Fur Trade

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Zeichner]

I thank the hon. Gentleman; I will come very specifically to that point later in that speech, but my belief is that we do have the power.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the widespread public support. One should always be careful to differentiate grassroots and astroturf in email responses. On this issue, it is clear that there has been sustained interest for a long time from all the different areas of my constituency, all indicating a deep and long-standing concern that the trade should be ended. I am sure that that is true of other hon. Members as well. That is not just a transient mood, but a long-standing demand.

[Daniel Zeichner]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. The number of hon. Members present shows the breadth of support, and the petition shows that it is consistent across the country. It has also been a response to some strong campaigns. There have been 109,554 signatures to the petition, but there is a spectrum of support behind it from significant organisations, including the Humane Society International; businesses such as Lush; and a range of cultural figures such as Brian May of Queen and Evanna Lynch of “Harry Potter”. It is fair to conclude that our country wants to ban fur.

It is not just the UK. Last week I had the pleasure of meeting a Finnish member of the European Parliament, Sirpa Pietikäinen, who leads the cross-party group on animal welfare. She assured me that there is growing and widespread support not just in the Parliament but in countries that have traditionally been more sympathetic to the fur trade.

The faux fur issue is an added complexity that is currently being probed by the EFRA Committee. The public are being duped into buying fur by mistake. We have a bizarre situation where less scrupulous retailers, or retailers that have been misled by wholesalers or people further down the supply chain, mislabel their products as faux fur when in fact they are real fur. That is partly a consequence of the fact that, from some suppliers, the real fur is very cheap, which says a lot about how it is produced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my constituency neighbour. I had not necessarily considered that, but as so often with legislation, it seems that there is more scope to do things than people tell us. There may be more flexibility than is sometimes suggested, so that may certainly be worth looking at.

[John Spellar]

That is an extremely important point and is actually an important part of the wider debate. Many of these issues are not a matter of EU regulation—they are a matter of political will and choice in this country. The debate’s clear message to the Minister needs to be that the Government have options and should exercise them, and not keep hiding behind a figment of rules from Brussels, which do not have the weight that the Government put on them.