Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Tim Farron and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Report stage
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I will speak to amendment 2, in my name and those of 30-odd colleagues.

The problem with the Bill is that it goes beyond the commitment made by Ministers to recognise animal sentience in British law in the same way that it is recognised in European Union law. My amendment is designed to ensure that the safeguards of the EU law are duplicated in British law. Currently, those safeguards are not in the Bill, as was the original ask of the animal welfare lobby.

It seems to me that we should have a bit of equivalence here. If this committee is set up by statute, its remit should also be defined by statute. I therefore ask the Government seriously to consider accepting my amendment as a sensible, fairly minor, but nevertheless important amendment to the remit of the committee, which recognises local customs,

“religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage”.

That seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing to do. With these few words, I strongly urge my hon. Friend the Minister to see whether she cannot, on behalf of the Government, accept my amendment.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I will speak in favour of new clause 5, which would ensure an annual report including,

“the number of sentient animals killed or injured”,

as a result of pollution, a description of water companies’ actions to protect animals and an assessment of the impact of Government policy on those two things. I will also speak briefly in favour of new clause 6, which we do not intend to push to a vote, which would establish an annual report into the ways the Government have taken into account animal sentience when establishing new trade deals.

Turning to new clause 5, Cumbria contains two national parks, the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, the latter being a world heritage site. The richness of our biodiversity throughout Cumbria is of great importance, not least in our rivers and lakes, whose ecology is of global significance as home to countless species. Yet Government policy threatens that diversity and damages animal welfare. In 2020, across the United Kingdom, water companies were permitted to dump raw sewage into our waterways on 400,000 occasions for a total of 3.l million hours, at enormous cost to the lives of aquatic and semi-aquatic sentient animals. At the River Lune near Sedbergh, we saw the longest discharge in the country lasting for 8,490 hours. At Derwentwater, a discharge of 8,275 hours took place. Is it any wonder that only 14 % of Britain’s rivers are classed as being in a “good” state?

The Government’s Environment Act 2021 acknowledges the problem and sets an ambition to reduce the pollution in our rivers caused by the dumping of raw sewage. Of course, as we all know, the Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming by Opposition Members, their own Back Benchers and members of another place to even do that.