Welfare of Laying Hens Directive

Debate between Eilidh Whiteford and Huw Irranca-Davies

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I will do my best to fill the available time, Mr Chairman, and will happily take interventions. This is a good chance to have a detailed debate.

I welcome the debate, and I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) on securing it, in her role both as a constituency MP and as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I also congratulate the members of the Committee on making this very much a live issue. It should be attracting the attention of parliamentarians and the wider public, and I will consider in a moment how we should deal with the consumer and market issues. I also welcome the expert, knowledgeable and detailed way in which the hon. Lady introduced the debate, and I note—as the Minister will have done—the significant differences that have emerged between her, as Chair of the Committee, and the Government, even though their positions support each other in many ways.

I very much welcome the comments from other contributors, including the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford). Am I pronouncing the constituency name correctly?

[Dr Whiteford]

It is Buchan.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Ah, it is a Welsh pronunciation, with the “ch” sound. I am dying to see how Hansard transcribes that. The hon. Lady mentioned the importance of recognising and rewarding good producers and the investment they have made, and that has been a common theme of the debate.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) made a very good contribution about how UK producers’ investment should bear fruit, or at least produce good eggs. He was certainly supportive of the idea, and I saw nodding heads on both sides of the House, of clearly identifying which producers, processors, retailers, supermarkets and restaurants use not only good shell eggs but good liquefied and other processed eggs, and which do not. There is some scope for the Minister. We might have a way forward, together with the UK egg producers and the various representative organisations.

The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) spoke very well about his experience with free-range hens. My household has always had a few, just for our own consumption. It has been a long-standing tradition on our smallholding, but I cannot compete with the hon. Gentleman’s much more extensive expertise. He rightly pointed out that we could do a lot with the power of consumers and the markets, but we have a heck of a long way to go.

I draw parliamentarians’ attention to research by YouGov and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The RSPCA would like to go even further towards free range and away from any sort of caging, but it has done an interesting analysis, which the Minister might not be aware of because it has, I think, come out only in the past few days. It looked at people’s awareness of the legislation, and at their buying power as consumers; 69% of them wrongly assumed what the law would mean for hens and animal welfare. A further 19% had not heard about the legislation at all. A fifth wrongly assumed that all battery cages would now be banned; 8% thought that all hens would now be free range and 1% thought it was something to do with farmers having to play music to their hens. We have a long way to go, not only in working with the retail sector, including supermarkets, but in highlighting the issue to consumers so that they can genuinely drive change in the market, but that is not all that I shall talk about today.