Animals (Low Welfare Activities Abroad) Bill

Anna Firth Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 17th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Anna Firth (Southend West) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to be called to speak about this important Bill, and I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson).

This has been an incredible day for animal welfare, and it has been a privilege to debate two Bills that will help to improve the lives of animals. As a patron of the brilliant Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, a position also held by my much-loved predecessor Sir David Amess, I know of the struggles that animals have had to endure both here and abroad. I pay tribute to the founders of that organisation, Lorraine and Chris Platt—I see Lorraine in the Public Gallery—for the huge amount that they have done to safeguard and raise awareness of animal welfare, both in the UK and abroad. On Wednesday I was privileged to speak at an event connected with their campaign to ban the use of pig farrowing crates in this country, and I hope that that ban will happen very soon. It was also an honour to support, earlier today, the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith).

All of us in this place can be proud of the huge strides we have made towards improving the lives of animals in the United Kingdom, and since we have left the European Union we have been able to make even greater progress. The Bill is greatly needed. A quick Google search brings up numerous websites offering elephant rides, which, as we all know, are not a harmless activity. Only last week, the Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand released a picture of Pai Lin, a 71-year-old female elephant whose spine has become disfigured after 25 years of working in the tourism industry. Being forced to carry up to six tourists at a time has caused irreversible physical damage to her spine. The Bill will stop companies being able to advertise trips like that, and will, I hope, prevent elephants like Pai Lin from enduring this appalling suffering.

Let me end by saying how proud I am of the animal rights record of successive Conservative Governments and how strongly I support the Bill, and by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford again on bringing it to us today.