Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Enforcement Regulations 2024.

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, these regulations make provision for enforcing the live exports ban in the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Act 2024. They create a robust and effective enforcement regime that builds on the existing requirements for animal welfare in transport and, importantly, ensures that the burden on industry is minimised.

Although animal welfare is a devolved matter, a joint approach to implementation and enforcement has been agreed with the devolved Governments in Scotland and Wales, as many export journeys begin in one jurisdiction and depart from ports located in another. This instrument therefore applies across England, Scotland and Wales to ensure a uniform, consistent enforcement of the prohibition across Great Britain.

This instrument provides powers to the Animal and Plant Health Agency, as the national regulator for animal welfare during transport, and to local authorities, which are responsible for enforcing it. First, to minimise circumvention of the ban and the need for enforcement action, this instrument provides for strengthened pre-export controls for livestock to be carried out by the Animal and Plant Health Agency. The current controls already require organisers of live animal transport to submit a plan of the journey, including departure and destination as well as rest stops. This plan, known as a journey log, must be submitted to APHA for approval for any long journey to a third country.

The new provisions in this instrument will require organisers of such journeys also to provide evidence of the purpose of their export. APHA will need to satisfy itself that the consignment will not be exported for slaughter or fattening before it approves the journey log, and it can refuse to approve the journey log on that basis. To facilitate this process, we have worked with the national beef, sheep and pig associations and the British Pig Association to establish a system whereby they will be able to assess and verify evidence provided by journey organisers. This system should provide journey organisers with a simple way of providing APHA with the required evidence.

The national associations have provided a similar service to industry for many years to facilitate shipments with P&O Ferries, which has a no-slaughter shipment policy. The industry is, therefore, familiar with the process of working with the national associations; we believe that this will encourage engagement and compliance with the new requirement.

It is important to be clear that the pre-export controls set out in these draft regulations do not apply to horses. We are taking a co-design approach to identifying solutions to prevent horses being exported for slaughter. We are working together with stakeholders, who know their industry best, to find the most effective solution. We expect to present specific measures for horses in a separate instrument for consideration in due course.

Secondly, these regulations provide a range of powers to APHA and local authorities; they are to be used in relation to both livestock and horses should investigative or enforcement action prove necessary. These include the power to serve a hold notice to prevent the movement of animals if an inspector suspects that they may be exported for slaughter or fattening. They also include a power of entry and inspection to premises, including vehicles, vessels and dwellings, where inspectors believe an offence is being, has been or is about to be committed, or where there is believed to be evidence of an offence on the premises. This includes a power of entry to private dwellings, subject to obtaining a warrant.

Exporters of livestock and horses will be required to retain records relating to the export of those animals for three years, which must be provided to an inspector on request. It will be an offence to fail to keep these records, to fail to comply with a hold notice or to obstruct an inspector. The penalty for these offences would be an unlimited fine in England and Wales or, in Scotland, a fine limited to level 5 on the standard scale.

These regulations provide the Animal and Plant Health Agency with the power to suspend or revoke a transporter authorisation if there is evidence of non-compliance with the live exports ban. Such decisions may be appealed, first through reconsideration by the Animal and Plant Health Agency then, if unsuccessful, in the relevant First-tier Tribunal.

We are taking a risk-based approach to regulating trade to ensure that the burden on industry is minimised while preventing circumvention of the ban and so minimising offending levels. This instrument is essential to ensure that we can effectively enforce this important animal welfare measure.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the regulations before us. I welcome the Minister to her position and thank her for setting them out.

We will not rehearse all the arguments we had in the debate on the Bill, but I welcome the fact that horses are not covered. I am sure that pony clubs across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will be extremely happy to hear that. When does the Minister think she will be in a position to come back to the Committee to explain the position on horses and how it relates to the tripartite agreement?

I have a number of questions that reflect my concerns. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, to her place; I think she is going to speak in a later debate. She will recall all the excitement around Brightlingsea, which was in my Euro constituency at the time, when one of the first incidents of live animals for export came to my attention. Of course, the cases have been small in number and heavily regulated by the EU and our own domestic regulations.

Paragraph 6.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum states that the regulations, certainly in England,

“will usually be enforced by the local authority”.

Has the Minister’s department done an impact assessment on the cost implications for local authorities and their resources, bearing in mind that we are well aware of the pressures on local authority budgets and resources at this time?

I regret that this is a unilateral measure and is not being imposed by our former partners in our erstwhile membership of the European Union. There is meant to be a legitimate trade in breeding stock and stock for racing. Obviously, it is excluded at the moment because of the prevalence of bluetongue disease. The last time we debated this, which was round about the time before the Bill gained Royal Assent, my understanding was that there were as yet no facilities to allow this practice to happen. This is a legitimate and very lucrative trade, and it is a source of great concern in the farming community that it will still not be permitted once we get over—in due course, I hope—the threat of bluetongue disease.

I perfectly accept that the Minister might not be able to respond today, but could she give us a written reply on where we are with the facilities? They have to be paid for. I understand that they could potentially be at Harwich, in my former Euro-constituency; they could be elsewhere, for example at Dover, but at the moment this is a very serious gap in a legitimate trade. Although it is not necessarily covered by the remit of these regulations, it is a great loss of earnings to those who ply that trade.