Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I first declare an interest in farming in that my family farms, but I am handing everything over.

I find this Bill woolly. Much is left to the discretion of the Minister and the Executive. I have heard it described as a paving Bill and an entry point; more legislation may follow. I am sure we will get lots of assurances from the Front Bench, but we should remember that no ministerial Statement or Government can bind the successor Governments and Parliaments that follow, so we have to be very careful; we need things to be in the Bill.

Several speakers have spoken about the Bill as being useful for protecting farm animals, but we already regulate farming in great detail—I am sure we will regulate more for things we have missed—so I presume this committee will look at wild animals. I very much like the points made just now by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, about what other things it could cross over into and mess up, when we are trying to look at the bigger pictures. If we try to make animals the pure and total focus of everything, we need to realise that we are only another animal on the planet.

One of the things that really worries me is that the composition of the committee is very open to manipulation—several speakers have mentioned this. There is nothing there about long-term balance and ensuring that it stays balanced.

Another thing that worries me is this definition of sentience. Again, I was very interested by the noble Viscount’s points about that, because there is a huge danger of anthropomorphism. Most creatures, if not all, have an autonomous nervous response to stimuli. This does not require thought, so should we really be inferring sentience from it? Or does sentience require reasoning, and in that case to what level? I do not think we go as far as the ethics, which was spoken about before.

The other thing is about pleasure and the question of whether animals enjoy working; this concerns the closing down of the circuses and things like that. I know from my personal experience that animals do enjoy doing things and working—there is no doubt about it—but some people think it is demeaning and do not like that, because they anthropomorphise what they are doing.

I just hope that this committee will understand the difficulty of balancing biodiversity. One of the biggest problems we have with a lot of things, particularly with single-issue pressure groups, is that the solution to the overpopulation of a particular animal species is to relocate it. Sometimes that just messes up somewhere else—or it may mess up the animal; it may be totally unproductive. We say, “Oh, we don’t want to hurt these animals”, which at the moment are destroying this environment that they may require for their own survival, so we relocate them over there—but that may not be any good for the animals, and they may die anyway as a result.

Another problem comes with the overprotection of certain species. I have noticed this particularly with some of the hunting species, such as badgers. There is huge overpopulation of badgers at the moment. Badgers eat hedgehogs. Why do we have a diminishing hedgehog population? No one thinks about this. They blame all sorts of things but not the badgers, one of the few creatures that can open them up and eat the things. The other thing is bumble bees. Quite a lot of species of bumble bee nest in the ground in small nests. It is just like a bar of chocolate for a badger; they love them. A bumble bee is very different from worker bees that live in hives and go out all over the place.

The trouble is that a lot of people who live in towns have perhaps done a brief course on the environment at Durham University, borrowed a pair of welly boots for a farm walk or whatever and then become experts on the environment. I do not think they really understand the breadth of things you need to understand.

Just for amusement I was thinking about anthropomorphism. I was amused by the “Lobster Quadrille” by Lewis Carroll, and I think we are going in that direction:

“‘Will you walk a little faster?’ said a whiting to a snail,

‘There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my tail.

See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!

They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?”

The way we are going, I think they are about to join our human dance.

I was amused by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan. I was going to suggest that maybe bear baiting has been replaced with politician and celebrity baiting. I think that is the new sport—and maybe toff baiting as well, since I seem to be counted among those by some people.

The main thing is that I agree with those who doubt the Bill’s utility. I am not sure we should waste a huge amount of time on it—but I think we will have to, to make sure it does not become dangerous.