Racehorse Protection

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Hill]

Yes. The petitioners’ point is that there is a conflict of interest.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

A whole number of realms of life are subject to scrutinised self-regulation by people who actually know the profession, industry or walk of life in question. We may look for improvements, but why would we want to take regulation away from the people who have a long-term interest in sustaining the industry and who have the support of the millions who follow racing, either by going to races or by watching them on television?

[Mike Hill]

That is, of course, a perfectly appropriate point to make, and the BHA in particular would agree. As I said, I have sat down with the BHA and it has made improvements in areas where it recognises that they are required.

I will cite examples to make the case that racehorses have been failed by the BHA, and set out why the BHA should lose its horse welfare remit and be replaced by an independent body that has horse welfare as its only concern.

The problem is nothing new; it is historical. The rich and politically influential people in racing have always had their hands on the reins. They have controlled all aspects since they chose to self-regulate the sport back in 1750, just a few streets away from here, in a Pall Mall gentlemen’s club called the Jockey Club. Their stranglehold on power, and for a short period that of jump racing’s National Hunt Committee, existed until this century, when it married for a few years with a fledgling authority, the Horseracing Regulatory Authority. In 2007, those authorities gave birth to the current incumbent, the BHA.

This is a blue-blooded family who maintain power. Their relatives maintain control too. Weatherby’s, racing’s private administrator and registrar of thoroughbred births and deaths, has since 1770 and for seven family generations enjoyed direct involvement in the fully integrated sport of breeding, racing and disposing of thoroughbreds. Much of the information that it gathers on racehorses is kept private, but in some circumstances it can be bought.

According to the petitioners, this is an exclusive old boys’ club run like a masonic lodge with friends in Government. Through the ages, the Government have left this racing club in full control, rarely intervening in horse welfare matters. Parliament has seen few discussions on the subject. The last time any serious debate took place here was in 1954, when Lord Ammon rose to ask

“whether the attention of Her Majesty’s Government has been directed to the disaster on the Aintree racecourse during the Grand National Steeplechase on Saturday, 27th March when 29 horses started, of which 20, including four killed, failed to finish the course; whether the law concerning cruelty to animals applies in such cases, and to move for Papers.”

He went on to say:

“Nor is that all the story; hundreds of the horses who fail are not heard of again. It is difficult to get news about them”.

He was talked down by Earl Winterton, who—with the support of the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, Lord Lloyd—rejected Government intervention, stating that

“it would be a pity if it went out from your Lordships’ House that there was undue criticism here. Surely we should leave the appropriate authorities”

—by which he meant racing’s self-regulating National Hunt Committee—

“to consider what has been said…and decide what course they should take”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 April 1954; Vol. 186, c. 1041-1049.]

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, the self-regulators did not take any course of action.

I mention that historical debate because, importantly, the same scenario is being played out today. Like Lord Ammon, I ask whether Her Majesty’s Government are aware that three horses died just weeks ago in a single afternoon’s racing at Perth racecourse. Is the horse welfare regulator—the BHA—going to make any changes to the racecourse or to the conditions of the races at Perth, to prevent this from happening again? Were the Government or anyone else aware that, more alarmingly, this is the second time that three horses have died in a day’s racing at Perth? After their deaths in August 2016, the BHA failed to act, making no changes and learning no lessons. As a consequence, horses have had to be killed yet again. Just as its predecessor for jump racing, the National Hunt Committee, walked away from horse deaths back in 1954, the BHA is doing the same—and this, of course, when the deaths do not make the headlines.

One might think that horses are racing’s most valuable assets. That is perhaps so for horses such as Frankel, Galileo or Kew Gardens, who are making millions of pounds for their owners, but maybe not for elderly brood mares and former racehorses such as Maidment or Marilouise. These are just two of 23 thoroughbreds, some pregnant and one with a foal at foot, who were taken at the eleventh hour from a bankrupt stud in Newmarket—the beating heart of British racing. Those horses were not saved with the support of the racing industry or the BHA but by Hillside animal sanctuary, a rescue centre that relies on public donations to feed and care for unwanted animals. Had Hillside not taken them into its care just a few weeks ago, on 17 September, those horses, including the foal, would have been destroyed—they were pre-booked for 18 September at 11 am. Fortunately for the BHA’s high-profile public image campaign, The Horse Comes First, and its flagship Retraining of Racehorses scheme, ROR, that desperate rescue of 23 vulnerable racehorses and broodmares, who were down on their luck, did not hit the national headlines.

That highlights the major welfare issue of overbreeding, and likewise what to do with the thousands of horses who face ejection by the industry each year, which in effect is the very same problem. In 2008, the Irish Republic, which is the supply centre of half the horses who are trained and raced in Britain, was hit by the global economic recession. British Racing, led by the BHA, stood by and watched an exponential rise in slaughter figures, from just over 2,000 in 2008 to 24,000 in 2012.

[John Spellar]

My recollection is that the global financial crisis also led to a crisis in horse-owning more generally, quite apart from horse-racing. I am not clear whether the perfectly legitimate line that my hon. Friend is taking is, actually, to oppose horse-racing.

[Mike Hill]

I remind my right hon. Friend that I am a member of the Petitions Committee and I am quoting the facts and figures of the petitioners on this occasion.

Abattoirs sprung up almost overnight to cater for the demand for the disposal of unwanted horses. In the crudest terms, Irish and British horse-racing had gone from a sport to a food producer. Young foals and those at the end of the careers, the injured or slow, poor-performing stallions and mediocre brood mares similar to Maidment and Marilouise, who Hillside took in just weeks ago, were turned into meat for human consumption or fed to hunting hounds, while others were rendered down to be mixed into everyday products. That massacre of the sport’s equine competitors was the result of a lack of foresight and strategic planning for the future, the ignorance of potential outcomes and the sheer apathy of a self-regulated industry. The average punter and Royal Ascot celebrity would never know this secret, because of a lack of transparency and a closed door to freedom of information.

Since that animal welfare disaster, the BHA has failed to put limits on breeding numbers. One hundred years ago, a top stallion would cover—a polite way of saying mate—with 15 mares. Around 35 years ago, stallions such as the ill-fated Shergar would cover 40 at best. This year, we are seeing single stallions cover 100, 200 or even 300 mares. It is irresponsible, and the BHA stands by and lets it happen. It is as bad as any unscrupulous dog breeder who has hit the news in recent years—behaviour that eventually brought about a change to the law.

The burgeoning racing fixtures list, drawn up to accommodate the swell of horses being bred, will be the biggest ever in 2019, with over 1,500 meetings. It will not meet the needs of a huge number of horses who will not win a race and will earn little or no prize money, and who will then be quickly cast out and replaced by another on the conveyor belt of horses that pass through the industry, which brings me on to racing itself.

When a horse steps on to a British racecourse, its welfare and protection from potential suffering should be paramount. Yet each horse has about a one in 50 chance of not surviving a year in racing. The BHA likes to minimise that alarming figure by stating that just 0.2% of runners die in racing, although if a horse runs 10 times and dies, that is classed as one in 10 runners. It is confusing and deliberately misleading. The disrespect shown by classing horses’ deaths as a percentage of runners, and the BHA’s unwillingness to name individual horses who are killed in an understandable and comprehensive list, as is done in Ireland, led the campaign group Animal Aid to launch its own online website, Race Horse Death Watch, where one can see the names of ill-fated horses and the racecourses where they died. It has become an endless list and makes for disturbing viewing.

Why do horses die racing? Is it by accident, as the BHA cited in the death of a two-year-old colt last month at Doncaster, or are horse deaths to some extent preventable? In the case of the two-year-old, the BHA shamefully absolved itself and the racecourse of any responsibility for the young horse’s death. I will go through the account of an eyewitness who saw this tragedy unfold. An inexperienced two-year-old colt known as Commanding Officer entered an enclosed starting stall from which to race. The horse became frightened and reared in an attempt to free himself from the all-enveloping stall. Instead of removing this panic-stricken, novice horse from the race, it was decided to blindfold him in the hope of eventually getting him to run. Without his vision, and with natural equine fear, he reared again in the starting stall. The poor design of stalls enabled Commanding Officer to trap a foreleg between the front gates. As he pulled back, blind, to free himself, his foreleg snapped into two as the gates held firmly shut. By design, there is, surprisingly, no quick-release mechanism on the gates to free individual horses from stalls. As a consequence, the colt’s hoof and five inches of bare cannon bone—his shin—were hanging off the end of his leg, held by just a tenuous flap of skin.

The horse was eventually destroyed, but not without immense suffering. The eyewitness described the horse’s destruction as “unbelievable”, and a load of empty syringes were thrown over the screens—those would have contained a deadly cocktail of drugs in a vain attempt to inject the scared and injured animal. The race was held up but still went ahead. As the other horses set off running, Commander Officer’s dead body lay in a white horsebox parked next to the stalls. He was two years old—just a baby.

Shockingly, the BHA stewards’ report of events stated that

“the BHA’s Equine Health and Welfare department…found that the starting and loading procedures were followed correctly, and that the injury sustained by Commanding Officer was an accident.”

There was no mention of the inability to quickly open the stall gates to free the horse. That might have been the end of the story, but it is not. At a previous meeting at the very same racecourse, Doncaster, an identical fatal injury happened that was similarly caused by the poor design of the stalls. An experienced horse known as Mukaynis caught his left foreleg in the starting stall gates when, yet again, the horse’s vision was compromised by a hood. Mukaynis, with restricted vision, was startled by a stalls handler. The gelding reared, the gates trapping a leg. Perhaps the BHA thinks that lightning cannot strike twice and crosses it fingers—it did not act after Mukaynis lost his life, and the young Commanding Officer has now lost his life, too. Both horses were failed by poor practice that could have been resolved with basic insight and cost-effective physical changes to starting stall gates.

That is not the only problem. The BHA’s crude reporting of events should also be scrutinised. The race-day stewards, who are mostly amateurs, are commissioned by and under guidance from the BHA, and are meant to monitor the races, take action, note any concerning matters and report them in the official BHA documents. The stewards reported that both horse victims were “unruly in the stalls”. Their report did not even acknowledge that Mukaynis was dead. The BHA allows anthropomorphic terms to be used to describe fear in an equine that is confined in an unnatural manner and unable to escape when panicked.

I could talk into the night about other heart-wrenching cases in which stewards failed to monitor or report welfare issues. Many racehorse deaths could easily have been avoided if the tired horses that had no chance of winning were simply pulled up. Horses are literally run into the ground: they are forced to race without having time to recover from the previous races.

I have spoken to the BHA, and it has talked about making improvements in the areas that I have condemned. It says that it reviews deaths, but its Cheltenham review came about only because of the public and media outcry over the death of six horses at this year’s festival meeting. It published no review of the 2017 festival and did not even mention the five horses that died during it, or the seven that were killed in 2016. The media failed to pick up on those deaths, so the BHA remained silent. It takes the wrath of public opinion to make it look into deaths, let alone take responsibility for them.

The BHA states that it has spent £33 million since 2017 on veterinary research and education. That sum may sound reasonable, but the BHA grossed more than £1.8 billion during that time, and it equates to less than 2% of expenditure. It is about £150 per horse—less money than a jockey’s riding fee for one race. Racing is a rich industry and can afford to increase its welfare budget. If it does not, horses will continue to pay the price of the underspend with their lives.

The petitioners call on the Government to act by removing the British Horseracing Authority from its role as welfare regulator for racehorses, while allowing it to retain its other roles in racing, and to replace the BHA with an independent body that is responsible only for horse welfare.