking about exceptions outside the UK. We accept that live transit would continue to be allowed within the UK, but we also need to ensure that decent standards and proper monitoring are in place. The one exception would be across the land border between Northern Ireland and Ireland; I do not think anyone would argue that that should be subject to an export ban.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Once we leave the EU, we will completely lose control over the welfare standards of any animals that go from the UK into southern Ireland. Does the hon. Lady accept that those animals could continue their journey on to Spain or France?

[Kerry McCarthy]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to argue for not having live exports across the border from the north of Ireland to the Republic of Ireland, he is welcome to do so. This goes to a much wider issue that the Government have not yet managed to address: what do we do about the border between the north and the south once we leave the EU? Many people want it to continue in its current form, but the practicalities of leaving should mean that a hard border is established. That is one for the Government and perhaps not one that we in Westminster Hall can grapple with today, but the fact that we need to address the issue of animals being transported between the north and the south ought not to be used as an excuse for not addressing an export ban outside the British Isles.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about leaving the EU, but he is not right about our standards. Listening to the anecdotal evidence of the people who watch the lorries going from Ramsgate, they complain that inspections are not rigorous enough. We can do a lot more here.

[Sir David Amess]

I am not going to fall out with my hon. Friend on this issue, particularly as he is a tropical fish fancier, but the Minister will have heard what he said. When the Minister sums up the debate, he will put my hon. Friend right on his criticism of how these things are managed.

The fundamental problem with the current EU regulations is a lack of political willpower in member states to enforce them. That does not just relate to animal welfare; that lack of willpower applies to so many other dealings with the EU. In November 2016, Sweden, with the support of Denmark, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, presented a paper to the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council highlighting numerous examples of infringements and a general lack of enforcement. For example, Compassion in World Farming has found that we export approximately 40,000 live sheep for slaughter to the continent each year. France takes a considerable number of those, yet it was only in 2016 that an inquiry by a committee of the French National Assembly found there to be serious concerns about welfare standards in French abattoirs. Is that something that our nation of animal lovers would be proud to be associated with? I think not.

More locally, veterinary costs are of concern to many constituents. Goodness me, vet bills seem to grow weekly. There are a lot of senior citizens in the area I represent—we have the most centenarians in the country, and I hope to be one of them one day. Animals are their lives. They are everything to elderly people who are on their own, and we should not trivialise the importance of animals to such people. Veterinary bills can be high, and the taxpayer foots the bill for veterinary checks in live transportation. If that cost was shifted to those involved in the industry, not only would the taxpayer save money during these hard times, but the industry would be incentivised to look after its animals well, as the cost of veterinary bills could be high.

I hope I have convinced the House about the issue of the live export of animals. Some 94,000 people signed the petition. What is particularly exciting is that unlike in 2012, the change I want is no longer an impossible dream. When we investigated a ban before, it was found that because of freedom of movement within the European Union—my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), who was a Member of the European Parliament, knows far better than I do how our hands were tied behind our back—it would be unlawful to stop the practice. Once we leave the European Union, that will no longer be the case. As the Minister said in 2017,

“there will be nothing standing in our way of placing an ethical ban on the export of live animals.”

I believe him.

I was further encouraged by something in the Conservative manifesto last year—one of the few things I was encouraged by, but the least said about that the better. My party committed the Government to continuing to improve animal welfare and specifically mentioned taking steps to control the export of animals for slaughter. The Secretary of State has also made positive noises about that inside and outside the House.

In summary, I want us to address the suffering of animals. The public are overwhelmingly with us—we have only to think of the Prime Minister’s little aside on foxhunting during the dreadful general election campaign and all the damage that that did. We are a nation of animal lovers, and political parties and Members of Parliament should get real on that, because animals are by and large grateful for everything we do for them, and they are not quite as moody as human beings can be.

We must look after animals to the best of our ability. We should enforce maximum journey times, end long-distance travel for slaughter, ensure that British animals are treated according to British standards, which I believe are high despite what my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire said, and prevent the public purse from paying for veterinary costs. Let us make this issue one of the first great steps as Britain takes back control from the European Union. As Gandhi once said:

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

As we leave the European Union next year, not only I and many of my constituents but the whole of the animal kingdom will be celebrating.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess), who I think is wrong about rural as opposed to urban communities. We have only to listen to the RSPCA to hear about unspeakable acts of vicious cruelty that take place against domestic animals in our urban areas to know that cruelty is not divided by region, people or nations, but by wickedness in individuals. It is absolutely the road to hell to ban things because we do not like the proper process that should be followed. I am particularly passionate about this because my amendment to the Animal Welfare Act 2006 would have seen the sentence for cruelty increased, but it was voted down by the Labour Government who took the credit for the Bill.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West for revealing my fondness for tropical fish, although I am not sure that they are completely relevant in this debate as they tend to be flown in from Singapore on very long journeys. However, the problem with a ban is that we are all here because we want to see less bad treatment and better treatment of animals in transit, irrespective of where they are coming from or going to and irrespective of whether they are for slaughter or for breeding stock.

I had to pass exams to be allowed to transport my animals. It is wrong to say that there are not rules on what we are allowed to do. There is an eight-hour limit. We have to have tests and we can drive our animals only within 65 km of where we live without any regulation whatsoever. So what the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said is wrong. She should look it up on the DEFRA website

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Gentleman has just said that I said there were not any rules, but I said nothing of the sort. I accepted that there are rules in place, but I said that they are not being adhered to. For example, calves being held in a truck in a lay-by technically counts as a rest period, but most of us would agree that is not much of a relief for them. I did not say that there were not any rules.

[Bill Wiggin]

I thought the hon. Lady said that we tried to object to the eight-hour limit in the European Union.

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is an overall limit.

[Bill Wiggin]

I have given the matter a great deal of thought and it occurs to me that we should not ban live exports. If we do that, we will lose control through the Irish border and the animals whose welfare we seek to improve could end up travelling from southern Ireland to Spain or France on journeys that are considerably longer than they need to be. We need to improve the standards of transport within the United Kingdom, and when they arrive in Kent ready to cross the channel they must be properly inspected by vets. That means there needs to be lairage and unloading of the animals, and they need to be checked. Then they should be loaded into approved-only transporters. There are penalties for any suffering that happens on the journeys, but at the moment there is not an owner.

The lorry driver is not the owner of the animals in the back, so if a sheep’s leg is sticking out of the back of the truck, nobody suffers financially for that. If one of the animals is found to be suffering when they are unloaded, it gets put down and then there is a penalty, because that life is lost and that animal is no longer fit for human consumption. The whole purpose of its export has been taken away. That is the penalty that hangs over all livestock producers all the time. If someone is found to have put the wrong medicines in their animal, it is condemned. That is how we deal with and enforce rules.

If we have proper policing all the way along the transport route, it is perfectly reasonable to continue to send animals 22 miles over the seas as opposed to thousands of miles around the edge.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I think my hon. Friend has missed the entire point of the debate. The point is not that animals should be transported under good conditions, but whether they should be slaughtered, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) said in opening the debate, as close to the point of production as possible and exported on the hook and not on the hoof. In that context, it is immaterial how they travel within the United Kingdom. There are 135 hours between the Scottish islands and Spain, and that is unacceptable under any circumstances. It is the principle that we object to, not the quality of the export.

[Bill Wiggin]

I hate to disagree with my hon. Friend, but if he reads the petition, he will see that it states:

“The transport of live animals exported from the UK causes immense suffering.”

So he is wrong. It is not about whether we kill the animals near to where they are born. We all agree on that: of course we should slaughter and export on the hook. If we cannot, or if something else is going on, such as fattening, we have to be careful, because large numbers of animals will be put in lorries for breeding purposes and they will arrive in France and be slaughtered, and there is nothing we can do. So we ought to correct where the suffering occurs and not try to blame foreign people for standards that they may or may not be more passionate about than some of our people.

It is much more important that the Government focus on removing any suffering on the journeys that we can control.

[Zac Goldsmith]

Does my hon. Friend think it is possible to transport in a civilised manner very young calves from the Scottish isles to Spain, for example? Obviously anything is possible in a world of fantasy, but in the real world does he believe that is a possibility?

[Bill Wiggin]

At the moment we have got the worst possible case where the roll-on/roll-off ferries will not take live exports because of the protests, so the animals end up going on slower ferries. Can we export and travel safely? Yes, we can. We fly racehorses around the world to appear in horseraces. We do all sorts of things with animals, but the purpose of the Animal Welfare Act was to name the five freedoms so that we would have basic frameworks for animal welfare, and breaking those is against the law. It is vital that we enforce the laws that we all like and support, rather than allow exporters an excuse. So can we transport calves abroad? Yes, we can.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. Surely if one were even to come close to applying the standards applied to racehorses, or to extremely valuable breeding stock, to animals that are transported for slaughter or fattening, the whole economic dynamic would change to such an extent that it would never make sense to transport animals on a large scale for those purposes? The standards for animals transported for slaughter or fattening will always necessarily be far lower than those in the example that he provided.

[Bill Wiggin]

It is far better to achieve a ban by making it economically difficult because the standards are so high than to apply a legal ban, which people get around by sending their animals to Northern Ireland, southern Ireland and to Spain. Let us get what we really want, which is a reduction in cruelty, rather than an export ban.

[Theresa Villiers]

In my ten-minute rule Bill, I proposed an exemption for north-south exports on the island of Ireland, so long as there was no onward transport overseas. My hon. Friend sees this as a great flaw in the proposal of a ban, but there is a technical solution that deals with the flaw that he has identified.

[Bill Wiggin]

It did not stop horsemeat getting into our supermarkets either, and that is the problem. Once we lose control, because the animal is in another sovereign nation, it is out of our hands. Therefore, let us get right the bit that we can. At the moment, a ban would fail. We would get illegal activity and, in the end, promote and improve the lot of the worst people—not the most caring people, such as those who are prepared to be hauliers who are properly policed, have proper veterinary inspections and will lose their licence to be an approved haulier if there is any case of abuse. That is how we can achieve what we really want, which is better animal welfare. I hope that if we can do that, the roll-on/roll-off ordinary ferries will allow proper, speedy channel crossings, rather than the slow boats that animals currently have to take. However, that cannot happen without better enforcement by British veterinary inspectors, and they cannot achieve that in Ramsgate because there is no lairage. If the animals are not taken off the trucks, they cannot be inspected properly. If they cannot be seen, they cannot be given the proper veterinary inspections, and if we do not do that, we will not get the improvements that we all want.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend; he is being very generous. He just said that once the animals leave these shores we have no control over them. He is absolutely right, and that is precisely why we do not want them transported halfway across Europe alive.

[Bill Wiggin]

Unfortunately for my hon. Friend, that will not be possible, because we are not proposing an export ban on all animals, but just on those that are for slaughter—and how will anyone know whether they are for slaughter? Who can tell what will happen to a sheep after it has arrived in France? It may be breeding stock that is downgraded to fattening, and then downgraded to immediate slaughter. Once it is out of our sphere of influence, it has gone. Equally, when animals come into the UK, they fall into our sphere of influence, and we must ensure that we have properly resourced policing, and the standards that we hope to achieve in this well-intentioned but, I think, slightly vulnerable petition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

Economic pressure is a far better way of achieving what my hon. Friend wants than legislative pressure. If it does not make economic sense, that is absolutely fine. What is wrong is that, without that potential outlet, supermarkets will simply screw down the price in the UK, and there will be nothing anybody can do. That is where the frustration comes from.

[Craig Mackinlay]

My hon. Friend made his points very well during his speech, and I was very pleased to hear them.

Let me put the size of the export market in context. Some 14.5 million sheep and lambs are slaughtered in this country each year, and a mere 40,000 are transported across the international sea border through ports such as Ramsgate in my constituency. It is a minor trade and alternatives are available. I have no intention—I say this now, but I suppose things change—of stopping my consumption of meat. I can think of nothing better than a decent Welsh or Kent salt marsh lamb, but the slaughter must be undertaken as close to where the animals are raised as possible. That means, post Brexit, having a national rethink about localising slaughterhouses. We need the Animal and Plant Health Agency to up its game on monitoring, particularly for long-distance transports within the UK. The rule that we should all be aiming for is that our meat should be provided on the hook, not on the hoof.

--- Later in debate ---

[Theresa Villiers]

There are still risks that the rules we put in place will not be enforced, but that is a reason to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure that they are enforced properly. If we bring in the ban that is advocated in my ten-minute rule Bill, exporting from north to south in Northern Ireland with a view to onward export to other jurisdictions would be unlawful. Obviously, it would be very important to seek to ensure that that aspect of the new legislation was enforced. Just because there are potential difficulties in enforcing some aspects of a ban does not mean that we should throw up our hands and say, “It’s impossible—we can’t do this.” The case has been strongly made for a ban, and we need to look very carefully at how we can make sure that we enforce it as effectively as possible.

[Bill Wiggin]

My concern is that if the price of sheep went up significantly in France, anybody who wanted to capitalise on that would send their sheep through southern Ireland; at that point, our ban would have made the situation worse for those sheep.

[Theresa Villiers]

I do not accept that that would be a consequence. It is possible to put together a legal formulation that contains an exemption from the ban for north-south exports within the island of Ireland. Enforcement would not necessarily be easy, but even if there were risks of the ban being evaded, that is not an excuse for inaction.

That is why I support an end to live exports. The case for a ban has been made clear by many campaigning organisations, such as Compassion in World Farming, the RSPCA, the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation and World Horse Welfare. The time has come to put an end to this trade that causes so much suffering. We should put a prohibition on live export in statute now, so that it comes into effect on exit day, when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman’s question prompts another question: what control is there to be within our domestic boundaries? It is still possible to transport animals for a very long time within the UK. He is right: there is a need for better enforcement across the whole European Union. Part of my unease about some of the arguments that he and others advance is that their attitude is almost, “Well, we’ll be fine—we’ll take the moral high ground and have the best possible standards of animal welfare.” That will not see the end of veal farming in France. That production will go on, but we somehow seem to think we can draw a line on the map and say, “We’re not going to be part of that.”

That also goes to the point I made earlier to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), to which we have not yet had an answer. A ban that does not ban movement across the Irish border is not a ban at all; it is a ban with a most obvious loophole. No matter what terms we may wish to write in about onward transmission, once the livestock has been moved from the north of Ireland to the south of Ireland we have lost control of it. As was said earlier—it might have been by the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin)—when market conditions dictate that a significantly better price is to be had for a product in France, that is where it will go. If there is even only one route to that market, that is the one route that will be taken.

[Bill Wiggin]

There is one other alternative. In that scenario, if we allowed live exports to continue, any animals coming from southern Ireland to France would cross through the United Kingdom, where our inspectors could significantly improve the quality of the transport.

[Mr Carmichael]

If the objection is to sea transportation, it strikes me as slightly ironic that one possible consequence for animals from Northern Ireland would be that, instead of crossing of a few miles across the border to the south, they would end up being put on boats to go across either the north channel or the Irish sea. Again, I fear the law of unintended consequences is at work here.

What is important? What should we be looking for as we seek to regulate this whole area better? I say to the Minister that in looking at this issue, which will constantly be under scrutiny, and rightly so, there is plenty of evidence and research. It is that evidence and research—not sentiment—that should ultimately govern the decisions that we make.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

We hear of all sorts of different positions on this issue from the Opposition at the moment. I simply say that EU free movement rules, which enshrine an open ports policy, govern this. Whether it is because of the customs union or single market legislation, the hon. Lady will find that taking action in this area will not be possible if the kind of approach that her party would like is adopted.

The hon. Lady made a legitimate point about WTO rules, but as she pointed out, there is clear WTO case law that enables Governments to ban certain trades on ethical grounds—including in a case on seal furs—as she highlighted. That issue was also looked at quite extensively in the judgment in the case of Barco de Vapor v. Thanet District Council, in relation to the contentious issue that my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet pointed out. That judgment made it clear that were it not for EU regulation and EU laws in this area on trade, it would be possible for a UK Government to amend the Harbours, Docks and Piers Clauses Act 1847 to introduce an ethical ban, should they want to. EU law is the obstacle to taking action in this space.

The hon. Member for Bristol East talked about the forthcoming Command Paper on agriculture and speculated about the timing of that. I will not get into speculation about timing, except to say that we have been working very hard on these issues. I have also been very clear—I have championed this since becoming the Minister responsible for farming—that I want there to be a strong animal welfare dimension to that agriculture paper. It will look predominantly at the type of framework that we would put in place to replace the common agricultural policy, but we have already been clear that we want to look at the idea of incentives to support high animal welfare systems of production.

The hon. Lady mentioned Scotland. We are working with the devolved Administrations to try to put forward a UK approach to this issue. As she highlighted and as we heard today, there is some scepticism from the Scottish Government and Scottish industry, which we recognise. To answer the specific question, it is possible—because this is essentially trade regulation—to put in place UK-wide regulations, but under the Sewel convention, there is an expectation that we will consult the devolved Administrations, and that is what we are doing.

I turn to some of the other contributions made by hon. Members. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West, as I said, has been a long-standing and passionate advocate on this issue. I welcome all his positive comments about the steps that we have been taking in this regard.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) introduced into the debate some very important notes of caution. The Government are clear about our position: we want to control the export of live animals for slaughter. It is sometimes very difficult in contentious debates such as this for people such as him to come in and take a contrarian position when there is a lot of emotion around. I understand that, but I think it very important, if we want to get the legislation right, that we take account of some of those complications.

My hon. Friend pointed out that there are already a lot of inspections of transport operators. That is true. We do not inspect at the point of entry at the port, or the point of departure at the port. Basically, we do not universally inspect; we do not inspect every consignment, and there is good reason for that. The terrible and unfortunate episode that took place in Ramsgate in 2012 showed the difficulties and dangers of trying to unload sheep in a port situation and trying to correct a position there. That is why, in the case of sheep destined for the MV Joline, we do have 100% inspections, on every consignment, at the point of loading, but not at the port; we do risk surveillance at the port. For other operators, we tend to have a risk-based approach, but there is 100% inspection, at the point of loading, for the MV Joline.

[Bill Wiggin]

Surely that is one of the low-hanging fruit, and something that we could look into improving in order to get more control over this industry. We should either use ports where lairage is available, which is probably cheaper than trying to create our own, or ensure that we are inspecting, particularly as things are leaving our shores, so that the pride that we have in animal welfare is reflected when the animals arrive at the other end.

[George Eustice]

Enforcement is an important issue, but I would say that in that case we do have, as I said, 100% inspection at the point of loading.

My hon. Friend suggested that there is no difference between transport at sea and transport by road or land. I think that there is a bit of a difference: if someone encounters a complication or difficulty and they are on the road, they can pull over somewhere quiet and perhaps find a helpful farmer who will let them unload the animals in the yard and sort it out, but it is much harder to do that on a sea crossing; sheep cannot be unloaded in the middle of a sea crossing.

I think that there is also a difference when it comes to transport for slaughter. The reason for that is that we go to great lengths to try to reduce the stress on animals in slaughterhouses and lairage facilities. That is one reason why our CCTV proposal for abattoirs will include cameras in lairage areas. We want to do the maximum to try to reduce the stress of those animals, and having a long, stressful journey before they get to the abattoir cannot be conducive to that.

My hon. Friend asked this important question: do we know whether the animals are actually going for slaughter or for fattening? The answer is that if they are going for slaughter, that requires a different type of declaration to be made on the export certificate, so we do have that information, although there is a moot point: how long does rearing and fattening take? People could say that, and it might be two weeks or two months; it would be difficult to record that information.

For all the reasons that I have set out, our manifesto commitment focuses on the export of animals for slaughter. We are having to look at considerations that have not been raised in today’s debate. For instance, we export some laying hens—chicken—for egg production in European countries. We have the highest standards of animal welfare in our hatcheries. We do not use practices such as maceration when it comes to hatcheries for laying hens. Other European countries do not take that approach, and if we were to displace that trade to other European countries, we would not have done a clever day’s work. There are legitimate issues that we need to take into account.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet, as I said, is a long-standing campaigner on this issue. I visited his constituency during the referendum campaign. I know that it was very galling for Thanet District Council to try to take action on something that mattered to the public and to find that, under EU law, it was unable to do so. My hon. Friend correctly pointed out that EU law is the only impediment to our taking action in this space.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) highlighted very important issues in relation to NFU Scotland, and some of the concerns that it has raised. Like him, I grew up on a farm. We raised livestock. I am not squeamish about these things, but as a farmer, I am also passionate about high standards of animal welfare. I very much concur with his view that we should be doing more to educate schoolchildren about where their food comes from and the realities of farming.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet, as I said, also been a long-standing campaigner on this issue. She introduced a Bill on it recently. Like others, she speculated that the Government may be considering a consultation, or that a consultation may be imminent. She will understand that today my point is that we are considering how best to take forward our manifesto commitment, but I hope that I have been able, with the detail that I have been able to outline, at least to reassure her that we are looking very closely at all these details. I commend her for the work that she has done with her Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet raised the issue, as a number of others did, about small abattoirs. There is an opportunity to look at that issue again, but I am very clear that we should not water down our standards of animal welfare in abattoirs. It is sometimes the case that small abattoirs can do this well—I saw that, for instance, when I visited Shetland—but equally, we want to ensure that we have proper regulation, and that they can afford to have an official veterinarian on site, monitoring activities. We need to ensure that we do not go backwards when it comes to animal welfare, and I know that he would agree with that.

My hon. Friend also made an important point about rose veal. If we could develop more of a market for rose veal, rather than ending up having to sell calves for white veal, that would be a tremendous step forward for animal welfare, but sadly, because people often confuse the two, we are stuck with the position that we have now.

I come to the points made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). He asked me to clarify the Government’s intentions. I hope that I have just done that. We have a clear manifesto commitment and are considering this matter very closely. He asked whether any such provision would apply just to the EU or to other countries, and I can confirm that it would apply to all countries. We would have a consistent approach. We are not in the business of singling out the EU for different or special treatment with any such provisions that we would put in place. However, I refer back to the position of his party, which I think would compromise our ability to act in this area. He also asked whether there would be any exemptions. As I said, we are considering that. There is a specific issue when it comes to certain island communities, so of course there are certain areas that we need to look at. Also, as I made clear, we have asked the Roslin Institute to do a very thorough review of all the evidence, because we believe that different circumstances pertain for different species.

Finally, on the issue of enforcement, as I have said, we have a 100% inspection rate in the case of the MV Joline. I also point out that in all our abattoirs, we have a full-time official veterinarian working for the Food Standards Agency, who is there to enforce and maintain animal welfare standards. We also have thorough checking at the ports. There is surveillance as regards all these issues, and there must be accompanying documentation.

We have had a detailed and comprehensive debate, covering many issues. The Government are absolutely aware of the importance of this issue to the public. That is why we included it in our manifesto. I hope that the points that I have made have reassured hon. Members that we are addressing this issue.

Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I will be very brief, Mr Gapes. I agree with everything I have heard from my hon. Friends on the Government Benches. More than 20,000 fruit pickers come into my constituency alone every year, and the people who employ them constantly make this plea: if there is a seasonal agricultural workers scheme, the people in it must stay working on the farms that work hard to apply for them to come. There must be some degree of stickiness to stop those people disappearing into the local economy and doing other things. The administration of such a visa will be expensive. The whole purpose of all this is to ensure that businesses are competitive, so it is critical that we keep the costs of any scheme down and ensure that the people who apply come and work for the people who go to the trouble of hiring them.