Animal Welfare (Primate Licences) (England) Regulations 2023

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

Thus, while I welcome these regulations as an improvement on current welfare regulations with regard to the private keeping of primates, they stop short of what many would argue is an appropriate, reasonable and scientifically justifiable prohibition on the keeping of primates as pets. I support the regret amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I can see that this SI is well motivated—both from an animal welfare point of view and for the Government to deliver on a promise. The problem is that it does not deliver on that promise, just as the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes, said—I enjoyed her speech and agree with her.

When we look more closely at this SI, we see that it is deeply weird. For example, I think a lot of people in England would not even know whether it was legal to own monkeys or other primates any more. We had an excellent briefing from nine animal welfare bodies, including the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, which gave us quite a lot of pointers to the gaps in the SI that need to be filled if we are going to take animal welfare seriously.

The Government say that they are fulfilling their manifesto promise, but all they have done is rebrand pet primates as zoo animals and the owners as “specialist private primate keepers”. These pet primates must be kept at zoo-level standards. I would imagine that most pet owners would be horrified at the concept of keeping their dogs and cats at zoo-level standards, but when we look at what zoo-level standards are, it begs the question of why all animals should not be kept in such conditions. The rules require a suitable diet, access to fresh water, hygienic standards, registration with a vet, monitoring for illness, being kept in suitable premises and structures, play space, appropriate levels of temperature, and animals to be kept in appropriate social groups—actually, that is going to be quite hard for most of our new specialist private primate keepers.

I can see only two things in the legislation that separate these zoo animals from well looked-after pets. The first is that you are not allowed to play with or handle them and, secondly, there is a lot of additional bureaucracy, which will be quite difficult to fulfil. Therefore, the Government have not actually banned keeping primates as pets; they have banned people from playing with their primates or pet monkeys and required them to pretend that they are zookeepers instead. That does not fulfil the manifesto promise, which is hugely disappointing. However, for want of anything better—although I will vote for the regret amendment, which, quite honestly, is the least that we can do—I can see that the measure is going to pass this House.