Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 14th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I assure noble Lords that I will not hold business up for very long. I particularly assure the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, that I am very much in favour of the Bill. But it is very important that noble Lords understand that, while we may be patting our backs and saying that it is wonderful that we have gone ahead with banning the live export of animals for slaughter, this is not a United Kingdom Bill; it is a Great Britain Bill. Once again, Northern Ireland has been left out. It has been left out, of course, because Northern Ireland has been left in the European Union single market.

There will be more discussion of the repercussions of that on the Rwanda Act. Whatever you think of the Rwanda Act, it was meant to be a United Kingdom Act. As we saw yesterday, the High Court has now said that it is disapplied in Northern Ireland.

As far as this Bill is concerned, the noble Lord who has been taking it through has been extremely kind and helpful in trying to placate me and some others on this issue, making it clear that when animals move from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, they will have to stay for some time—30 days—before they can be moved over the border. Let us be honest: there is a frontier. The Republic of Ireland is a foreign country. Therefore, there would be no incentive for people to move animals to Northern Ireland in order to send them on to the Republic of Ireland.

Therefore, what concerns us is not that specific movement but the fact that there is no guarantee that animals from Northern Ireland, which are under no restriction whatever, will not be moved to the Republic of Ireland and then onwards on a long journey down to the south of Ireland and across the sea to France and then Morocco, with loads of sheep packed together. Yet we are saying that this is wonderful, that we have changed things and that leaving the European Union has allowed us to ban live exports. I just hope noble Lords realise that this is one of many provisions that now cannot be applied to Northern Ireland, because this Government have basically sold out Northern Ireland and left it under the European Union for so many regulations. Unless we wake up and start to realise that, this will be the very beginning of the end of the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I will make a couple of points. The Minister got Scottish and Welsh legislative consent for this legislation, but the Northern Ireland Assembly was not asked to give its consent, even though a lot of this area is devolved under existing legislation. The Minister went on to say that there would be potential repercussions to extending the ban to Northern Ireland—for example, under the terms of the trade and co-operation agreement. In effect, the issue here is: is this matter a policy choice or a legal necessity under the trade and co-operation agreement? It would be most helpful to get clarification.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, said, we had a very significant court decision yesterday. It was dismissed out of hand in the Safeguarding the Union document at paragraph 46, which made very clear that this was only a matter of trade. It specified—in black and white —that immigration would be excluded; that is what the Government said. It went on to say that those suggesting that there would be an issue with immigration were entirely wrong, and that all of the United Kingdom would be treated as an individual unit in the UK’s policy on immigration. We have not only a trade border up the Irish Sea but an immigration border and now an animal export border. Is it not time that people were told the truth, instead of being misled?