Draft Humane Trapping Standards Regulations 2019

Debate between David Drew and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Wednesday 19th December 2018 General Committees

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I am delighted that the Minister is in her place. Happy Christmas to everybody—it may not be so happy when I finish, but let us start as we mean to go on.

This is an interesting piece of secondary legislation. It is the sort of thing that could pass through on the nod without people taking much notice, because in a sense it is just doing what was agreed some time ago with the EU. Why has it taken quite so long to get here? It was laid down in 2016, and the original agreement dates back to 1997. I am a little intrigued about why, within three months of our potentially leaving the EU, we have this piece of secondary legislation now. I have always thought that the idea of humane trapping is an oxymoron, but I will pass over that quickly.

I want to raise a number of issues. Clause 108(1) in the Government’s excellent draft legislation to replace the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 is about the prohibition of leg-hold traps:

“It is an offence to use a leghold trap for or in connection with the purpose of killing, injuring or capturing a wild bird or other wild animal.”

The Government are clear that they want to outlaw these things. It is disappointing that the primary legislation has not been introduced, which would mean at least that we had clarity. The Minister will have to answer this: should we reject this legislation, would it make any difference? We have an indication that the Government want to outlaw leg-hold traps when they introduce the primary legislation.

Are we putting ourselves in jeopardy as regards the international agreement? Clearly, this is one agreement that we will, supposedly, have to renegotiate: it is between the EU, Russia and Canada, not the UK. The Minister will have to persuade me that we have some clarity on how we will go about doing that—otherwise, why are we all here today? We could have left it until after March and done our own thing in due course.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich might have some other things to say about the consultation, because he pointed it out to me. The consultation was a bit one-sided: respondents included every estate that can be imagined and only a very small number of animal welfare organisations. In the main, they shrugged and said, “Well, if it’s coming, it’s coming,” but they were not overjoyed at some of the proposals.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the accompanying impact assessment, which I thought was the most interesting document of the lot. On page 11, on currently approved spring traps that are rarely used and not compliant, it says:

“We should be restricting the continued use of non-compliant traps to the minimum necessary to enable the continued trapping of stoats”—

as the Minister rightly said, the regulations are mainly about stoats—

“prior to implementation. The remaining traps approved for stoat have been out of production for some time and are not used in meaningful numbers to trap any permitted target species.”

Out-of-date traps are therefore still being used—presumably, to trap stoats—yet we currently have no real intention of outlawing them, even if we pass the SI. If we are not outlawing, to some extent, these traps, what are we doing today?

Page 16 of the impact assessment says:

“There is significant evidence that the public value animal welfare”—

there’s a surprise. It goes on:

“Research by the University of Reading…conducted a small survey on animal welfare.”

That research found that 96% of respondents thought that animal welfare was a very good thing—I do not know about the other 4%; there always people who are contrary to the public will—and were prepared to pay extra for animal welfare to be put in place. I am not sure how that relates to the trapping of wild animals, but in my view we need animal welfare to be in line with not just the letter of the law, but the practicalities of how animals are treated.

Obviously, any trap in which an animal is kept for only five minutes can do limited damage. Nothing that I have read, however, says that the traps are time limited: an animal can be trapped for days, during which time it dies, yet that trap is apparently treated in exactly the same way.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

I am confused by that statement, because it is illegal for a gamekeeper not to check traps every 24 hours, so an animal could not legally be left in any trap for any length of time. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Dr Drew]

That is what happens in theory, but of course other people put traps down for slightly nefarious reasons. Yes, I know that gamekeepers have a strict way of doing things, and I accept that the regulations relate largely to gamekeepers. Within current law, however, others can trap and catch wild animals. On the one hand, we are trying to reintroduce stoats into certain parts of the country—sadly, their numbers are very small, despite being one of our native species—and on the other, we are trapping stoats in other parts of the country. That is just an observation.

Before I sit down, I will make a couple of other points. There is a real lack of clarity about why the regulations are being introduced now and what their impact will be. I mentioned the time limits for keeping an eye on caught animals, but there is no mention of animals caught by accident. Clearly, with any trap, any animal—dare I say, even a human being—can put its foot on a trap. Some ask whether that is an appropriate way to manage our wildlife.

The League Against Cruel Sports has been critical of the continuation of trapping generally, and, in particular, of the way that the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards operates. It wants greater clarification on how we intend to move forward—we are talking about a new traps regime. I am not totally sure who pays the £1.7 million cost of providing the new traps. Is it the industry, or are the Government prepared to put some money where their mouth is?

Perhaps alternative ideas could have been explored and brought forward. There are a number of questions. Where are the Government going with their animal welfare legislation? No doubt this issue would have been wrapped up with the animal welfare Bill if we had got it to the stage of being debated, in which case we would not have had to have this debate at all. Since we are having it, if the Opposition were to vote against it, would that put us in any international jeopardy or can we do our own thing, when appropriate, after March—if that is when we have some freedom—and adopt even higher standards of animal welfare? That could include looking at alternatives to trapping. Trapping is a very difficult exercise and we will always check to see that it is done in the most humane way possible. That is the whole point about this legislation.

Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill

Debate between David Drew and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 3rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, with which I absolutely agree. I am pleased that the number of people being held in police cells has fallen dramatically in the past few years, but, as we have seen this week, if people feel that they are suffering injustice, they should always take it to the police or, if that is where the problem or inappropriateness lies, find another outlet to be heard and to get redress. Every citizen of our country should always feel able to stand up and say, “This was wrong, and I am seeking redress for what was done to me.” I encourage the hon. Lady to support her constituent in seeking redress.

Many constituents have written to me with deep concerns about the effect that the undue use of force might have had on their child—and, in three harrowing cases, the effect that it has indeed had. One constituent detailed how the use of unreasonable restraint had a lasting effect on the health not only of the particular family member but on the whole family, which created years of trauma and ongoing illness. The use of excessive force can lead to long-term damage, and, as in the tragic case highlighted by the hon. Member for Croydon North, a death is an absolute travesty. We can never allow such abuses to take place in our civilised society.

It is good that cases of such terrible treatment are rare and that the numbers are coming down, but if we ever treat with force and brutality people who desperately need our help and support when in a state of mental ill health and distress, it is time for those voices to be heard and for action to be taken. These abuses cannot go unanswered or be tolerated any longer. The movement towards understanding mental ill health is progressing, and the Bill will help to change practice.

With that in mind, I will address two specific issues that are extremely close to my heart: autism and young people. There has previously been a lack of cross-Government co-operation on mental health issues. If we are to make a real impact on this issue and to change cultural norms, we need to ensure that the Department of Health, the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and NHS England have closer working practices to deliver the necessary detention reforms. I hope the Minister will confirm that to the House later today.

The Bill could make a real difference in tackling the inappropriate force that is too often used against patients, many of whom are on the autism spectrum. A recent freedom of information request discovered that there were 66,681 recorded instances of restraint in England in 2015-16, an increase on the previous year. The use of physical, mechanical or face-down restraint can undermine an individual’s recovery and increase their risk of injury and long-term harm. As a society, we should be charged with protecting and helping those people to get well again.

I would hope that many in this House have read the National Autistic Society’s recent report “Transforming Care: our stories”. The report follows 13 families with a family member who is on the autistic spectrum or who has a learning disability and who is at risk of being admitted to an in-patient mental health hospital, of which there are still 2,500 across the country. One story spoke of a boy who was, according to a serious case review, “completely failed”:

“A very vulnerable young man suffered a sequence of traumatic experiences which may adversely affect him for…years.”

I am the mother of an autistic young adult—he has just turned 18—and I have other family members who are now diagnosed, and I am constantly concerned that the invisibility of autism in so many sufferers means that their mental health, or mental ill health when it hits them, has completely failed to be understood or, indeed, identified in crisis situations.

I used to have to ask teachers at my son’s school who did not understand how his Asperger’s affected him, “If he had a broken leg, would you ask him to run up the stairs or to join in a football match?” They would look a little bemused, and I would say, “He is in a state of deep stress and trauma at this point. You are expecting him to sit quietly in a classroom and pay attention, as when he is in a state of wellness. This is not possible.”

Teachers committed a huge amount of time to helping him to be in the mainstream system, and it took two or three years to understand that the invisibility not only of autism but often also of mental ill health until a crisis hits means that society cannot see it. Unless we are particularly attuned to the individual sufferer, or indeed to a wider understanding and identification of what that means, we cannot help them. It is important that people charged with looking after those who may be in need have rigorous frameworks and training. Just as we would not ask a boy with a broken leg to play in a football match, we must not have similar expectations of those in mental health crisis.

What can we say when we hear such harrowing stories, which are much more tragic than we should ever have to hear, and have to imagine the tragedy that those families have had to go through? How do we react? The instinct can no longer be to allow things to continue. We need things to improve, but we cannot just make tweaks here and there. The House cannot ignore issues that need urgent attention and reform. I am glad the Government recognise that and are supporting the Bill.

These isolated cases are sadly too common, and NHS Digital figures show that autistic young people still have an increased risk of being unnecessarily and frequently restrained because they cannot express their anxieties and crises in the way that neurotypical people more often can. We cannot continue with outdated practices and restraints that severely endanger the most vulnerable, who need considerate, appropriate and constructive treatment programmes that meet the autistic individual’s needs.

The Bill includes provisions to turn that into reality and to reform practices in mental healthcare, and it highlights a number of concepts that our constituents expect of us, of the Government and of our public services right through the system. I will cover a couple of those concepts.

First, on transparency, every time restraining force is used in a mental health unit it will be recorded and fully detailed. This would allow people to know that if this happened when they were in a state of mental ill health, it would be recorded; often people are not able to think clearly in these situations. Where someone has a broken leg or a broken arm, their mental capacities are still functioning fine and they will remember if the cast was put on the wrong arm—they would notice that. However, people in a state of deep mental ill health are not always able to see the world clearly at that point, so to have that fully detailed record will make a big difference to empowering those sufferers to know that they are being properly looked after.

In all our major institutions, such as the police or the NHS, we need accountability in everything that is done for our constituents. That is no mean feat in practice. This Bill will mean that every institution will have to have a named individual responsible for policy on the use of force and implementation. Given the discussions this week in the House, it is perhaps prescient to have a named person to whom those in distress can go, safe in the knowledge that they will be supported, understood and given a fair hearing. That is so important.

[Dr Drew]

Does the hon. Lady accept that the named individual must be able to prove that they have been trained in handling these incidents responsibly and, particularly, that they have been retrained on a regular basis? One weakness of the units is that there is not only a lack of training, but certainly a lack of updating of people’s training.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I agree absolutely that we need to get the training right in the first place; understand unconscious bias, which we all invariably suffer from, not only in general life, but within the complex environment of mental ill health; and ensure that de-escalation techniques are learned and constantly reiterated. Such an approach would allow the extraordinary people who work in this sector to be supported, constantly reminded of things and given the right tools to ensure that they can look after our family members and our constituents when they are in these crises.