Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

John McNally Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 22nd March 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The negative impact on the species as a whole has to be considered, especially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) said, because we are seeing real reduction in some species. We are getting below the critical mass necessary to sustain the genetic variation of a healthy species.

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[John Spellar]

I will just make a little progress, because I mentioned one of the campaigning organisations and if I take interventions before I mention the others, they might think I am leaving them out.

I pay tribute to the many campaigns that have maintained interest in this issue over the years, bringing us—I hope —to the culmination today. Humane Society International, LionAid, FOUR PAWS and Born Free have all played a prominent role in contacting Members and campaigning. There is also the coalition against trophy and canned hunting, which includes Action for Primates, A-LAW, Animal Defenders International, Animal Aid, Animal Interfaith Alliance, Catholic Concern for Animals, the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation—again, showing the bipartisan nature of the support—International Wildlife Bond, Labour Animal Welfare Society, OneKind, People for Nature and Peace, Protecting African Lions, Quaker Concern for Animals, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Voice4Lions, World Animal Protection, Wildlife Conservation Foundation and Zimbabwe Elephant Foundation. If I have missed anyone out, they can text me and I might include them in the wind-up. Those organisations have worked together successfully to highlight the issue, and we pay tribute to them.

[John Mc Nally]

I totally agree with the right hon. Member on that point. I support the Bill because I stand with many of my Falkirk constituents who have written to me on the issue. He mentioned many of the non-governmental organisations. I have been heavily involved with FOUR PAWS in the UK, which has provided so much useful information to me on the subject over a long while. As we all know, this is a non-partisan issue. MPs from all corners of the House have spoken at great length and passionately on the totally incomprehensible nature of this brutal sport. Enough talking—the time is to make this actually happen. Does he agree that killing animals for sport is just not an acceptable practice?

[John Spellar]

The hon. Gentleman makes that point strongly and stresses once again the all-party support for the measure.

Plastic Pollution in the Ocean

John McNally Excerpts

Thursday 18th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing this much-needed debate, as well as Members who have made valuable points on how the world uses plastic.

Plastic has been one of the world’s most valuable inventions. It is durable and flexible and has myriad uses. It has reduced product weight, increased the life cycles of materials and massively reduced waste, all of which have huge environmental benefits. However, its very durability and strength means that we have created a monster, as others have said. Having been on nurdle hunts on beaches and shores around the Forth estuary, I have witnessed the devastation that these nurdles have caused. I remember someone saying in a debate a while ago that seabirds are now picking up these plastic nurdles and feeding them to their young, which means that they are filled up but starving to death. That is an awful image.

Around the world, nearly 460 megatonnes of plastic were produced in 2019, and that number is expected to grow by 267% by 2060, which is not that far away. In parallel, plastic waste is predicted to increase from 353 megatonnes in 2019 by some 287% by 2060. The predictions are that mismanaged waste will increase and the number will grow to an alarming 533% by 2060. Meanwhile, the plastic waste emitted annually to the hydrosphere is expected to increase by 2060 from 6.1 megatonnes to 11.6 megatonnes, which is about 190%. It is nearly doubling. Eventually, 22% of the plastic entering the hydrosphere enters the ocean. That number will increase to 29% by 2060. These statistics are verified by the OECD global plastics report.

Trillions of pieces of plastic drift in our oceans. They eventually sink to the bottom of the ocean, killing life and, as has been said, creating ocean “deserts”, or they gather in vast floating patches of plastic hundreds of square kilometres in size. The largest one, the great Pacific garbage patch, is estimated to cover an area equivalent to three times the size of France. That is a very scary image. The plastic is then broken down into many millions of small pieces, which float down the water column, making it more and more difficult to remove.

The plastic has four main negative effects. First, it harms marine ecosystems irrevocably. Nearly 700 marine species are negatively affected by plastic in the oceans, including 100 listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as endangered, such as the Hawaiian monk seal, the hawksbill sea turtle and the Galapagos petrel. Moreover, the plastic brings horrifically invasive species into the ecosystem. Secondly, as it breaks down into microplastics, it is eaten by fish and potentially ends up in our food systems, with the health implications that everybody has mentioned—I do not think this is in doubt; it is actually happening now—for humans and particularly for children and babies, given how they are fed. Thirdly, the plastic has economic implications, impacting shipping through propellor entanglement and other marine activities, especially fishing, and undermining tourist areas. Fourthly and importantly, there is a growing body of research showing that by reducing oxygen in the water and thereby the amount of life that oceans can sustain, the plastic almost certainly reduces the ability of oceans to store carbon and therefore combat climate change.

I wish to take this opportunity to compliment the Ocean Cleanup organisation, which has advised me and others on the worrying waste that we are producing. The Ocean Cleanup proposes undertaking what may be considered the largest high seas clean-up in history. Its mission is to remove 90% of floating plastic in the ocean by 2040. The whole project is based on scientific research. To efficiently address the issue, we need to understand where the plastic is, what it consists of and, crucially, where it comes from.

To reiterate what others have said, 26 academic partners on five continents are seeking to understand the ocean garbage patches, and numerous scientific institutions have produced 49 scientific publications in different peer-reviewed journals. There is great interest in this. Using computational modelling, the Ocean Cleanup crew estimates in which areas the circulating currents are creating plastic hotspots. As has been said, artificial intelligence is used while further research is conducted in the field of spaceborne plastic detection in collaboration with the European Space Agency, ARGANS Ltd and other spatial sector organisations. It is reassuring that people are tackling this huge problem. Research shows that it takes up to seven years for plastic emitted into the oceans to make it to the GPGP. The plastic there can survive for decades; it degrades by about 1% per annum.

To clean the oceans and address legacy plastic, Governments need to focus on areas where there is most recoverable plastic, which is in the ocean gyres—the permanent current systems, which trap plastic debris. As I said, the largest and best known patch is the great Pacific garbage patch, and that is where efforts are being focused. A trawler-type solution has been crafted. It pulls a semi-circular, 4-metre-high net system slowly, as the hon. Member for North Devon said, through the garbage patch and into a funnel—the retention zone—which takes the plastic on to ships to be taken back to shore. I have watched videos of that; it is very impressive, and very dangerous.

To protect our oceans, stopping the leakage of future plastic pollution from rivers is the best form of prevention. We are talking about interceptor systems to prevent plastic from entering the seas. With a focus on the rivers that research has shown pump the most plastic into our oceans, there has been work with national, regional and, importantly, local governments to create a range of tailored interceptor systems—suited to rivers that are tidal or not, have deltas or do not, are slow-flowing or fast-flowing, deep or shallow, and so on. There are 12 interceptors now in place in different types of rivers in south-east Asia and the Caribbean, as the hon. Member mentioned.

The encouraging news, which gives us all some hope, is that the Ocean Cleanup organisation has signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations development programme to collaborate on eliminating plastic pollution in our oceans and rivers around the globe. The goal of that partnership is simply to reduce leakages of plastic into marine ecosystems by boosting policies and, particularly, behaviour change aimed at advancing sound plastic waste management systems and reducing overall plastic pollution, and accelerating the deployment of interception technologies in rivers to end marine plastic pollution. Let us hope that they and their partners, and all Governments, are successful in their objectives to clean up our treasured oceans and protect them for our future generations.

Disposable Vapes: Environmental Impact

John McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Murray. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) on securing the debate and on raising the issue of the impact of disposable vapes on the environment, which I want to speak about today. As the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) mentioned, there are other issues and concerns with vapes, such as those on smoking, but I want to address their environmental impact.

Vapes are cheap and accessible to young people and they cause significant waste problems in the environment. Coloured vapes have now become a fashion accessory for many of our youth. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for ethics and sustainability in fashion—believe it or not—I have heard at first hand that people are now matching their clothes with their vapes. We may not have considered such issues, but it means vapes are just left lying about everywhere.

First, I want to repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire said. I know that the Scottish Government are aiming to reach a zero-waste society. With the circular economy, we have a target of recycling 70% of waste by 2025, exceeding EU targets, and matching EU targets for all plastic packaging to be economically recyclable or reusable by 2030. Scotland is also a signatory to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy global commitment.

Cheap and easy-to-use disposable vapes are booming in popularity and creating a mass waste issue similar to the nurdles we all encountered and now have to deal with. Those vape waste products have now added even more to the national embarrassment of litter on our streets and cycle and canal path networks. They are even being found on mountain paths and forest trails, so people who walk in those places will start to see those things lying about in areas where they would go for their natural weekend away. If they go somewhere to relax, and come across those things, they will get more and more anxious about seeing them lying about.

All of this, in my opinion is, pitiful. Dropping litter is avoidable. In particular, it costs needless amounts of money to collect and clear up the debris from these vape pens and many other single-use products that we just discard. In fact, I might add—I put my right hand up to God and say this with all truthfulness—that when crossing a car park at night I can find my way in the dark now by following the path of the blue lights coming from the vapes. That is a stark reality. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire mentioned earlier, they are becoming visible everywhere. It is worth reiterating the stark figures that my hon. Friend mentioned: 1.3 disposable vapes are thrown away every week, equating to two vapes per second, and, as she has just said, an estimated 13.6 million disposable vapes are bought in Scotland annually. Those are scary statistics to hear.

I ask the Minister to speak with, or, indeed, whether she has spoken with, some of the relevant authorities—the devolved Parliaments, local authorities, regional Mayors, courts, judges and police—to ask if they could agree on a more meaningful deterrent. We could introduce something like an automatic three points on the driving licence of anyone who discards any of those products. I tried to introduce a measure into Parliament on that some years ago, and an awful lot of people congratulated me on the idea, but it did not actually go anywhere—I think we might have had an election in between.

We all recognise that vapes, and all the other disposable products, are causing a lot of damage to our fauna and flora, and that that is seeping into the whole food supply chain. As my hon. Friend said, it is now causing toxic waste to seep into everything around us. It is impacting the already perilous environment in which we live.

Furthermore, ASH Scotland has called for a tightening of vape ads and promotion, following its consultation report. The Association of Directors of Public Health has also called for tighter regulation to ban brightly coloured packaging and for a review of flavours likely to appeal to children. The “e” part of e-cigarettes—more specifically, the battery—is using up valuable minerals, the mining of which has led to water loss, ground destabilisation, biodiversity loss, increased salinity in our rivers, contaminated soil and toxic waste.

This place has the power to change the weaknesses in the law that allow those pitiful practices to continue. Members have made excellent points in their speeches, but I humbly suggest that serious action is needed to hasten a behavioural change to benefit our health, wealth, and wellbeing. That might mean points on driving licences, or that we change the way we advertise these products and tighten up the ads, but whatever we have to do, the Government must take action before it becomes too late, once again. I am very keen to hear from the Minister on the action she is taking to address the issue.

Shark Fins Bill

John McNally Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 16th November 2022 Public Bill Committees

[Christina Rees]

I thank my hon. Friend for another superb intervention. I thank him for his support in coming to the Committee today, which is much appreciated. I really hope the Bill sends a massive message that the practice should not go on and that, if it does continue, serious action should be taken.

The schedule outlines the strict processes in place to access applications for exemption certificates to ensure that they do not undermine the overall ban. Paragraph 1 confirms that the prohibition in clause 1 on the import or export of shark fins or things containing them does not apply if the appropriate authority has issued an exemption certificate. The definition of appropriate authority is outlined in paragraph 9.

The process for applying for an exemption certificate is set out in paragraph 2. Paragraph 3 permits the appropriate authority to revoke or issue a revised exemption certificate if, before the import or export takes place, any information provided in connection with an application is or has become inaccurate or incomplete.

Paragraph 4 provides for a civil liability, where the appropriate authority can impose a penalty up to £3,000 if the applicant provides inaccurate or incomplete information or a document that contains an inaccuracy in relation to an application. This power provides a strong incentive for applicants for exemptions to be truthful and ensures that the ban will not be undermined. The process for monetary penalties is outlined in paragraph 5.

Paragraph 6 defines what information must be included in an initial penalty notice and a final penalty notice. A final penalty notice may also provide for interest or other penalties to be payable in the event that payment is not made within the period specified by the notice. Applicants who wish to appeal against decisions will do so to the First-tier Tribunal. Appeals in relation to decisions by Scottish Ministers, as I have already said, should be heard by the First-tier Tribunal in Scotland, reflecting the devolved competency within the Bill. Paragraph 8 provides information for when a person does not pay the whole of or part of a penalty.

I thank all hon. Members again for coming here this morning. I hope we can agree that the Bill will deliver a significant improvement to our shark conservation standards and make us a global leader in shark conservation and sustainable fisheries. I am delighted to commend the Bill to the Committee.

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Neath on introducing this vital Bill. It is a great step forward in the preservation of this wonderful species. I have absolutely no issues with the Bill and sincerely hope that it will go a long way to prevent further deterioration of such poor practice in the removal of shark fins, and will help us to conserve the species. I hope the Bill starts behavioural change on this loathful practice.

Greyhound Racing

John McNally Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank my good friend the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) for securing today’s debate on greyhound racing. The petition, which received about 105,000 signatures, is to ban greyhound racing and ensure that the welfare of redundant dogs is, via a levy on the industry, absolutely adhered to. May I say how apt it is that the hon. Member for Neath, a person who is absolutely steeped in sport and who understands and appreciates the benefits and value of sport, brings this sport in front of MPs for our attention and debate? I thought her speech was enlightening.

MPs across the room have made excellent points and raised concerns about the welfare of these beautiful animals. I, too, sympathise with the petition—I thank the 160 people from my own constituency of Falkirk who signed it, even though they do not have a dog track in their area—and its merits, aims and ambitions. Who would not do so when they read about the cruelty inflicted on the animals in this so-called sport? Why would we not have sympathy for them?

Sir Roger, let me take you back a wee while. May I take you back in time some 60 years to when, as a young boy growing up in Denny, I and my friends would sneak along to the local dog track? All innocent and all exciting it was, too, to watch these magnificent animals run. Then, as we grew, we started to learn a wee bit more about how the greyhounds were actually treated—including how they were fed a pie before the race to prevent them from running so fast. Goodness knows what else they were being fed or injected with. And of course, when their usefulness was done, they were cruelly destroyed.

We probably did not know any better at the time, so what has improved? There are certainly fewer tracks now. The British Greyhound Racing Fund has awarded, as other hon. Members have said, more than £1 million to improve the racing tracks and welfare. The Greyhound Trust has received approximately £1.4 million to home retired greyhounds. That all sounds good and it leaves us wondering why, if greyhounds are such wonderful pets, there is such a problem with finding them homes. The answer is simple: it is down to the sheer number of dogs involved in greyhound racing. More than 30,000 dogs are surplus to requirements each year. In 2020, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain recorded, if my figures are correct—I think they are—3,575 injuries. In 2018, 324 greyhounds were destroyed; no home could be found for them. In 2019, 14 greyhounds a week died; they were destroyed because of injuries sustained while racing.

In Scotland, the welfare of greyhounds is covered by devolved legislation under the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006, but significantly there is no statutory legislation on greyhound racing in Scotland. Only two greyhound tracks are currently operating in Scotland. Thornton Greyhounds, in Kirkcaldy, is an unlicensed flapping track, and Shawfield greyhound stadium is licensed under the GBGB. In August 2019, the Glasgow track reduced its activity to a single night of racing per week—there were simply not enough dogs, I am told, to make up two nights’ racing. The position was similar at Thornton. It seems evident that racing greyhound numbers are at their lowest in Scotland, at least, and the sport is on its last legs.

The Greyhound Board of Great Britain is the body responsible for the governance, regulation and management of the sport of licensed greyhound racing in England, Scotland and Wales, but oddly, the regulations on the welfare of the greyhounds do not apply to independent tracks. I find that quite odd. Could the Minister please confirm whether that is true?

The Scottish Government do not currently have plans to ban greyhound racing, but they are very much aware of the Animal Welfare Commission’s interest on this vexatious business. I want to finish up with this letter I received on greyhound racing from Marie, a Falkirk constituent of mine. I am grateful to her for sending such a thoughtful and knowledgeable insight into why we are debating this. Marie said:

“I adopted Morag when she was five and a half. Out of all the wonderful, excited and noisy dogs in the Greyhound Rescue Fife’s kennels that day, Morag was just lying there looking at me with her huge brown eyes. My heart went out to her. She had a rotten life. I’ll never know whether she was just born terrified or whether her early experiences made her that way. Ironically, her racing name was “Honour and Love”, but I saw no signs of her ever having been honoured or loved. She didn’t know anything about the world outside of racetracks. She had never slept on anything except straw and probably old newspapers. Shut up and locked up in a crate for most of the day and night, Morag bears the scars of her racing career—not just mentally, but in the form of ugly, large blackheads on her abdomen, a nasty scar on her face and the loss of 17 teeth.”

Many breeders and trainers do not bother to take care of the hounds’ teeth. Why? It is because they will not have them long enough to have to deal with the resulting decay from the negligence. That happened at Doncaster and Nottingham racetracks. Bookmakers, as the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said, have a lot of money to put into their sport. They are taking a lot out of it. In the world of gambling, these wonderful, intelligent and innocent sighthounds do not matter. Only their ability to run for their lives at the snapping open of a metal trap matters.

Morag matters. When Morag first wagged her tail, when she first played with her toys and when she sighed contentedly in her basket, she had won the best race of all. She survived to have a better life and got her sweet revenge on those who mishandled her, filled her with drugs, did not show a minute of kindness and would have put a cattle bolt to her head, had the regulations not improved and had there not been the kindness of volunteers at rescue centres.

Due to Morag being so timid and scared, the Greyhound Rescue Fife advised Marie that a male dog companion would bring Morag out of herself. Marie went back up to Kinross and fell in love again, this time with her second sighthound, Hector—a big blue boy only 26 months old. He had been bought from his breeder in Ireland from £12,000. The trainer in Tranent who bought him raced him three times at Newcastle. The blue boy stopped to play at the last bend in each race, so he was disqualified. Luckily, he did not have to put up with a life of being a slave to the gambling industry for long.

Sandside Chief never made money for anyone, but he became a much loved part of her family, and every morning Marie wakes up to the pleasure of her wonderful greyhounds trotting towards her for hugs and food. She says:

“I adore them and all greyhounds. The racing greyhound is a special commodity. I would like to see the breed die out. I would like to see greyhound racing banned. Show greyhounds are looked after. Coursing greyhounds have a healthier lifestyle, but the racing greyhound is born into servitude and from the age of six weeks is trained for only one thing: to make money.”

We have all acknowledged a lot of problems in the industry. There is no doubt about that. If a ban is not forthcoming, then a better life for these greyhounds must be the absolute priority.

Oral Answers to Questions

John McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

As my hon. Friend has pointed out, there has been a long-standing legal provision for mandatory country of origin labelling on beef, in which, to claim that the country of origin is the UK, the animal must be born, reared and slaughtered in the UK. Those regulations on mandatory country of origin labelling were extended several years ago to cover all principal meat species. They do not yet extend to processed goods that might contain multiple goods, but there have been significant steps forward in broadening the scope of mandatory country of origin labelling.

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

What additional financial support he plans to provide to food producers to mitigate the effect of the covid-19 outbreak.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

What additional financial support he plans to provide to food producers to mitigate the effect of the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

We are working closely with the agriculture and fishing industries to manage the negative impacts of covid-19. In addition to HM Treasury’s financial support packages, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has announced support schemes for the dairy and fishing industries, and we continue to monitor other sectors.

[John Mc Nally [V]]

Will DEFRA Ministers go further and insist with their counterparts in the Department for International Trade on high standards for animal welfare, phytosanitary and food production imports to protect our domestic food producers?

[George Eustice]

The Government are very clear—and it was set out in our manifesto—that we will not compromise on our high food and animal welfare standards as we approach trade agreements. Specifically, that means that the UK will determine its own domestic standards when it comes to the so-called SPS chapter—those sanitary and phytosanitary issues—relating in particular to food safety. Those will be set at a UK level and we will not abandon or change those standards in response to demands from other countries.

Flooding

John McNally Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

In Scotland, we do not build housing or allow developments on floodplains. Flooding has become an all too familiar story in this place, and listening to the stories about individuals, businesses and communities devastated by the effect of flooding is indeed heartbreaking. I have listened to everything that has gone on, and when I was chair of the all-party group on flood prevention in this place, we heard story after story about the devastation caused to local communities. I, too, praise the courage, knowledge and professionalism of the rescue services. Dealing with the impact of flooding seems to be a never-ending story for them in this country.

As the former chair of the all-party group, I heard this narrative and I visited places affected. I visited the constituency of the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), and saw how a local medical centre could not afford insurance. The insurance premium went up to something like £400,000, and it could not move. These things were all too common, and people were left bewildered, not knowing who to turn to. In Scotland, we know who to turn to if we have an immediate need. The problem in England is that it is still following the same path as it was before.

I resigned from the all-party group on flood prevention; my friend the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) has now taken over that role, and I wish her all the best. But to listen to businesses and communities that have been devastated by flooding is a never-ending, heartbreaking story. That group carried out a lot of good work; we saw Flood Re introduced and new products that are supposed to prevent or control water ingress into houses, but nothing much seems to have changed since all that happened.

Where is the Prime Minister? He is reportedly avoiding the flooded areas so as not to detract from communities’ situations—or the Secretary of State’s situation, as we heard earlier—but, as has been said, that did not stop him turning up and holding emergency briefings in the run-up to the election. So where is he?

That is in contrast to our First Minister in Scotland. She has visited hard-hit communities; she is not feart to have difficult conversations with anyone. The SNP Government will continue to work with and support our local authorities. We have committed about £42 million each year through the local government capital grant, helping our communities invest in flood protection measures. This Prime Minister said recently he would rather die in a ditch. That flooded ditch is now a castle moat he is hiding behind—not so our First Minister.

[George Eustice]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for updating us on the steps that the Scottish Government have taken. Scotland has been less severely affected than other parts of the country by the recent floods, but there have been some effects—there have been some flooding incidents.

The hon. Gentleman made a point about insurance. As I said, we have introduced the Flood Re insurance scheme to ensure that people with properties who were unable to get access to insurance because of a flood risk are now able to.