Sentience and Welfare of Animals

James Daly Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

I want to talk about my experience of the criminal justice system, and how the sentences I have seen being given are a reflection of society’s attitude to animals and an indictment of how we treat animals in my profession.

I cannot calculate the number of lower court cases in which I have acted, during which I heard the most harrowing details of animal abuse in interviews conducted by the RSPCA. However, I cannot remember one occasion when a perpetrator was sent to prison. Those cases rarely went to the Crown Court, because of the sentencing powers that we are talking about.

I pay tribute to the Minister and to any Government who have legislated to support animal welfare, but we must increase the punishment available to our courts to reflect the fact that animals are sentient beings, and that we value them as such. We must find a way to ensure that sentencing within the criminal justice system acts as a deterrent to the people who act in the most appalling manner, rather than most people being able to walk away from the justice system with, at worst, a community penalty.

I could tell you how much I love animals, Sir Roger, but you do not want to hear that. I know that this Government are committed to the highest possible standards of welfare for animals, and that they will bring forward the measures they think are reasonable and appropriate to achieve those aims. I know this is not in the Minister’s portfolio, but could she comment on any discussions she has had with colleagues in the Ministry of Justice about giving guidance to the courts, the prosecution and the RSPCA, which mounts such prosecutions, to ensure that we have a rigorous attitude to animal prosecutions and that the courts provide harsh but fair sentences?

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Pollard]

My hon. Friend is dead right. There is an amazing amount of good political meat in publications by the Environment Secretary from the time when he was on the Back Benches. It feels as if the Opposition do not need to remind him of them, because I am sure his officials have churned through those plentiful publications, and the amendments he tabled to an earlier Agriculture Bill. Sadly, his new batch of Ministers recently voted against those proposals, but they include things for which there is a lot of support, and there is cross-party support for what we are discussing today.

I do not think British diplomats in Washington instructing President Trump to raise his domestic animal welfare standards to get a trade deal with the UK would work, but it is important to maintain high levels of protection in law, so that during negotiations the people we are negotiating with know the strength of feeling of the British people and Parliament: that we will not accept any lowering of standards or undercutting of them in any trade deal. That is why we need the animal sentience legislation to be implemented before the end of the implementation period. We cannot allow our animal welfare standards to fall behind those of the EU, especially after the plentiful promises of Conservative Ministers.

The animal sentience legislation that I hope the Minister will announce needs to apply to all policy areas and all sentient animals. If an animal is sentient, they are sentient no matter how they are being used by humans or where they are living. The law needs to confer an active duty to respect that sentience on all aspects of government. Simply having a function within DEFRA to advise the rest of Government is insufficient because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East said, there are other Departments that need to reflect the importance of animals in their day-to-day work and that might not, as standard, take animal sentience on board. That is why an independent monitor is such a good idea.

The legislation should require the Government to publish an annual report detailing how the duty has been acted on, including the policy options considered and what animal welfare impact assessments have been undertaken. It also needs to recognise that decapods and cephalopods—that is, crabs and lobsters, octopuses and squids—are sentient animals. In Labour’s animal welfare manifesto, which, again, is a very good read and still available on the website, we make the case that lobsters experience anxiety, crabs use tools, and octopuses have been known to predict the results of football matches—at least, that is not quite in the manifesto, but the sense of it is.

That is why, in our manifesto, we talk about not allowing those precious creatures to be boiled alive, for instance. We know that if you put a lobster in a boiling pot of water, it experiences pain. The pain may be lessened by the experience of being slowly heated, but it is pain none the less, and there are better ways of doing it.

The petition calls for a new body to support the Government in their duties to animals, which I referred to briefly, to ensure that

“decisions are underpinned by…scientific and ethics expertise.”

It has been proposed under a few names. The experience of Scotland was mentioned by the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald), and the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) spoke about how Scotland has already got there. In Scotland, it is called the animal welfare commission, but it could also be an animal welfare advisory council. In our manifesto, we talk about an animal welfare commissioner. Regardless of the name or the precise format, the function is the same: to support and critically analyse, to advise Ministers and Government to make the right decisions, and to ensure that the effects are truly understood.

My party prides itself on being the party for animal welfare. At the last election, we were the only party to publish a manifesto exclusively on animal rights. In it, we set out how we would appoint an independent animal welfare commissioner to operate in England and in collaboration with the devolved Administrations. Now that the UK is no longer a member of the European Food Safety Authority, we need to establish a body that can advise DEFRA and all of Government independently, and to represent the wealth of scientific, ethics and animal welfare expertise available in the UK.

We know that at the moment there is no specific body that is under a statutory duty to enforce the welfare requirements of Labour’s landmark Animal Welfare Act 2006, which my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) mentioned. That needs to be placed on a statutory footing, and an animal welfare commissioner would help to achieve that. I recommend that the Minister cut and paste that from our manifesto into her Department’s work plan; if she did, it would enjoy the cross-party support that we have seen from the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), who were united in the same effort here.

The commissioner would be responsible for gathering the latest scientific evidence on animal sentience and welfare, to ensure that there is the most up-to-date, evidence-based understanding across Whitehall, and to ensure that our nation maintains its top ranking in the animal protection index. Working alongside Government, the commissioner would assist in the promotion of best practice in animal welfare internationally because, although we pride ourselves on the legislative framework, Britons care about animal welfare both at home and abroad. To see that, we need only look at changes that the tourism industry has made to remove animals from so many of the products sold to British tourists, because that is not something Brits support.

Ministers are often found saying that the legislation that has been proposed now that we have left the EU is world leading, but time and again the evidence does not support that high-falutin’ soundbite. The Bills that have come out of DEFRA recently on agriculture and the environment have, I am afraid, been disappointing, at a time when many of us—including many of the “greenies” from across the parties and across the divide here—had high hopes that they really would deliver on that promise.

We cannot be world leading without an animal welfare commissioner. We are not even leading in the UK, because Scotland already has an animal welfare commissioner. England is already lagging behind. That matters as well. My little sister is a sheep farmer in Cornwall and, if she were to move north of the border, the animals that she now keeps in Cornwall would have a different legislative framework and different protections. That does not quite seem right for the same sheep, and I think there is an option to look at that again. I am not advocating taking sheep out of the Secretary of State’s own county along the way, for fear of offending him, but having those standards across our islands is important when it comes to animal welfare.

As I conclude, I will mention briefly the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), who said in his remarks that he was exasperated by the language around chlorinated chicken. Indeed, many people in this place are, and the answer is very simple: put it in the Bill. That would prevent our standards from ever being undercut. If the hon. Gentleman believes the words of Ministers—they are said so very often—there is no reason for that not be put in a Bill, because those words are already on record. The thing is, I do not believe Ministers when they say that. There is an important element of building trust in these areas.

[James Daly]

Can I ask a very simple question? What shred of evidence does the hon. Gentleman have to back up what he has just said?

[Luke Pollard]

The difficulty when we sit on the Opposition Benches, where our job is to scrutinise rather than to support, is that we look for evidence of the words. There is a genuine risk that standards could be undercut.

It is important to make a distinction here, because this is frequently lost in interventions, although I hope that will not be the case with the hon. Gentleman. It is not that we think the Government will somehow lower our standards immediately, but by signing trade deals that undercut our standards and permit food produced to lower animal welfare standards or with negative environmental impacts, we will be allowing in produce that undercuts our own farmers and our high animal welfare standards, and that creates an incentive to lower regulatory pressures in the UK—or protections, as the Opposition like to think of them.

That is not something that is supported. It is not supported by Labour, it is not supported by the SNP and it is not supported by many Conservative Members, nor is it supported by the National Farmers Union and other groups. There are elements of cross-party support for keeping standards high and keeping that in law; it is one of those areas where we can come together on a cross-party basis to say that animal sentience should be in law. If we did, it should be a simple Bill with good scrutiny—the Minister knows that there are many experts in this House who would happily advise her for free along the way—because it is important that we get it done. At the moment, far from getting done, it is just getting delayed.

I hope that the Minister, when she gets to her feet, will give a boost to the petitioners—all 104,000 of them, in nearly every single parliamentary constituency of the country—and reassure them that this petition will not only enjoy warm words from Government, but see Government action before the end of the implementation period at the end of this year.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

It really is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Sir Roger. I am not sure that we have yet reached a point on animal welfare where we are sharing glory, but if there is glory to be shared, you should certainly have a part in that, as should many of the hon. Members who have spoken in today’s debate. I recognise that many hon. Members here have been involved in this area for a long time and will continue to be involved, and that is to be welcomed.

I thank in particular the Petitions Committee and its representative in this Chamber, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important subject. I also thank the 104,000 people who signed a petition to say that it is important that the House have this debate.

I start by saying that we should be proud of this country’s animal welfare record. In preparing for the debate, I had a little look at the history books. We started legislating for animal welfare in the 1830s—a long time before we put into place many other provisions that we would now consider essential, such as for the protection of children—so it is true that we are keen on protecting animals in this country.

It has never been in dispute that, of course, animals are sentient beings. Today’s debate demonstrates once again that we are a nation of animal lovers. All colleagues will know how deeply their constituents feel about these issues. We see that all the time in the love and money that people give to animal charities. We have heard today about the work that the Barnsley Brownies have been doing, and the excellent work that Give a Dog a Bone has been doing in East Renfrewshire. I pay tribute to all those who are involved in that way.

[James Daly]

If we are mentioning community groups, I must speak up on behalf of my constituent Helena Abrahams, who runs Gizmo’s Legacy. We talk about how we treat animals and how important they are to us, but, as the Minister knows, thousands of cats are disposed of every year without being scanned for a chip by local authorities. Cats are part of the family and need to be returned home rather than simply thrown into landfill. Will she agree to meet me or Ms Abrahams to discuss the matter further?

[Victoria Prentis]

It will give me enormous pleasure to agree to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that. I am a former officer of the all-party parliamentary group on cats and, indeed, the proud keeper—I certainly would not call myself the owner—of Midnight, voted parliamentary cat of the year the year before last. He definitely keeps me fully under control and has no difficulty in telling me about all his welfare needs.

Until 31 December, we are covered by article 13 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, but the Government have committed to introducing new laws on sentience, as we heard many times. We had an extremely clear manifesto commitment to do that, and I confirm that we will do so as soon as we can, but I am sadly unable to say exactly when that will be.

Obligations on keepers of animals under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 make it an offence to cause unnecessary suffering to any animal, and anyone responsible for an animal must take reasonable steps to ensure that the animal’s welfare needs are met. At this point, I thank those vets, charities and animal welfare organisations working around the clock with Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs officials in these difficult times of reacting to the spread of the coronavirus to develop guidance for pet and livestock owners. We want to help owners and keepers to take proportionate hygiene measures while supporting animal welfare.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) spoke of the comfort that animals can give us in these frightening times, which was an important, well-made point. We are pleased to support the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill, a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder), who has just popped out of the room. It had its First Reading on 5 February 2020. It is the same Bill that the Government introduced in the last Parliament, and this small but critical piece of legislation will increase maximum sentences for animal welfare abuses tenfold, from six months to five years. It was good to hear the breaking news during the debate that we will next hear about this important Bill on 12 June.

I understand the concerns raised about the loss of protections as we leave the EU. I have never spoken ill of Government lawyers, and I certainly would not like to start now, but article 13 of the Lisbon treaty was proposed and promoted by UK Government lawyers. It states, as I think we all agree, that animals are sentient beings and that the EU and member states should pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals when formulating and implementing policies, but only in relation to a limited number of EU policy areas. Article 13 also provides some wide-ranging exemptions for cultural and religious practices and so on. It does not—I hesitate to criticise it, but we must—confer directly applicable rights or legally enforceable requirements. Frankly, it does not provide the sort of protection for animals that we want going forward.

Now that we have left the EU, we have the opportunity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West said so powerfully, to do things differently and in a way that reflects the importance we attach to animal welfare. Of course, what really matters is that we can enforce standards of animal welfare. I listened with interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly). We must find a way to ensure that sentencing acts as a deterrent, and I am extremely happy, given my legal background, to have many conversations with him about that, so we shall take that offline.

We have some world-leading animal protections in place in this country. The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) will be pleased that we have introduced a ban on the commercial third-party sale of puppies and kittens, known as Lucy’s law, and I pay tribute to the charity from her constituency that worked on that. The ban will help to clamp down on puppy farming and to ensure that our much-loved pets have the best start to their lives. It comes into force on 6 April, which will be welcomed.