Official Controls (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023

Debate between Lord Benyon and Lord Moylan

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by sending the whole House’s best wishes to DCI John Caldwell and his family, following the despicable attack that took place last week. As the Prime Minister set out on Monday, there is no place for such attacks in Northern Ireland or anywhere in the United Kingdom.

I thank noble Lords for their contribution to the debate, and, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, for introducing it; I have huge respect for him and his colleagues. I will start and finish my response to the debate on the basis of years spent in Northern Ireland in my early 20s, where I saw some of the terrible things that the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, spoke about—and I have heard others speak in similar ways. I understand, perhaps more than many, the levels of compromise which have been required of him and his colleagues to get to where we are today, and the levels of leadership in the communities they represent, which the rest of us in these islands will never be called on to show. They have demonstrated quite remarkable levels of compromise and leadership, and I fully respect them for doing that.

The instrument which the Motion seeks to annul, the Official Controls (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2023, was laid on 12 January this year. In direct response to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, I assure the House that, if the Assembly is restored, the implementation of these measures will become the responsibility of the Executive and be delivered through the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland. Their purpose is to grant the Secretary of State concurrent powers: first, to allow Defra to construct facilities for the purposes of performing official controls, with the primary purpose of controlling goods travelling via Northern Ireland into the European Union; and secondly, to enable Defra to direct the competent authority, DAERA—the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs—to hire suitably qualified staff to perform these controls.

The Windsor Framework announced by the Government this week establishes a new way forward for Northern Ireland, making substantial changes to the protocol. It addresses the full range of issues it caused, safeguarding both economic and democratic principles in Northern Ireland. It was always this Government’s preference to secure a negotiated outcome, and this agreement, we hope, delivers for all communities in Northern Ireland. I entirely respect the points made by the noble Lord, and his and his party’s wish to really study this: we must be patient with them.

Benefits from the agreement are significant and wide-ranging and I shall provide noble Lords, briefly, with a couple of examples. We have scrapped all unnecessary red tape for internal UK trade into Northern Ireland. We have also permanently guaranteed unfettered access for Northern Ireland goods to the whole UK market, maintaining the integrity and smooth functioning of the UK internal market. The only controls that remain are for a very limited subset of goods, such as endangered species. We have secured an expansion of the green lane for UK food retailers. Supermarkets, wholesalers, hospitality and catering companies, and those providing food to public services, such as schools and hospitals, will be able to use the green lane. We have removed the requirement for costly health certificates for individual food products; and the requirement for up to 100% physical checks is replaced with a purely risk-based and intelligence-led arrangement.

We have also successfully negotiated significant changes on plants. Previously banned seed potatoes and other commercially important plants described by the EU as “high risk”, such as British oak trees, will now be able to move between GB and NI. Overall, the Windsor Framework delivers for businesses, consumers and all people and communities in Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

I now turn from the benefits of the Windsor Framework to this specific SI. As we have explained previously, this legislation was required in all scenarios. I pick up the point made by my noble friend Lord Moylan: SPS checks into Northern Ireland have happened for decades. The whole island of Ireland has been an epidemiological area for these purposes for several decades. The SPS inspection facilities that we are talking about in this SI will ensure that goods destined for the European Union travelling via Northern Ireland are subject to EU checks and controls. These will mainly be goods travelling directly to the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland ports. They are necessary checks, as the former DUP Minister for Agriculture, Edwin Poots, acknowledged. They will ensure that checks on live animals are performed safely and with due regard to animal and staff welfare, something that is not possible at the moment with the temporary arrangements that have been put in place. This is a long-standing commitment to protect against disease, given that the island of Ireland is a single epidemiological unit, pre-dating Brexit. They ensure that Irish trucks are not using Northern Ireland ports as a backdoor into the EU without red-lane checks. So, as we said in the Bill and have always maintained, we will need to have the appropriate facilities to carry out red-lane checks.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I want to ask something just for the sake of clarification. My understanding is that the checks that have been carried out for many years relate to livestock and that most people understand SPS checks, which may technically include livestock, as checks on food, seeds, plants and so forth. While I fully accept that there have always been checks on livestock, for good reason, and that they are uncontroversial—I do not think anyone is asking that they be abolished—it slightly overeggs the position to suggest that there have always been SPS checks in the broader sense in which that term has come to be used in the course of the debate following the referendum vote in 2016. However, I am happy to be corrected.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Benyon and Lord Moylan

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part three
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, it has been a fascinating debate. I do not want to detain the House, but I was very entertained by my noble friend Lord Moylan’s trips down the gradations of sentience that might exist across the animal kingdom. I was trying to work out whether he was a follower of Aristotle—who believed that animals lacked rational souls and therefore were outside the sphere of justice—or whether he was Descartian or Rousseauan in his view. I do not want to go into a philosophical—

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

It may help my noble friend—seeing as he was so kind as to ask the question, I am sure he will be interested in the answer—to know that I stand on every occasion with Aristotle on this, as on so many other matters. I just want that to be clear.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That is good to know. I am very grateful. However, I differ from him entirely if he thinks—which I do not think he really does—that the Government, of whom I am proud to be part, would engage with any form of ropey bunch of scientists. In fact we will come on to talk about, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, the degree of scientific breadth that went into the 300 different pieces of work studied by the London School of Economics in its reports on decapods and cephalopods. It is an indication of the expertise that exists out there.

I think my noble friend Lord Hannan has the advantage on me in that he believes that legislators do not need experts. I may have misunderstood him, but as I gaze around this Chamber I see precious few scientists, with one notable exception. There may be more—of course, there is the noble Lord, Lord Trees.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will make sure that every single person who applies for the committee has the necessary expertise, whatever background they come from. We will be looking for a range of people, from those with agricultural experience, those with experience of animals at the end of life in the slaughter process, and veterinarians. I made a list earlier; I will not repeat it because there were some long words which I cannot remember, but they will undoubtedly be a factor in deciding who will be members of the committee.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great disappointment that my noble friend has not conceded the very sensible proposal I made. It was unsurprising, however. What did surprise me were the remarks from the Opposition Dispatch Box. A more thorough-going endorsement of government policy better presented it is rare to imagine coming across. The idea that the Government never take scientific advice that needs to be checked or disputed and that they would never take dodgy scientific advice, now endorsed by the Labour Front Bench, is one I will cherish and store up for reference, no doubt, on some future occasion. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to your Lordships for your forbearance, and for your views and insights on this important piece of legislation. I will also speak to the consequential Amendment 43.

As I have said during previous debates on the Bill, the Government’s approach to recognising the sentience of animals will be guided by the scientific evidence. My department commissioned an independent review from the London School of Economics and Political Science of the evidence surrounding the sentience of cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans for that very purpose. As promised, I made the findings of that review available to your Lordships for consideration ahead of today’s debate.

Sentience is broadly understood to be the capacity to feel pain. Our Animal Welfare Committee advised in 2018:

“Sentience is the capacity to experience pain, distress and harm.”


The review considered the findings of around 300 scientific studies, using a set of criteria based on brain structure, nervous system complexity and testing for adaptive behaviour to assess whether these classes of invertebrate are sentient. The report itself was subject to peer review.

The Government have given careful consideration to the contents of the final report. We accept that there is strong evidence of the sentience of these invertebrates. It is only right, therefore, that they are included in the provisions of the Bill. That means that the animal sentience committee, once established, may produce reports under Section 2 of the Bill in relation to the welfare of cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans.

However, I want to be clear that this amendment does not alter existing legislation or policy. I have heard, for example, the concerns put to me by representatives of the fishing sector, and I can assure this House that nothing in this amendment, or indeed in the Bill, changes the rules governing the activities of individuals or businesses.

Naturally, in due course, the Government may wish to consider whether it would be appropriate to amend the scope of other animal welfare legislation to include cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans. While that is not the question we are discussing today, I take the opportunity to assure your Lordships that any changes to existing laws would be subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny, and we would consider carefully how we would engage industry in their development.

Today, we propose simply to recognise the sentience of these invertebrates in line with the scientific evidence. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and my noble friends Lady Fookes and Lord Randall of Uxbridge, for their previous amendments on this subject. I hope that they, and the rest of the House, will support this amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is with some regret that I note that my noble friend at the Dispatch Box did not thank me for my previous amendment on this subject. I accepted as far back as Committee that it was likely that cephalopods and decapod crustaceans would be added to the list of sentient beings covered by the Bill, although I did not expect it to be done in the Bill but through the secondary legislation which it contemplates.

I introduced an amendment in Committee that said, beyond vertebrates, the Government can only add, to the list of sentient beings, cephalopods and decapod crustaceans and no more. This was countered, so to speak, by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, who put down an amendment that actually added those two classes of creature to the face of the Bill. Neither amendment, of course, proceeded at Committee stage. I find it rather sad and curious that, of those two amendments, my noble friend at the Dispatch Box selected that promoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and has rather ignored mine.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for those remarks. I think it might be helpful to the House if I say how this came about, as it answers the points about how we got to the stage of including decapods and cephalopods in the Bill. It is a matter of serendipity. For many years people have been pushing for work to be done, and it was done by the LSE. It just so happened that that report came into the Government’s hands over the summer while we were in the process of going through the Committee stage, and it seemed an obvious moment to take this forward when the findings of that report were so clear.

To cheer up my noble friend Lord Hamilton a bit at this late hour, I cannot think of any other species that are likely to go through this process. If there are any, I suggest that it will probably be at least a decade before someone is standing here recommending that we take that forward. It may be less; this is a fast-moving area of science, but it has taken many years—I do not know how many precisely—for decapods and cephalopods to be recognised in this way. I hope that is reassuring.

The noble Baroness asked a question about the food industry and making sure that, if the committee were to make recommendations about how one treats these organisms as part of food processing or cooking and the law is then changed because Ministers accepted that advice, there would have to be a huge amount of work with the food industry to make sure that it was prepared for it. However, this amendment does not change anything. It does not change the law; it just allows it to be within the remit of the committee to give advice to Ministers who will then take other factors into account, regarding, for example, the marine environment, fish, the economic benefits of the fishing industry to coastal communities or the importance that the Government put on fish being part of the nation’s balanced diet. These are the sort of wider factors that Governments will take into consideration.

I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Moylan feels put upon. I thought that I was the victim here, but clearly that is not the case. I will try to be kind to him when I come to his amendment.

I turn to Amendment 41, and here my remarks relate to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Trees. The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill recognises that live animals with a backbone—vertebrates—are sentient. A government amendment has been tabled to also recognise decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs as sentient, as I have said. It is our intention and expectation that the committee will concern itself with consideration of the welfare of live animals. In practice, it would be difficult for the committee and government departments to identify the way in which a policy under consideration affects the welfare needs of a foetus or an embryo, as opposed to those of the mother animal. It is unlikely, therefore, that the committee would find itself considering a policy beyond its remit. The central recommendation in the report is that these cephalopods and decapods will be regarded as sentient animals, but we carefully considered the recommendations in the review. The evidence of sentient decapods and cephalopods is clear: we are committed to being led by science when it comes to sentience, and that is why we amended the Bill.

Turning to Amendment 42 in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan, as I mentioned, the Government are led by the science when it comes to sentience. We have considered the review’s findings carefully before amending the Bill to recognise these invertebrates as sentient. I can confirm that, at the present time, there is no intention to treat any other invertebrates, beyond decapods and cephalopods, as sentient animals. The scientific evidence that led to the Government commissioning the LSE review has been many years in the making. I can assure the House that this will continue to be the case for future extension, using the delegated powers in Clause 5.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I note what my noble friend says about there being no plans—and I fully accept that that is so, as he has assured the House—but if there are no plans, why do the Government wish to take the powers to continue to pursue them? Would it not be better if the Minister would just accept that primary legislation will be required as and when the science demands it?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I hope I can reassure my noble friend by saying that if the Secretary of State were to use his or her powers to recommend another species or group of species to be included, that would be the subject of parliamentary oversight. It would be an affirmative resolution requiring debate in both Houses and would be subject to other areas of parliamentary scrutiny, such as Select Committees and other means by which noble Lords and people in the other place would seek to hold that decision to account. I hope that we would not wish to risk this Bill becoming out of date by removing the ability to update its scope should the scientific evidence develop.

While we are not aware of any instances on the horizon, we cannot discount the possibility that new evidence will emerge in the future that demonstrates the sentience of some additional category of invertebrate. Decapods and cephalopods were the invertebrates most likely to qualify for being regarded as sentient animals. The likelihood that another category of invertebrate might one day be shown to be sentient is small, but it is not zero. That is why we wish to leave an option to update the definition if needed. Such a power must be subject to appropriate checks and balances, of course, and I will address this point shortly.

In the meantime, I take this opportunity to clarify that the Bill is all about government policy decision-making and how well particular decisions take account of the welfare needs of animals. The Bill and our amendments do not change existing law or impose new restrictions on individuals or businesses. I hope that your Lordships will agree that the time has come to include decapod crustaceans and cephalopods in the Bill and will therefore support the government amendment. I also hope that the points I have set out reassure noble Lords and that they will be content not to press their amendments. I beg to move.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Benyon and Lord Moylan

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. It would not be our intention to edit the committee’s membership by their eating habits or by any other habits or disciplines. We want a balanced committee that draws together a wide range of expertise across the whole field of animal welfare.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken in support of the amendment, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, for contributing to the debate. I reiterate the point that the science that underlies animal sentience is of crucial importance to the Bill and deserves further debate, which may come at a future stage in the Bill. To be absolutely clear on my own position in case it was not, I am not saying that there is no such thing as animal sentience science—I believe there is such a branch of science—but I am saying that it is a relatively new, relatively specialist and slightly political branch of science. It needs the buttressing of peer review.

In that regard, I was disappointed by the response of my noble friend the Minister. He said that the Government did not want to dictate to committees such as this because they usually did well-reasoned reports. I thought “usually” was interesting. I quite understand that the Minister does not appear to want to dictate to committees that do badly reasoned reports; he wants to stand aloof from good research, from good reason and from bad reason alike. But that is not a very good basis for carrying the public with you. When this committee comes into existence and produces its reports, I think that much of what it says will be met by the challenge, “Well, that’s not really science anyway.”

It is slightly remarkable that, given the opportunity by these modest amendments to rebut that challenge and say, “No, this is science at the cutting edge. It is the best science we have and we know that because we have ensured that it is properly peer-reviewed”, the Government have turned away in distain and said that they would rather have uncertain science and not have any checks on what the committee is going to do. I am sure that, if they reflect, they will think that that is not really a sustainable or credible position. For the moment, to allow them time to reflect, I am happy to see my amendment withdrawn.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I would be going down a very dangerous path if I moved on to cats and how many songbirds they account for, and would probably find this getting out of hand, but my noble friend is absolutely right. What we seek to achieve through not just animal welfare provision but other legislation and regulation is a balanced countryside. We do not get it right; we are suffering a cataclysmic decline in species, which means that our children and grandchildren will not see the species that we have perhaps relied on seeing regularly. That is a tragedy that we are seeking to reverse through a variety of other policies. At the same time, when it comes to pest control, we can do it as humanely as possible, and we can have management techniques that protect both species and landscapes. It is not an exact science and it will be got wrong at certain times, but, by and large, I think there is a great unity of purpose in trying to reverse these tragic declines in species.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, given our discussion at our earlier session two weeks ago about the composition of the committee, I was struck by the Minister’s certainty that he could describe the members of the committee in such paradigmatic terms. I cannot recall his exact words—I will look at them in Hansard—but he said that the members of the committee would be knowledgeable, balanced, cautious, restrained and unwilling to rush into areas where they were not wanted. This must narrow the number of people who would qualify to sit on the committee to the point where I suspect the Minister must have a list of names already. If he has not, or is not willing to disclose it, is he at least willing to assure us that, when the public appointment process is launched and the person description drafted, the words that he has used now will be carried over verbatim into the person description for the applicants so that we get exactly who he appears to be promising us?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am very worried about my noble friend. He appears to have a very jaundiced view of human nature. There are a great many people with those skills whom we meet every day, whether we are having our dog treated at the vets or talking to farmers or discussing wider policy areas in this field. I hope I can prove to him that his glass should be half full on this; we will find the right people.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am not an expert, and that is why I want an animal sentience committee that will advise me and my successors on the rights and wrongs of dispatching species of all kinds. I cannot answer my noble friend. I understand the point that he makes. He is a seasoned political debater. This is an issue which requires people who will make decisions about such matters, and that should not be lay men like me.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister and to other noble Lords who have spoken on this group of amendments, particularly my noble friends Lord Caithness, Lord Robathan and Lord Mancroft. I was pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Trees, felt able to express support for Amendment 57 in my name.

I also want on this occasion to thank the Minister for handling us so well. These have been two afternoons of extremely informative and at the same time very good-natured debate, and he has taken everything that we have thrown at him and come back with a dazzling display of intellect and sympathy, though it is mildly regrettable that the only philosophers he cites are all French—maybe he should have a closer look at that for the future.

I apologise for expressing myself badly if I conveyed to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, that I did not think that dogs could feel pleasure. That is not what I intended to say. In fact, one of my amendments specifically preserved mammals as part of the scope of the Bill. I was trying to say that, while we can certainly understand pleasure and indeed pain in a dog or in the higher mammals, it is very difficult to understand what that means in any meaningful sense when one is talking about fish, for example. It was simply that point that I was trying to make; I am sorry if I did not express myself well.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, that Amendments 52 and 53 would add fish and birds to a clause that excepts—it is an exception clause—so that it would except homo sapiens “and fish” and so on. It takes them out of the scope of the Bill. Clearly, the noble Baroness does not want them taken out. However, she was never going to express support so, in a way, it does not matter.

As a final point, I want to pick up on what the noble Baroness said about cephalopods and decapod crustaceans, and it is a bit of commentary on much of the Bill. I think that we are all agreed that the Bill has to say something, and we have a Bill here which is so empty of content that it would almost be a scandal if it passed in its current circumstances. Today and on previous occasions, we have discussed how it ought to say something about composition and about term limits—which we discussed last time. Perhaps there is a feeling that it ought to say something too about cephalopods and decapod crustaceans. Where we might differ around the Committee, because we have not sufficiently coalesced, is on what exactly it should say on those issues, but I think that many of us sitting here, from all political parties and groups, can probably agree with me if I say to the Minister that as the Bill stands, it is not good enough, and that when it comes back on Report we expect many things that we have said to be heard and the Bill to be improved in a number of respects.

I wish the Minister well in his endeavours to make the Bill better so that we are all as happy with it as we have been with him. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Livestock Feed: Processed Animal Protein

Debate between Lord Benyon and Lord Moylan

Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, the EU is introducing changes that follow the World Organisation for Animal Health feed rules, and its own agreed road map. These permit the feeding of porcine processed animal protein to poultry and poultry processed animal protein to pigs, and ruminant gelatine and collagen, and protein derived from insects, to pigs and poultry. The Government are assessing the implications of these changes.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, given the association of processed animal protein with BSE and CJD in the past, if, having assessed the situation, Her Majesty’s Government decide to ban the import of food produced in this manner from the EU, is there a mechanism in the trade and co-operation agreement that would allow for that? If so, is there a means of making it legally effective in Northern Ireland, given the protocol?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, I first say to my noble friend that the experience of BSE has scarred both me and the Agriculture Minister, Victoria Prentis; we both well remember that awful time. I assure him that at the moment we receive into this country meat products from countries that sign up to the OIE, that are of a lower standard even than the one to which the EU will go following the changes it has announced. There is no question of this concerning any trade and co-operation agreement, and meat products will still be able to be traded to and from Northern Ireland, as they will with the EU.