Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jo Churchill and Neil Parish

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

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

I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to our lively and wide-ranging debate. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) for his excellent maiden speech; I am delighted to have his support. As he said, animal welfare is important to his and all our constituents.

I know that my hon. Friends the Members for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), for Huntingdon (Mr Djanogly) and for North Herefordshire (Sir Bill Wiggin) are all upholders of animal welfare who care for their own animals. Indeed, I often look fondly at Christmas cards from my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire; they are signed by him and his wife but often bear a picture of him with a cow from his herd, which is quite interesting.

I am pleased to associate myself with the comments about our former colleague the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, with whom I worked to try to ensure that more cancer nurse specialists are there when people need them. We miss his wise counsel, but we welcome wholeheartedly our new hon. Friend.

The Bill is the latest in a series of steps that the Government are taking to develop and strengthen animal welfare protections. As we have heard from many hon. Members, it builds on the UK’s proud tradition of protecting pets, livestock and wildlife. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State laid out, our nation has a long and proud history in the area, and our action plan for animal welfare is making positive progress.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) pointed out, the Bill has been well discussed in the other place. She also alluded to other Bills. The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 came into force in June, increasing the maximum prison sentence for animal cruelty, and has been welcomed by hon. Members. The Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill is currently going through the House. We are supporting private Members’ Bills: the Animals (Penalty Notices) Bill and the Glue Traps (Offences) Bill, which we will debate in Committee tomorrow. We introduced a Government amendment, which I know many right hon. and hon. Members have welcomed, to tackle illegal hare coursing in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. We are progressing a range of other commitments in the action plan, including on cat microchipping, and are moving forward on many other things.

Members asked many questions; I aim to answer them all, but if I do not, my door is always open. My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon said that we had not yet had a conversation; I am keen to work to deliver good legislation not only for the countryside that I represent but for all our constituents. Our primary job is to make sure we get it right.

I was asked how sentience is defined in the Bill. Our scientific understanding of sentience has come a long way in recent years, but it is well defined and continues to evolve. Baroness Hayman’s work included the reviewing of 300 pieces of research to bring forward the definition of decapods and cephalopods. The situation will carry on evolving, so it would seem to be counter-intuitive to have a fixed definition, because the definition itself is not fixed. We therefore do not deem it necessary to define sentience for the work going forward. We can all recognise that animals are sentient and their welfare should be considered in any decisions we make.

As we have said, the public feel strongly about this issue, which is why we have introduced this legislation. I welcome the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) who, with this vast experience and strong expertise, highlighted the point that the committee will need to cover those areas of expertise. It is for that reason that we are not over-prescriptive. Indeed, as I said to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), somebody in one of the devolved nations could have the key expertise and we should look throughout the United Kingdom to ensure we have the right people on the committee to draw on.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border also mentioned constituents who lose dogs and horses. I agree that there are other things we should be doing in the animal space, but we are moving forward with them. The Bill is tightly drafted for a distinct reason, which is why it merely has simple clauses to make sure we get it right.

I thank the EFRA Committee for all its work to get the Bill into a much better place. I notice that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) is now in his place.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I apologise to the House for not being here for the debate; I have been chairing the EFRA Committee. The advisory committee will need members with good practical animal welfare experience and an independent chair. It will also need to be given the proper resources and we will need more transparency in respect of the process of advising the Government. I really hope we can have a strong animal welfare process that is actually workable.

[Jo Churchill]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for the letter that he recently wrote to me. We intend to do exactly that and I shall come to that in a moment.

The Bill delivers on our manifesto commitment and provides legal recognition that animals are sentient beings. As I have said, it is a tight, short Bill that establishes an animal sentience committee to consider how individual central Government policies and decision making take account of animal welfare. The Bill contains provisions to ensure that Ministers respond to Parliament in respect of reports published by the animal sentience committee. It establishes that committee and empowers it to scrutinise Minister’s policy formation and implementation decisions, with a view to publishing reports containing its views on whether Ministers have paid all due regard to animals’ welfare needs as sentient beings.

The Bill places a duty on Ministers to respond to the reports by means of a written statement to Parliament within three months’ sitting time and confirms that non-human vertebrates such as dogs, birds, decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs and invertebrates such as lobsters and octopuses are sentient—that is, capable of experiencing pain or suffering. Together, these measures constitute a targeted, timely and proportionate accountability mechanism, as so aptly described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett).

The hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) asked why the Bill talks only of adverse effects. It is because the Animal Sentience Committee’s role will be to encourage policy decision makers to think about the positive improvements they could make to animal welfare, rather than just minimising adverse effects. Meeting the welfare needs of animals means avoiding those negative impacts, as well as providing for positive experiences. The reference to an adverse effect allows the committee to consider whether a policy might restrict an animal’s positive experience.

I was asked whether the Animal Sentience Committee will produce an animal welfare strategy, and the answer is no. The Government’s current and future work on animal welfare and conservation is set out clearly in the action plan for animal welfare, and the role of the Animal Sentience Committee is not to devise future policy or strategy.

I was asked whether the committee could produce an annual report. That task is not established by the Bill, although that would not be necessary. There is nothing to prevent the committee from assessing improvements annually, if that fulfils its legislative purposes, or from issuing a report should it so wish.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jo Churchill and Neil Parish

Thursday 9th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee, Neil Parish.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Minister was before the Select Committee last week saying that 7,000 hectares of trees would be planted in England by 2024. When planting those trees, we want native trees that have been grown in this country so as not to import disease. It takes three years to grow a tree, so we need the nurseries to be told exactly what we need for 2024.

[Jo Churchill]

We are working hard to ensure that my hon. Friend has that clarity and that we have that understanding in the area of biosecurity. We want to ensure that everybody knows what the rules are so that we can get on with improving the environment and planting those trees.

Pension Equality for Women

Debate between Jo Churchill and Neil Parish

Thursday 14th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) on securing this debate on such an important subject. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore).

I, too, have had meetings with WASPI women. As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) discussed, this is a real and prevalent issue for many women in Suffolk. Nevertheless, I have discovered that stories differ. It is important to treat people as individuals on their journey through life. We do not necessarily serve all our population well if we lump everything together in our discussions of these matters. As I understand it, the primary thing is that no matter what the hue of the Government, there needs to be clarity in the information that is passed down on these important issues. There is blame across the piece for people not getting the information. People tell me that letters often were not received, and I have no reason to think that they were. There is a problem in ensuring that people are properly informed.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

rose—

[Mims Davies (Eastleigh) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is very important for the generation of women affected? Although some of them saw the letters, others did not, and some did not receive them, so they have not been able to make plans for their retirement. The next generation of women will know exactly what is coming. We have made some alterations, but the Government need to be much more generous than they have been to this group of women.

[Jo Churchill]

I agree with my hon. Friend, but it also affects those of us who were in our late 40s when we received the letters. I received one in 2011 or 2012, which proves that they do work. I took a 10% hit in my working life. I will be working until I am 67, I think—

BT Broadband Provision: Local Businesses

Debate between Jo Churchill and Neil Parish

Thursday 10th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

I hope I will not be ruled out of order, because that is going a little off the topic of the debate. However, I can enlighten the hon. Lady. We had the head of the RPA in Parliament yesterday, and obviously what happened—to put it in layman’s terms—is that DEFRA created a system that was not entirely compatible with what the RPA was doing. We tried to drill down yesterday on the issue: at what stage did the head of the RPA realise that, and at what stage did he intervene? Was there a breakdown in communication? Was there a clash of personalities? Yes, there was; there is no doubt about that. The trouble is that whatever Department or whatever system was to blame it is the farmers who pay the price, because they are still waiting for that payment.

In fairness to the RPA, it has speeded up its operation. However, what we are mindful of is that we do not want this situation to carry on as things did in 2004, when the payments were bad for 2005, 2006 and 2007, and it took 10 years and more to put matters right. We want to make sure that within one year the situation is absolutely right. There are people farming on the commons, and other farmers. Why should they have to wait so long for their payment when the problems are down to others?

As I say, we had the head of the RPA in yesterday and he was trying to say, “Well, it’s this Department, or that Department or the other Department.” However, as the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland says, if the farmers are not getting their payment, they are not interested in which Government Department is failing. We must deliver.

[Jo Churchill]

Before my hon. Friend is asked to come back to the topic of the debate, may I just draw a comparison? No matter who is to blame—whether it is BT, or any other company or persons—the people who suffer are our businesses, and that is the point that we want to address here today. The Government are doing good work. Suffolk County Council is hitting its targets; indeed, it got an extra payment for doing that. But the key word that my hon. Friend used was “communication”. I had a very robust conversation on Monday with BT’s directors—in fact, it was incredibly robust—and I pointed out that if they cannot communicate with their customers, their businesses and so on, they should not call BT a communications company.

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which brings me back on track. She is right about communication, and I will say a little more about that in a minute.

The point that my hon. Friend also rightly makes is that broadband is absolutely essential for our businesses. If we have a car, a piece of machinery or anything else that is not working, we can swap that car or that piece of machinery for another make that delivers what we want it to deliver. The problem that our constituents have is that there is no other “make” out there that can necessarily deliver broadband. Again, that is why BT needs more competition and why it has to step up to the plate.

Despite all my rhetoric I am not actually anti-BT, but I want BT to deliver. I know that the Minister is working very hard on this issue. I have urged him before to apply his iron fist to make sure that BT delivers, because it is not our money—it is our taxpayers’ money. It does not matter whether it comes from Government or councils; in the end, it comes from our individual taxpayers, who are often the very same people who are not getting connected to broadband. Therefore, they have paid for broadband but they are not getting it, so they have a double whammy.

We have made that point this afternoon and I know that the Minister must probably think, “Oh, yet another debate on broadband.” But once people are connected to broadband we will not have these debates, because people will not be concerned. While these debates continue, naturally he must respect that.

My final point is about some businesses in Dunkeswell and Luppitt, which are the sites of old aerodromes. They could not access broadband for three weeks, because the exchange went down. Exchanges can go down, but I will now explain the compensation that those businesses have been offered. Many businesses in my constituency have been affected by poor internet and broadband speeds; some of them have had no internet at all for a lengthy time, which is unthinkable from day to day. Companies such as Assinder Turnham Ltd, a property and construction consultancy, Lynch Motor Company Ltd, Dolly Diamond, and Flymoore Aircraft Engineering were all without internet for as long as three weeks. I completely understand that a catastrophic fault at a BT exchange can and will happen from time to time, but when it happens, what is done to compensate and help the businesses that are left on their knees?

I will take Flymoore Aircraft Engineering as an example. It is a local business in my constituency that deals with aircraft respraying and engineering. It lost broadband from 25 January for three weeks. Flymoore could not do its VAT returns, and so spoke to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Flymoore asked BT for evidence to provide to HMRC, but was told that it would cost £10 to get something called a work report. This company was without broadband for three weeks, but it ended up paying BT for the lack of service. It could not pay its staff or order parts or supplies for aircraft, and it did not receive new orders for work and so lost vast amounts of money. Flymoore could not access the European Aviation Safety Authority’s website, which has all the mandatory legal requirements for aircraft safety. Because of that, it could not finish ongoing jobs. It could not access repair information or manuals online. It needed those instructions to physically carry out the maintenance on the aircraft.

At the very least, we would expect substantial compensation for the serious loss of business. Flymoore had a financial buffer to deal with market uncertainty, but virtually all of that has been wiped out, and the business is struggling financially. BT did not initially offer compensation, but Flymoore has since managed to get £25 in compensation and three months’ free internet. What sort of company offers that level of compensation? If there was competition in the marketplace, BT would have to offer proper compensation.

I will not go into all the details of the other businesses affected, but interestingly they have all been offered different amounts of compensation and different lengths of free internet access. There seems to be nothing in place to compensate for the types of losses that the businesses have had. It is not only about delivering broadband in the hardest hit areas, but about ensuring that when the broadband connection is there, it is constant. If it breaks down for a long period, those businesses need adequate compensation. What they have been offered is pathetic.

BT needs to step up to the plate, deliver broadband and compensate people when they do not receive it. My hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) gave us a huge catalogue of issues with a company trying for more than a year to get broadband onsite. We want, and we have, a dynamic economy, but we will only improve it further by having good delivery of broadband across the whole country.