Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a chair of the Royal Veterinary College and as a person owned by two sentient horses. I know that they have feelings; I would define them in the following way. They experience comfort and joy when I wait on them hand and foot and bring them haylage, and frustration when I get things wrong in a dressage competition. I welcome the legislation that has now arrived, and there is much to welcome in it. It covers all government policy areas, as the Minister said, and means that all government departments will have to consider animal welfare and sentience issues when forming policy. The Bill also applies to wildlife. The animal sentience committee created by the Bill has potential but needs to be toughened if it is to fulfil the potential for increased recognition and application of animal sentience principles across government as a whole.

What strengthening should we be looking for? Strangely, the Bill does not lay a direct duty on Ministers but on the committee, so the committee needs not a discretionary power to review government policy but a mandated duty to review all policies that fall within defined criteria of having the potential for a significant adverse effect on the welfare of animals. The Bill should also require all government departments to inform the committee when such policies are being drawn up, and positively and proactively to seek the views of the committee. What guidance will be given to other government departments to encourage them to take this responsibility seriously? Will all the guidance associated with the Bill be published during its passage in your Lordships’ House?

The committee also needs more clarity about its powers. It needs independent powers and adequate resources to fund a secretariat and to have the ability to call witnesses, commission research and have access to documents. Can the Minister tell us his plan for resources, both funding and staff? Can I also ask the Minister for clarity on the rumours that the committee might be tucked in as a sub-committee of the Animal Welfare Committee? The ASC needs a separate status. The AWC provides reactive scientific advice to Defra alone, and the new committee will proactively review government policy decisions across all departments—a very different role. The ASC must work transparently, publishing all its advice to government and having a direct role with the strong public interest in this issue. It should also demonstrate accountability by having a statutory duty to report direct to Parliament annually and the right to a formal response from the Government in Parliament. On the overall working of the committee, such strengthening would mean that the arrangements could be seen as being in the first division globally, but it would be useful to know what ideas the Minister has drawn from the best global examples of such mechanisms. I include in the best global examples the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission and the arrangements in the Netherlands and those in New Zealand.

Importantly, the Bill must include a duty on government to create and maintain an animal sentience strategy. If it does not, all the responsibility is offshored to the ASC and guidance needs to be given, by means of that strategy, on the policy issues that the ASC would primarily concentrate on, though not to the exclusion of others at the ASC’s discretion.

Lastly, the definition of “animal” should be expanded in the Bill. It currently applies to all vertebrates other than man. Ministers have indicated that the definition could be widened to include invertebrates if new evidence of sentience came forward. It appears that there is already sufficient evidence of sentience among cephalopods and decapod crustaceans, as is the case in the Scottish arrangements. When will the independent review of the subject be published, and can it be expedited so that we can include these animal groups in the Bill as it goes through both Houses? If the Minister is in any doubt about this latter point of inclusion of wider groups, I urge him to view the award-winning documentary “My Octopus Teacher”, which explores the rather bizarre and strange but nevertheless emotional relationship between a man and an octopus. I hope that he enjoys it but has a box of tissues to hand.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in the group. Amendments 24 and 30 both probe why “all” is required. Would not “due regard” by enough, as in other legislation? The extra word may risk the committee not reporting on whether due process has taken place but instead starting to opine or comment on the merits of policy and government decision. That is not its role, but it has the potential to create unnecessary delays and complications for legislation, as the remit of the committee is widened to such a degree that there is almost nothing on which it cannot express views.

Amendments 25 and 32 would give the committee a further remit—the power to consider both a positive and a negative impact on the welfare of animals. That is crucial when we consider policy that relates to pest control. The formulation and implementation of policy, having all due regard for the welfare of animals as sentient beings, must consider the particular circumstances of all animals, the welfare of which the committee is considering. Lawful pest control activities are undertaken to stop the spread of diseases and to protect livestock. The positive effect of those actions should be noted if the policy is to be reported on.

As I am sure the Minister knows, the animal world can be pretty brutal. If some of the gentler species are to survive, there needs to be control of predators. It is no accident that, where there is such control, there is a far broader range of species. I hope this will be recognised by the committee. How it seeks to balance the demands of the various sentient species is of great importance.

Amendment 34 would limit the remit of the committee to future policy and prevent it considering existing law. Amendments 18, 23 and 29 in my name, to which I shall speak later, cover the point of existing law. Limiting reports to future policy would be a sensible limitation, because if the committee was suddenly given the job of reviewing all existing policy, large amounts of government business might have to be stopped for review by the committee. Such a standstill could cause severe disruption and would place a huge burden on government departments and the committee. It is difficult to think how the committee could possibly cope from scratch with looking at large swathes of policy. The potential damage and the massive cost of stopping government work would be immensely onerous and impractical.

Amendment 36 probes why the Bill does not cover the devolved Administrations. There seems to be somewhat of a blind spot in that reports of the committee may not include any policy falling within devolved competence. After all, this debate on animal sentience only began with our departure from the European Union, as there would no longer be an explicit reference to law applicable in the United Kingdom on the sentience of animals. Should the Bill therefore not apply to the policy of all Governments?

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the Royal Veterinary College and speak to Amendment 47 in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock. Basically, what the Bill does is set up a committee. For the animal sentience provisions to be effective, the committee has to be effective. Both my amendments, one of which is in a later group, would ensure that committee could do a good job.

Amendment 47 would ensure that committee could call witnesses, commission research and get proper access to information across government, and make sure that all government departments co-operated. It is very straightforward, and I hope the Government will accept it.

On Amendment 39, in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, the remit of the committee and the range of policy on which it can report must remain wide if it is going to spot animal sentience challenges. I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Trees, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, about restricting the scope of the committee. I do not often fall out with the noble Earl, but I find it slightly quaint that we are harking back to the Lisbon treaty. I was very much against Brexit, but it seems rather strange that we are clinging to the terms of the Lisbon treaty.

The range of policy on which the committee can report has to remain wide, but it needs a helping pointer from government departments to areas of policy which they are beginning to develop which could have animal sentience implications. Such a heads-up by government departments needs to be especially early in the process for the committee then to do its work to help the Government in good time and before things become too wedded within the department. The amendment therefore aims to be helpful to government departments rather than to hinder. It would have a beneficial effect in encouraging departments to think in advance about the animal sentience implications of policy right at the start of the policy process.

I also support Amendment 45, which would enable the committee to work with government on a framework for forward planning and review. It would mean that government was not offshoring all thinking on animal sentience to the committee and avoiding its responsibilities for being at the centre of that process.