Wild Animals in Circuses (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Roger Gale and Mike Penning

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mike Penning]

My right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) has addressed exactly the memory loss that I had during my speech on Report. I could not remember the dates when the all-party group dealt with this. I was here in a different capacity at that time. All of us would understand the situation in ’97, when there was so much legislation from a new Government. Finding time was difficult, but there was a huge majority on this issue and it was not contentious. I remember the discussions absolutely vividly. People were saying, “Would you do this private Member’s Bill? Would you take this forward? Would you go into the ballot?” It has taken until today to get the Third Reading of a Bill that, frankly, is a no-brainer in this day and age.

I am thrilled that the Minister has taken on this Bill and by the way in which he has done so. I was not invited to go on the Public Bill Committee, and I was genuine when I said that I would have loved to. I was not here on Second Reading, so people obviously thought that I was not interested, and so on—but we are where we are.

I hope that when this very short Bill goes to the Lords they will look at what this House has done—how we have come together—and move the Bill through the other place quite fast so that it can be on the statute book in time for what the Minister is looking at doing.

People out there will say, “We miss this” and “We miss that”, but there is not very many of them. As the Minister said, the country has changed. If we had tried to bring this Bill through in the ’70s and ’80s, we might have struggled, because people were different. I am not saying that they were bad, but what was acceptable then is not acceptable now. Making animals do things that are completely unnatural to them is not acceptable. I vividly remember one of these fly-on-the-wall videos that was taken at one circus—I will not name it, because a lot of circuses were bad. People were abusing and torturing animals to make them do things that were not natural. I hope that the Bill means that that never, ever happens again.

Other legislation needs to come forward, and I am conscious of what the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin), was saying. We have legislation on the statute book but we have to be good and strict on this issue. Dogfighting is on the up in this country. Cockfighting, believe it or not, continues to this day. There is badger-baiting.

[Sir Roger Gale]

Trophy hunting.

[Sir Mike Penning]

To me, a trophy-hunting Bill is the simplest thing in the world. If someone wants to do that sort of thing, do not bring trophies—the animal’s head—to this country. That is so abhorrent to 99.9% of the British public.

We have set a line in the sand and shown that we can bring such Bills through the House—it is a shame that more people are not in the Public Gallery to listen to us when we get things right. I am sure that, tomorrow, in Parliament this will get thruppence, because of President Trump and other things that have been going on, but this indicates what this House can do and is right morally and ethically. We should be very proud of what has happened in this House today.