Animal Welfare in Farming

Debate between Alex Mayer and John Hayes

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this debate.

I last spoke about eggs in a debate just before Easter, but eggs are not just for Easter; they are for all year round. As other hon. Members have already said, we are still in a situation where the space that many hens have to live in is the same size as a piece of A4 paper. That is just not good enough. Such cages are known as “enriched cages”. The marketing people really earned their stripes that day, because I think that if we started calling them “confinement cages” we would go a long way towards stamping out this horrible practice.

I am very keen to hear from the Minister about the recent EU reset, because some of our European friends and neighbours already have better standards than us; indeed, some of them, for example Germany, are thinking of introducing even higher standards. Does that mean that there is now a real need for us to catch up? I would be keen to hear the Minister’s views.

I am also concerned about the welfare of lobsters—the first time that lobsters have got a mention today. I did a bit of googling last night and found out that it is possible to buy fresh lobsters on the open market. The advertisement that I saw said:

“Upon receipt of delivery, store your live lobsters in the fridge until ready to cook. Lobsters can be boiled, poached, grilled or barbecued.”

Imagine that referred to any other kind of animal. Imagine saying, “A live chicken or lamb will arrive; put it in the garden and then, as an amateur, smash its skull in and boil it alive.” Is that the kind of situation that we want to see, in a country that talks about being a nation of animal lovers? I would be keen to hear from the Minister whether that is something that he wants to get his claws into.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

We are moving ahead with alacrity, and I am grateful to all hon. Members for allowing us to do so. Without more ado, I call Sarah Dyke, the Liberal Democrat spokesman.

Solar Farms

Debate between Alex Mayer and John Hayes

Thursday 15th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Mayer (Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me so early on, Madam Deputy Speaker, at the sunrise of the debate.

I believe there is not only a climate and biodiversity emergency, but real insecurity in our energy market. That is why I absolutely back the Government’s plan to triple our solar capacity and reach the clean power target by 2030. We need to look at the whole gamut of renewable energy out there, including tidal—although perhaps not so much in Bedfordshire—wind and solar power. I am very lucky that my constituency is home to the joint tallest wind turbine in the country, an honour I share with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones). When I visited, I suggested that we put a Union flag on top of the one in my constituency so that it would be the tallest, but there was no agreement to that—never mind.

My constituency is also home to a solar farm in Eggington, as the Minister knows, because he visited it with me. It produces enough power for 2,000 homes every year. What is interesting is that as well as producing that clean, green power, it retains an agricultural use; as the Minister may remember, there are also sheep grazing between the solar panels, nibbling at the grass.

[Sir John Hayes]

Just to be clear, this is not about what, but where. Of course it is important that we have a diverse energy mix, but the hon. Lady must know that if we put solar panels on the best-quality agricultural land, we will have to import more food and extend supply chains, and so damage the environment.

[Alex Mayer]

I think we need a mix, but we cannot rule out using solar panels on large chunks of land.

When the Minister came along to visit our solar farm in Eggington, he not only met the sheep, but saw that some of the land around the panels has been transformed into wildflower meadows. In my constituency, AW Group —the people with the turbine—is branching out into solar. In the next couple of months, it will build another solar array and again put in wildflower meadows. Those meadows are so important for biodiversity in our country, as our pollinators and other insects face real problems. I learned on my visit that solar farms can also be useful to some of our ground-nesting birds, which find shelter and sanctuary underneath the solar panels.

In essence, I just wanted to say that I really welcome what the Government are doing. I welcome what they did yesterday; the new rules make it easier for some of the smaller amounts of power generated from solar panels to be linked to our grid. I urge the Minister to go full steam ahead on this, and to make sure that our solar industry has a really bright future in this time of biodiversity and climate emergency.