Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Trees

Committee stage
Tuesday 20th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

I support my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising’s amendment, to which I have put my name. It strikes me that the Government have not really thought this through very carefully, because if this is going to be retrospective and it will be possible for this committee to review all legislation that has already been passed, then this will provoke a need for massive new legislation stretching into the future. The Government have the option, I suppose, of ignoring recommendations from the animal sentience committee, but if they do not ignore its recommendations, then of course that means they will inevitably get involved in more legislation in the future. I am not sure that that was really the intention of the Bill in the beginning. Surely, the original point of the Bill—not that I am a great supporter of it—was that there should be some form of oversight of government legislation to ensure that the sentience of animals was being taken into account, but if it works retrospectively, then of course it has unlimited capacity for creating ever more work and expense, as has been mentioned by my noble friend. Therefore, I very much support his amendment.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 18 and 23, which carry my name, and in support of Amendments 17 and 29. These all rule out scrutiny of policies established in the past and are consistent with my Amendment 3, which we discussed on the first day in Committee, which laid out the function of the committee and confined it to considering policies subsequent to the committee’s establishment. The arguments for not having any retrospective powers have been well made by others.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Hamilton of Epsom and Lord Trees

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am moving this amendment because my noble friend Lord Forsyth is putting the report on quantitative easing to bed at his Economic Affairs Committee, just across the Corridor, so he has asked me to move it for him. I apologise that I was not able to contribute to Second Reading, but I have read Members’ contributions to that debate, and very interesting they were, too.

This amendment would change the first line of Clause 1(1) to read:

“The Secretary of State must”,


by regulations—that is the amendment—

“establish and maintain a committee called the Animal Sentience Committee.”

That is because, in common with quite a lot of my fellow Members of the House of Lords, I have great worries about the creation of this committee at all. In the second group of amendments, we will look at the whole question of duplication. We already have an Animal Welfare Committee and it is not altogether obvious why we need another one doing much the same tasks as the old one. Surely it is the task of government, particularly a Conservative Government, to simplify legislation, not complicate it.

Therefore, by adding “by regulations”, it would be necessary for the Secretary of State to come back to Parliament and say precisely what committee he wanted. It would also be an opportunity for him to explain to Parliament how much this is all costing, which is something my noble friend Lord Robathan raised at Second Reading. Looking at this Bill, there is no evidence at all of what it will cost the taxpayer, and it is important that we know how much these things will cost. It is not ridiculous to argue that we should be told how much people will be paid for being on the committee.

Generally, there is a great worry that the committee will develop a complete mind of its own, go roaring off, interfere with many different areas of government, and become rather unaccountable. Anything that can be done to ensure that the Secretary of State comes back to Parliament should be welcomed by the Government, as we do not want this committee getting completely out of control.

A great worry about the whole of this Bill, as my noble friend Lord Hannan said, is:

“to what problem is this Bill a solution?”—[Official Report, 16/6/21; col. 1918.]

There is an awful lot of truth in that, and it was echoed by a number of other contributors at Second Reading. We ought to be careful about creating new layers of bureaucracy and a committee with enormous powers to interfere with other areas of government, and end up not being accountable to Parliament at all. I beg to move.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

Thank you, my Lords. I should like to speak to Amendment 3 in my name and Amendment 16 in the names of my noble friend Lord Kinnoull and the noble Lord, Lord Hannan.

Amendment 3 will sit in Clause 1, which introduces the animal sentience committee, and it seems right, proper and appropriate that the clause then goes on to describe the committee’s remit. That is to some extent covered in Clause 2(2), but my amendment goes further than that clause in two important respects. First, it stresses:

“The function of the Committee is to determine whether, in relation to the process of the formulation”—


and so on. It introduces the word “process”, which is critical to understanding the function of the committee. It is not influencing the policy or commenting on it. It can comment, and it has a remit to comment, on the process by which policy is formulated and implemented with regard to considering animal welfare implications. That is important. It may be a statement of the obvious, but it is perhaps sometimes worth stating the obvious.

Amendment 3, which would extend Clause 2(2), also refers to its remit to look at policy subsequent to the establishment of the committee, which would therefore have no right to retrospective review of policies previously formulated or implemented, even if they are in process at the time. This is an issue that a number of subsequent amendments on the list repeatedly allude to. It would therefore seem sensible to include that provision right at the beginning as a limitation on the committee’s remit.

Those are the main points: the amendment sets out the committee’s remit right at the beginning of the Bill, emphasising that its role is to comment on process, and would limit its remit to policy being formulated and implemented after the committee has been established.

Perhaps I may quickly speak to Amendment 16. It would restrict policy, which the Bill does not do; the Bill refers to “any government policy”, which is a huge remit. The amendment would restrict the policy to areas that were defined in Article 13 of the Lisbon treaty, which to some extent is the progenitor of the Bill. It seems sensible to make the scope of the committee more manageable, reasonable and pertinent by restricting that remit.