Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill

Lord Hart of Tenby Excerpts

Friday 5th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hart of Tenby (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, on getting this legislation to the House. Not a lot of people know this, but she and I first met back in 2007, when we were doing our candidate selection course at a hotel in Milton Keynes. Ever since then, she has been a most wonderful parliamentary friend—and, as everybody here already knows, her career has advanced further, faster and more successfully than I could ever have dreamed that mine would. I thank her for the friendship that she has shown.

In the same breath, I extend my thanks to Black Rod, the clerks and the doorkeepers for their patience and good will since I came here just a few weeks ago. Having been away from the Palace of Westminster for a year, when I returned I wondered whether everything would be just the same and what changes I could expect. As with all good institutions, when I got here I realised that all the things that were important have not changed at all—and I thank everyone for making sure that that is the case and continues to be so.

To the noble Lords, Lord Brady and Lord Hunt, I give huge thanks for their support when I came here. Both have given me advice over many years, both in the Commons and here, and I hope very much to continue to tap into that advice as time goes by.

I did not realise that this was going to happen today, but I am particularly honoured to follow the noble Lord, Lord Trees, in this debate. For some time, in all the different aspects of animal welfare legislation that has come before this House and the other place over the years, I always felt that we lacked a sufficient veterinary input and were short of vets. I am glad to see that we now have many more vets than we once did; we have gone from nought to two in the House of Commons, which probably counts as progress. One of the reasons I always thought we needed more vets in these debates is to make the important distinction that the noble Lord made just now between suffering and cruelty: suffering can be measured and cruelty is generally subjective. In my previous existence, there was an adage that we preferred our evidence to be vetted rather than doctored. At least we know now that when the legislation comes before this House and the other place, it is going to be vetted to the highest possible standard.

Students of Wikipedia might have noticed that I have only one claim to fame in an otherwise uninteresting political career: I am the only Secretary of State for Wales to have been born in Wolverhampton. This is not something I made much of when I was in the Wales Office, as noble Lords might understand, but I am very proud of my West Midlands roots. My mother put it down to a medical emergency rather than a geographical preference, but I am quite happy with that entry.

That is where that bit ended. All my working life has been spent in west Wales, in Pembrokeshire, which is known to many people here. My wife’s family farm there, my children were born there and I was the MP for a bit of the county of Pembrokeshire for 14 and a half years. The county is steeped in agriculture, tourism, energy production and, luckily for me, cricket and the countryside, two things that have occupied much of my life.

Those interests have led me to some interesting places; they led me to being able to become both the chief executive and chair of the Countryside Alliance for seven to 10 years. In that role I met so many Members of this House and the House of Commons, including the noble Lord, Lord Burns. Not a lot of people know this, but he and I were crammed in the back of a Land Rover for six months in 1999 on the instructions of Jack Straw in his pursuit of evidence to support the Burns inquiry into hunting. That inquiry was a fascinating tour of all the most wonderful, interesting and beautiful places, and started with the Blencathra Foxhounds. It was the most interesting journey in terms of its geography and the knowledge we both obtained. It is why I entered politics, how I entered government and why I went to the Wales Office and ultimately became Chief Whip for Rishi Sunak.

To finish, I will return to the animal welfare theme. We should probably all admit that the statute book is littered with examples of very well-meaning but not necessarily effective pieces of animal welfare legislation. There is a reason for that and a reason why Governments seem to be hesitant sometimes: either the proposals go far too far or they do not go far enough, so we end up with either a fudge or an ambush. I really hope that the current Government, whatever their ambitions for animal welfare and the countryside might include, will realise that you simply cannot separate different aspects of rural Britain—whether fishing, farming, field sports or forestry—because they are as one. Previous Governments have learned painful lessons from trying to segregate different elements of rural activity.

The good news is that the legislation before the House today is not one of those moments; it is something around which all residents of the countryside—whether farmers, livestock managers, politicians or anybody from any side of the political spectrum—can unite. I very much hope to be able to support this and other legislation of a similar nature going forward.