Wild Animals in Circuses (No. 2) Bill (Second sitting)

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st May 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Q Are there any animals that you would say should not perform?

Carol MacManus: No.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Q Some of the answers to Mr Hoare’s questions were about children being able to see the animals because they are in a circus. Is that different from going to see an animal in a safari park, for example, where the animal is in a habitat in which it is not required to perform? In a way, safari parks try to recreate the natural habitats that animals live in, whereas in a circus the animal is expected to perform for a crowd, which is completely at odds with what it would do in the wild. I want to challenge some of the comments that you made. What would you say in response to that?

Peter Jolly: I would rather that an animal perform in a circus than that it be in a safari park, where there are hundreds of cars going by with fumes, noise and children banging on the windows. There is no comparison. Our animals are calm and are handled gently; they are not in a safari park situation, where youngsters and the cars driving past are upsetting them. We do not do that.

[Ellie Reeves]

Q What about when they are packed up and have to travel from place to place?

Peter Jolly: We do not pack them up.

[Ellie Reeves]

Q But they move around, do they not?

Peter Jolly: Our animals are transported; we do not pack them up. We pack the tent up.

Carol MacManus: Zoo animals are moved around, too, but they are generally not used to it. I am not an expert on zoo animals, but I believe that most of them are usually sedated to be moved around, or at least to be put in the transporters. We do not do any of that. All our animals are quite happy to move along the road. They travel next to the same companion that they have travelled with all the time. They are used to the other animals, used to the environment and used to us. There is nothing strange or stressful.

[Ellie Reeves]

Q How often do they have to be transported?

Carol MacManus: We move once a week, on a Sunday.

Peter Jolly: We move once a week.

Carol MacManus: Then they have two days off, because generally we do not work on Monday and Tuesday, and then they work—if you can call it work—from Wednesday to Sunday. They appear for about two minutes in the circus ring. They are not over-stressed.

Peter Jolly: Ours are the same.

Carol MacManus: In 2013, we had 85,000 attendants at our circus. We know that some people are saying, “Oh, we’re not doing very well this year,” but with animals we seem to be doing fine. People come to see our animals.

[Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)]

Q Mr Jolly, you referred to your two racoons and your fox, zebra and camels. If there was a ban, what would happen to those animals?

Peter Jolly: Nothing. I would change my business to something else, but the animals would stop with me.