Wild Animals (Circuses)

Jim Fitzpatrick Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to follow the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), and I congratulate him. I do not imagine that he is in the running for his Chief Whip’s Back-Bencher of the month award, and he might have to wait a wee while before receiving further invitations to receptions at No. 10, but he is showing great tenacity and determination in keeping this issue alive in Parliament, and in bringing it to the attention of the House today, with the able assistance of the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate.

Some people may not consider this issue to be of major political consequence, but it means a great deal to a lot of people, as evidenced by the thousands of responses to last year’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs consultation, by the number of people signing The Independent newspaper’s petition, by the hundreds of MPs who have signed the relevant early-day motions, and by the e-mails and letters MPs have been receiving not just in the last few days, but over the past 14 months.

I should declare an interest: I was the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister who left this matter to the current Minister of State, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice), to sort out, and I apologise to him for that. I am sure he would rather be concentrating on other matters, but he is a highly respected politician of integrity, and I know he will take note of today’s debate and vote.

[Tony Baldry]

As the hon. Gentleman had ministerial responsibility for this issue under the last Government, may I ask him a question? In the last Parliament, we spent a lot of time debating the Bill that became the Animal Welfare Act 2006, and we were told that it was the most up-to-date legislation in the world. Therefore, if there is a concern about animal welfare, why is it not covered by the provisions of that Act?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

That is a good question, and I will discuss the 2006 Act in due course. It is my understanding that that Act could be used as the enabling legislation to introduce a ban, and I hope that my later remarks on it will clarify the situation for the hon. Gentleman.

When I took over as Minister of State in 2009, the question of wild animals in circuses had been left over from the 2006 Act. That Act was much needed and warmly welcomed and took animal welfare to a much better place, but wild animals in circuses were not specifically covered. I was lobbied by the Born Free Foundation, as well as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Animal Defenders International, and also by many Members. DEFRA organised a consultation, and we all know the outcome: 94.5% of the 13,000 respondents said they wanted a ban. The then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), agreed that we should express our conclusions before last May’s election and we said we were minded to introduce a ban.

Recently, there has been much comment about legal impediments. The European Circus Association challenged the Austrian ban at the European Commission in 2006, and it lost. It invoked the European ombudsman and it lost. The ombudsman asked the Commission to evaluate whether the Austrian ban on wild animals in circuses was proportionate. The Commission’s final opinion of September 2009, as laid out in the documents available in the Library pack for today’s debate, set out why it did not believe there were grounds for an accusation of maladministration and also set out its view on the proportionality of the Austrian ban. It ruled that this was a matter for member states to decide.

Much advice was offered to me when I was a Minister, but my recollection is that the legal questions were about whether a ban would require primary or secondary legislation. I do not remember there being a European dimension to the advice, but of course memory does play tricks on us.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman was a good Minister, but does he regret that he did not introduce a ban in his time as a Minister?

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I regret that we as a Labour Government did not introduce a ban, but the Animal Welfare Act was a major piece of legislation and we tried our best. Given the constraints and the time frame between when I was appointed Minister of State and the May 2010 election, there was not long enough to introduce that ban. However we gave a commitment to the animal welfare lobby, to parliamentary colleagues and to the public that we were minded to introduce a ban if we were re-elected, which sadly we were not. I am convinced that we would have gone ahead with that.

The biggest obstacle to progress that I can remember, as has been mentioned by the hon. Member for The Wrekin, was at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which contended that any such ban could harm our creative industries by outlawing the use of animals in film and TV productions at worst or by reducing the number of performing animals available at best. Either way, the contention was that the threat to film and TV production would move it abroad and cost us jobs and revenue. We had numerous discussions about this and we were eventually able to reassure DCMS that that would not be the case and that we could limit the ban to the use of wild animals in circuses, as the hon. Gentleman has outlined. DCMS dropped its objection and the Government had a united policy, which appeared in our manifesto in May last year.

All kinds of questions were raised about whether wild animals should perform at all and which should be allowed to. My main concern was and is about the conditions in which animals are kept in venues and on the road. We are mostly reassured that modern zoos create environments that try to reflect animals’ origins, natural habitat and behaviour patterns, and we have to ask how that can be done in the back of a cage attached to a lorry driving along the motorways of Britain. Even this morning on BBC “Breakfast”, the camera crew visiting a circus was not allowed to film the animals’ living quarters. I think that that speaks volumes. Why the reluctance? I think we all know.

The Government say they want to introduce a licensing system rather than a ban. The system would mean that any circuses wishing to have wild animals such as tigers, lions and elephants performing in them would need to demonstrate that they met high animal welfare standards for each animal before they could be granted a licence to keep them. Areas being considered as part of the licensing conditions include the rules on transporting animals, the type of quarters they could be kept in, including winter quarters, and their treatment by trainers and keepers.

I know from my time at DEFRA that it wants to improve the welfare of animals across the piece and to improve the situation. It has even been suggested by some that the licensing regime could introduce a ban by the back door, but we do not want a ban by the back door—we want a ban through the front door. We want honesty and transparency in the laws and regulations we debate and introduce. We want clarity, not confusion. The public have used their voice to articulate that they want a ban and Members of every party have said that they want a ban. I hope and appeal to hon. Members in all parts of the House when it comes to the vote at 6 o’clock tonight to support the motion in the names of the hon. Members for The Wrekin, for Colchester and myself.