Wild Animals in Circuses (No. 2) Bill (Second sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBob Seely
Main Page: Bob Seely (Conservative - Isle of Wight)Department Debates - View all Bob Seely's debates with the HM Treasury
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Peter Jolly: All our animals are, yes.
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Peter Jolly: The thing is, we cannot explain it without people actually coming to see it. You have to see it for yourself. The animals are not stressed in any way. They are happy in the environment they are in. They are as far away from wild animals as you can get. We class it as handling; taming is not a word we use.
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Peter Jolly: Camels have always been kept by one nation or another.
Carol MacManus: There is evidence on the internet that there are only 100 wild camels left and that there are three different species of camel: the domestic dromedary, the domestic Bactrian and the feral Bactrian. We definitely do not have the feral Bactrian.
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Carol MacManus: Well, we will have to. We will be forced to do that if the ban comes in, won’t we? We will still continue with animals in circus, yes.
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Peter Jolly: We can’t really comment on that, because we do not have them. We do not work with them to see that.
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Carol MacManus: Not if they are kept correctly, no.
Peter Jolly: It is all down to them being kept correctly, and to animal welfare standards being high. You have got to provide the facilities.
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Peter Jolly: My camels are in 10 acres of ground at the moment.
Carol MacManus: We are not asking for that. We are asking if there is any possibility, somehow or other, to make a little amendment so that our animals can carry on travelling—
I should have advised everyone at the start that this session can run until 3.30 pm.
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Martin Lacey: I understand all your questions because, like I said before, I have learned from work with politicians that they do not understand so much about the circus. What we have to understand is that the circus is 250 years old. I am an animal trainer; that has evolved in the circus over 250 years. I was at boarding school in Lincoln, and I had these questions from my friends in the RAF, the Army and normal life—not circus life. Stress really interested me: do animals have stress when they travel from town to town?
I was the first person to do stress tests on my lions, when many people said, “Don’t do that, because they might have stress.” No, we love our animals, and we want to see whether it is really bad for them to travel. I was the first person to do checks with my lions—with lions in Africa and with lions in Zürich zoo in Switzerland. It was a private handler and me, looking at whether the animals do not do enough. The studies showed that my animals were more busy; in fact, we had to ensure that they did not do too much. A lion needs 18 to 22 hours’ rest. When you have two shows a day and training, they have a very full day.
As I said, my family comes from zoos. My mother and father said those things in the 1960s, and everybody thought that they were crazy. They were doing shows in the zoo—they owned Sherwood zoo and Sunderland zoo. They then went into working with the animals, because it was proved, again on facts—Marthe Kiley-Worthington—that the animals benefit from training.
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Martin Lacey: Absolutely correct. It is exactly what Rona was saying: you have good and bad in every walk of life. We have good politicians and bad politicians; we have good animal trainers and bad animal trainers. I have worked with big cats since I was 17. We are inspected every week by the vets in Germany. The inspections are a little more rigorous than in England, and a prosecution has never been brought against me. In fact, the vets always speak about my work.
When you ask me about animals in the circus, you have to understand many things. Things have changed. I keep hearing about “tricks”. There are no tricks in a modern circus; it is natural movement. We are working with animals. My lions are 22 generations born in the circus. Yes, they would still be classed as wild animals, and they still have their instincts. However, it is just like when a dog walks around before it lies down on the floor. Those are instincts that dogs have from when they were wild dogs, because they were getting rid of the snakes on the floor before they lay down.
The instincts will stay in the animal, but we have done all the scientific reports to see whether the animals have everything that they need. We have checked whether they are stressed, whether they have what they need in nature, whether they have their social group and whether they are busy enough. As animal trainers, we look for all those things. We asked for those studies to be done, and they are controlled studies with vets because we want the best for our animals. Everything has evolved. Zoos used to have animals in small cages, but they evolved into natural gardens. The circus has also evolved.
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Martin Lacey: First of all, I am talking about facts. This is not just what I say; it is fact, because we have done enough studies, although they have sadly not been listened to by the English Government. The RSPCA has also rubbished the studies that have been done.
We do not have much time, but afterwards I will give you the modern way lions live in a circus. I have a book; it is all in German, of course, but I have translated the foreword so that you can understand what it is about. There are lots of pictures that tell you what we do with the animals—if you are interested, after the meeting I have the books for you. It was very short notice; they told me on Thursday to come, and I flew in this morning from Frankfurt. I have done that for you so that you can understand that things have changed. I understand what you are saying, because for the last 20 years you have not had a circus with wild animals. Is that correct?
Rona Brown: We have, because at the beginning of the regulations Peter Jolly’s circus had three lions and two tigers.
Martin Lacey: Was it a good example?
Rona Brown: It was very well put together, yes. It was Peter’s licence, and Peter monitored it, looked after it and made sure that everything was correct. They left Peter’s circus after the first year, and on their own they have been unable to get a licence since. It shows that wild animals such as lions and tigers can be looked after properly and comply in the circus.
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Martin Lacey: That is a very good question. In the wild, the life expectancy for a lion would by nine to 11 years old. Because now, as we all know, the wild is getting less and less—there are controlled parks—lions are living to around 12 or 13. It is not like before. Very sadly, we do not know what will happen in the next 20 years, so we should actually support well-run circuses and zoos. For a lion in a circus or a zoo, the age expectancy would be around 15 to 17 years old. In fact, all the lions with me live more than 20 years. I lost a lion just last year that was 28 years old—I think that was probably the oldest lion in the world. We are very proud of that. We have had 22 generations of lions.
What is very important, and what you have to remember, is that animals in circuses are not inbred. From my experience, in a zoo—I am not knocking zoos because my family come from zoos—you are there to look at the animal. We work with the animals. It is very important that we have the Einsteins of the circus world. We are very careful of the bloodline, and because we have been very careful, my family—some of the biggest protectors of lions—can still breed lions for the next 60 years, for future generations, with different bloodlines. That is very important when you see all the different problems in the wild.
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Martin Lacey: Yes. It is in German, but I have added a foreword just so that you get the idea of the book.
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Rona Brown: That is my opinion.
This is in Mrs Brown’s evidence, and I want to know what she thinks it has to do with the Bill.
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Mike Radford: They are not terms of legal art; it would be for a court to decide. On certainty, Ms McManus talked about the racing camels. We go to our local agricultural show every year, 20 miles north of Inverness. Two or three years ago there were racing camels there. I assume that they were on a tour. They would not normally have been regarded as a circus performance, or circus undertaking; it was a troupe of camels. Again, Parliament needs to decide whether there is an ethical argument for the ban, and that is a matter of judgment. If there is, it then needs to make very clear definitions in the legislation of the animals and the context. Otherwise, it is going to be a mess.
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Mike Radford: I am here as a lawyer, not as an ethicist or scientist, but it is clearly open to society to make a judgment and decide that all those are unacceptable, some are unacceptable or none is unacceptable. So far as wild or non-domesticated animals in circuses are concerned, my understanding is that there is a view, which seems to be shared in Parliament and among certain elements of the public, that it is no longer acceptable, time has moved on and non-domesticated animals should not be used for performance and entertainment in this way.
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Mike Radford: I would answer that by giving examples of where attitudes have changed. Fur farming is a very good example: it was considered to be a perfectly acceptable agricultural undertaking. Parliament decided that it should be banned earlier this century, in 2000. The situation with hunting with hounds is that it has not been outlawed altogether, but it was put on a different basis, because public opinion and public perception moved on. I am not in a position to give you different percentages, but clearly it is up to Parliament—you as our representatives—to make that judgment.
We are shifting the balance, so there is a public perception. Do you know what the polling is over approval ratings or disapproval ratings about “wild” animals in circuses, and how do you think that fits in with the human rights agenda, considering that in this society we use animals for food, entertainment and other things anyway? Where is that balance?
Mike Radford: My personal opinion is that the first thing that is important is trying to provide an animal with a decent standard of life. Whether that can be done in a circus or not is not for me to decide; it is for Parliament to decide.
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Mike Radford: Circuses have been subject to an offence of cruelty for a good number of years, going back to 1835. Standards, however, have changed during that time. Circuses have been subject to the Animal Welfare Act provisions since 2006. Let me give you an example of how attitudes change. This is not to do with circuses, but I think it illustrates the point. When I was young, if there was an unwanted litter of puppies or kittens on a farm in Cambridgeshire, where we lived, it was standard that they would have been drowned in the water butt. What else would you do? That is now an offence of causing unnecessary suffering, not because the law has changed—the term “unnecessary suffering” is exactly the same—but because public perceptions and attitudes have changed. It is about judgment and attitudes.
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Mike Radford: I think that as much should go in the Bill as possible. Guidance can be helpful, but it is not the same as legislative provisions, as you well understand. The question of how quickly a ban could be introduced was raised earlier. My view is that those who have a licence to use wild animals are entitled to have a legitimate expectation that their licence will remain in place until it expires, and they could have a claim for compensation if it was stopped earlier, but there is no expectation beyond the lifetime of the present licences.