Agriculture Bill

Debate between Lord Dobbs and Lord Trees

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak on this amendment. I very much welcome the inclusion in the Bill of the recognition that animal health and welfare is important and worthy of support. I want to speak particularly to Amendment 26. I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare.

I have huge sympathy for the amendment, but I have a reservation about the word change that I hope to be able to explain satisfactorily. There is of course no question that health and welfare are frequently interrelated. Disease and ill health almost always have a welfare consequence. However, there may be situations and indeed desirable welfare objectives where health is not immediately involved, and I think the current wording reflects that. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, who spoke just before me, articulated that point pretty well.

I interpret the current wording not as an either/or situation but rather that the protection or improvement of both health and welfare are included as eligible for financial assistance. Another way of looking at this is to conceive of a Venn diagram, with health as one circle and welfare as another. While the two overlap hugely, there may be elements of welfare in particular that do not have an immediate health relevance. For example, enabling animals to be able to better express normal behaviour may not have an immediate health issue. Were “or” to be replaced by “and” in this paragraph, thinking of the Venn diagram, one might argue semantically that only where both health and welfare interact would support be given and, ironically, I think that would be more restrictive than as currently conceived and, indeed, than the noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, and his fellow movers would want.

I would welcome an assurance from the Minister that my interpretation of this paragraph is indeed what the Government intend, in which case I am content with the current wording—with apologies to the noble Earls, Lord Shrewsbury and Lord Caithness, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, who I know are extremely committed to animal welfare, as indeed am I.

[Lord Dobbs (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I apologise for not being able to join the House for the discussions on Tuesday. There was an IT hitch and I was virtually silenced. Like so many of your Lordships, I do so hate virtual. However, it has been a pleasure to follow the debate and to listen to so many expert ideas and views. I was particularly struck by the debate that was just recently led by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I was delighted to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, that my old hometown of Bridport is flourishing.

This is a terrifyingly long list of amendments to get through, so I shall try to be brief. I remind noble Lords that the devil lies in the details of many of these amendments, of course but also in their sheer weight. When the list of amendments is almost as long as the Bill itself, I fear there is a real danger of ending up with a piece of legislation so cumbersome that it simply gets bogged down in the mud.

In that spirit, I am happy to speak in favour of Amendment 26 in the name of my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury and others. Replacing “or” with “and” seems such a small change—I am not sure I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Trees, although we have to consider very carefully the points that he has just made—and I thought my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury spoke very clearly and eloquently.

The amendment helps emphasise that health and welfare, if not exactly the same, are certainly two sides of the same coin, which leads to better outcomes for not only livestock but consumers. Without repeating any Second Reading discussions, consumers are the key to so many of the issues raised by so many of the amendments. Consumers want better food and wider choice at affordable prices. They have no interest in a race to the bottom. That is why I suspect most of us would be delighted to see more livestock raised outdoors, as the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Dundee suggests. I appreciated the wise and learned comments of the noble—and newly restored—Lord, Lord Rooker.

However, I feel much less sanguine, I am afraid, about some of the other amendments, such as Amendment 68, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and others. The experience of the cousin of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in Australia notwithstanding, these amendments would add all sorts of unnecessary chains and handcuffs to the legislation and perhaps make it worse. Amendment 68 and other amendments like it—Amendment 77, for instance—would change the tone of the Bill and add to its complexity and would help make British farmers less competitive.

There has to be some consistency in all this. If we worry about imports of substandard chickens, for instance, it is counterproductive to make chicken less competitive, placing even more reliance on imported chicken by raising barriers for British chicken farmers. If all we are doing is to permit or enable imports of more chickens from the other side of the world, we are simply shifting the problem elsewhere. We must try to find a balance if we are to provide effective legislation.

So much in Amendments 77 and 125 is very worthy and I have no objection to the principles and values, but we have to concentrate on one prime objective, which is delivering a piece of legislation which is practicable and workable and enables British farming to flourish. In my view, the last three amendments I have mentioned are likely to undermine that objective of balance and practicability so, despite their fine objectives, I hope that they will not be pursued.