Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 23rd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) on bringing this Bill forward today. I am glad we are finally in a position where an animal sentencing Bill might actually become law.

Everyone will be talking about their dogs today. I do not actually have a dog, but I have a dog in my life, which is my mother’s miniature schnauzer, Teddy, although he is actually twice the size of an ordinary miniature schnauzer, which just shows that Teddy is above other dogs. I am constantly telling him that he is the best dog. We do not have dog birthdays in our family, we have dog “got” days, and tomorrow is Teddy’s 12th got day. Congratulations to Teddy, who I am sure will be watching on video later.

Before we had Teddy in our family, we had a bulldog called Buster when I was growing up, and that was why the case of Baby the bulldog particularly struck home with me. It originally inspired Anna Turley’s Animal Cruelty (Sentencing) Bill back in 2017 when it was brought to public attention. It was not just a horrific story of the bulldog puppy being abused—I think it was thrown down the stairs—but the fact that it was videoed and put online. The perpetrators clearly thought it was something they could boast about and joke about and that they would not be brought to justice for it.

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

rose—

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think I know what the hon. Member is going to say, but yes, I will give way.

[Jacob Young]

I join the hon. Lady in paying tribute to my predecessor Anna Turley for bringing forward a previous iteration of the Bill. I am glad we are here today.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. I was going to say that I thought it was a little churlish of the hon. Member for West Dorset to not mention her, because she did so much work on this issue. I know he was not in Parliament at the time.

[Chris Loder]

The hon. Lady makes a very valid point. I would just like to say that I did not mention Anna Turley because my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) is here today and wanted to pay tribute to her directly.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Well, the hon. Gentleman did thank the hon. Member for Redcar, and he did not mention Anna, but let us not quibble over it. She does deserve a lot of credit for her indefatigable campaigning on this issue, and I have to say with no offence to the current hon. Member for Redcar that I miss her in this place.

The Government never really explained why they would not support that Bill back in 2017, and then we got bogged down in the process of bringing in a joint sentencing and sentience Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny—the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), is nodding away, because we both went through that process. It was basically all about the sentience side, and I would argue that it was about delaying the sentience side, which I will come on to later. There was no need for pre-legislative scrutiny of one clause that talked about sentencing.

We then debated another version of the Bill on 10 July 2019. I recall the Government saying then that it was really important to legislate as quickly as possible. The Bill went into Committee, and I was on that Committee. The Government wanted to get it done and dusted before summer recess, so they did not want to talk about any amendments or complicate things. There was a suggestion that there should be a more severe penalty for those who film themselves indulging in animal cruelty and post it online, partly as a deterrent, but also because such actions encourage other people to indulge in that behaviour. I must admit that quite a lot of 2019 is a bit of a blur to me. We did not know whether we were proroguing or nor proroguing, getting a Brexit deal or not getting a Brexit deal, having an election or not having an election.

That Bill did not become law either. The Government promised to legislate in autumn 2019, and then they called an election. I mean no disrespect to the hon. Member for West Dorset, but I do not see why, when this was in the Queen’s Speech, it has been left to a private Member’s Bill—it could have been Government legislation. I see the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) in his place. He was here when we debated this in 2019, and he joined me in saying that there was so much of this legislation—the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill was another example—where the Government kept saying, “We really want to do this, but we just don’t have time to bring it forward.” But there have been loads of days when we have been on a one-line Whip, having general debates. We could have got this legislation through in one day, and then everyone could have taken part, and by now it would have been law.

Although the Government will seek to get a lot of credit for supporting this Bill now, it could have become law in 2017 when Anna Turley first proposed it. That means that we have had three years of light sentences for the very worst animal abusers and three years of not being able to send out a strong message to potential abusers that they would face five years’ imprisonment. That deterrent has not been there, and that is a great shame. Having said that, I welcome the fact that we are here now. I hope that the accelerator will be pressed and the Bill will get through Committee quickly and through the House of Lords, and perhaps by year end it will be law.

While we are talking about the messages that are sent out and the importance of a deterrent, I think that children should be taught about animal welfare in schools. Far too many people, and particularly young men, think that the way to treat a dog is to be very harsh with it, to abuse it and to almost beat it into submission, as if that is the way to train a dog. There are others who abuse animals because they find enjoyment in it. Discussing animal welfare at an early age—particularly for children from families that do not have pets—would be really important in instilling the right behaviour and helping people to understand what owning a pet is all about.

I would not want to do anything to delay the Bill, but I hope that reports of a far more comprehensive animal welfare Bill are true, because they have been kicking around for quite a while—I see the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), smiling. Animal welfare is about a lot more than being nice to puppies or pets generally. There seems to be a focus on what I would describe as the low-hanging fruit, which is the “being nice to puppies” end of the spectrum. It is great that we have legislated for things such as Lucy’s law and trying to crack down on puppy farming, although I understand from Marc Abraham, who promoted that campaign through Pup Aid, that there are still some concerns about loopholes, so there is a new petition about the need to tighten that up. Finn’s law was a really good step. A petition on pet theft was discussed earlier this week in Westminster Hall, and there are also debates about ensuring that the law on microchipping is enforced.

[John Spellar]

My hon. Friend rightly mentions microchipping. It appears that there has been very limited enforcement of that by the police. Does she agree that the Home Office ought to give clear instructions to police forces that this is the law of the land and therefore they need to enforce it? I suspect that the police will find that the perpetrators are often subjects of interest in other criminal matters as well.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right, and of course there is the whole question about how animal welfare is enforced at a local level and what resources that are made available. In the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, we have also debated the dangerous dogs legislation—the breed-specific legislation and things like that—and it really is a question of resources on that front.

As I said, there is a lot going on about being nice to dogs, in particular, and to pets, but at the same time as we talk about Britain having the highest animal welfare standards in the world we still allow hunts to flout the hunting ban. We repeatedly see stories of people basically getting away with chasing a wild animal and ripping it to shreds; they are not being prosecuted for that. Millions of game birds are raised in factory farms in France, Spain, Portugal and Poland and imported into the UK every year and shot in the name of sport. People will have different opinions on shooting as a sport, but I think we can all agree that the conditions in which those birds are raised in those factory farms and in which they are imported are very questionable, aside from the separate issue of driven grouse shooting, which we have discussed in Parliament recently. We are also allowing the “unscientific, inhumane and ineffective” badger cull, to quote the experts, to go ahead, with thousands more badgers due to be slaughtered this autumn.

We have also seen a failure to curb the unnecessary rise in animal experimentation and to address what leaving the EU means for the duplication of experiments if we are not subject to REACH, the EU regulation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. I always feel that I have to say this when I speak on this issue: I am not totally opposed to all animal experimentation. I have a niece with cystic fibrosis, and I would want to see whatever is possible done to procure medical advances that might help solve those genetic issues, but I think most people would agree that a huge number of unnecessary animal experiments are still being carried out. There is so much duplication and so little data-sharing, and that will become worse once we leave the EU because we will not be part of the same regime. That is a cause for concern.

The hon. Member for West Dorset mentioned live exports. Again, a promise made during the Brexit referendum campaign was that we would end the practice. I would argue that we could have done a lot more, because the EU set minimum standards that governed the export of live animals and we could have gone further. As I understand it, there were efforts in the EU led by, I think, Germany and the Netherlands, to reduce the number of hours for which animals could travel, but the UK opposed that in EU negotiations before the Brexit referendum. Before the general election, the latest news was that the Government were going to ban live exports for fattening but not for slaughter, and there was no real explanation as to why that was the case, but we may have moved on.

[Jo Gideon]

I particularly want to speak on live animal exports, because a few years ago I was a councillor in Ramsgate where we had the live exporting of sheep to the great distress of everybody who live there. People blamed the council and the Government, and it was very clear at that point that there was no possible intervention that even the council, as the owners of the port, could do to stop the practice because of the EU legislation. I think we have to acknowledge that it was something that we tried to act on and would have loved to have done more about, but that was impossible under EU legislation. This is a real opportunity for us now that we are leaving.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think that the hon. Lady is talking about a ban on live exports, but I am talking about the standards that govern those exports, the inspections of the trucks and the conditions in which animals are transported. My understanding is that we could have done quite a bit more to at least alleviate the issue. Now, although I am not looking forward to the end of the transition period for many reasons, I hope that one thing that the Government will legislate on very early in the new year will be a ban on live exports for both fattening and slaughter. I have read about some loopholes—for example, breeding chicks might not be covered—but I hope that there will not be exceptions.

[Chris Loder]

Does the hon. Lady agree that regardless of all the things have happened before, here and now we should just be stopping live animal exports? Will she join me in challenging the NFU in that respect?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think that it is wrong to blame the NFU, because I doubt the Government’s will on this. I know that the hon. Gentleman does not want me to look back, but we have to judge a Government’s intentions by whether their deeds match their words, and I have doubts.

As we are talking about the NFU and about farming let me say that I sat on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I chair the all-party parliamentary group on agroecology, and I spoke on Second Reading and served on the Public Bill Committee for two iterations of the Agriculture Bill, so I have lost count of the number of times I have heard Government Ministers say that there would be no lowering of standards in any future trade deals. However, as we saw with the vote the other week—I hope that the Chair of the Select Committee will back me up on this—the willingness to enshrine that in law was not there, so I think I am right to doubt any other promises that the Government may make when it comes to protecting animal welfare. On that, the NFU was certainly on the right page, along with the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton.

[Chris Loder]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. The point that I am making is that those of us who do farm and are from farming backgrounds take this matter very seriously indeed. It is really important to note that it is in law today that chlorinated chicken is not permitted to come into this country, and it is exactly the same for hormone-injected beef—it is not allowed. I do not understand why the Opposition and others keep saying that it is, because it is a matter of fact that it is not. That is in legislation today. Does she agree that it is utter hypocrisy for the NFU on the one hand to lobby for live animal exports to go thousands of miles across Europe, yet on the other hand to accuse my colleagues and me of not caring at all about animal welfare?

[Kerry McCarthy]

When we return after the half-term recess, the Agriculture Bill will come back from the Lords, so we will have another opportunity to debate the amendments on protecting standards.

What this is all about is that under future trade deals this could all change, and we know that the Americans want to be allowed to export such products to the UK. We know that was a sticking point. We also know that the former Secretary of State for International Trade, the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), was rather keen to open the doors to such exports—he and I were in Washington at the same time a couple of years ago, and we were both on social media saying very different things about chickens. I just do not agree with the hon. Member for West Dorset that there is not a risk from those products.

There are many other examples of animal abuse that we need to crack down on. We need to enforce the existing law and to strengthen it. We are still seeing undercover footage emerging from so-called high welfare farms, so red tractor farms. I mentioned this the last time I spoke on the subject in 2019, but a different case emerged over the summer, at Flat House farm in Leicestershire. The hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) said that the footage contained

“some of the most disturbing images I have ever seen… We cannot allow farms like this to operate in the UK.”

It was a pig farm, and we know that pigs are incredibly intelligent animals. I think they ought to be treated on a par with dogs. We saw that they had bleeding hernias, lacerations, bites and deformed trotters. There were dead and dying animals being dragged into the walkway and left there to rot. My concern about not having protection for standards in the Agriculture Bill is that that sort of industrialised farming, with very small profit margins, and therefore with corners cut and welfare standards not adhered to, will become the norm in this country. I do not want to see that happen.

The Government brought forward the dual Bill on sentencing and sentience because they had promised, during the discussions on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill in late 2017, to legislate for animal sentience before we left the EU. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) had tabled new clause 30, which I seconded, and the Government voted it down. There was immediately an outcry—I would have preferred to have the support before the vote—because the Government had whipped their Members to vote against the new clause, and they were forced to say that they would legislate for this. They then brought forward the draft dual Bill, which went through pre-legislative scrutiny, and the sentience bit was not very well drafted. We have since had nothing. I brought forward my own animal sentience Bill—I have lost track of when; probably somewhere in 2019 when everything disappeared into the black hole. I was, for a very short while, on the Petitions Committee earlier this year, and I had the pleasure of speaking to a petition that received 104,000 signatures calling on the Government to legislate on animal sentience. My one question for the Minister is: what on earth happened to that legislation? A clear promise was made to this place and to the public that there would be legislation.

[Robbie Moore (Keighley) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a great contribution to the debate. I am sure she agrees that the Bill is completely worthwhile, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) on bringing it forward. However, does she agree that it is slightly disappointing that only one Opposition Member—herself—is contributing to the debate? While the Government side of the House is full of people contributing to the debate, it is slightly disappointing that the other side of the House is empty.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Perhaps my colleagues are all worn out from trying to get hungry children free school meals earlier in the week. The fact that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has the next Bill on the Order Paper may have something to do with the packed Conservative Benches. I say that as a former Government Whip for Friday sittings. That may be churlish of me.

I think I was reaching my peroration, as the former Speaker used to like to term it; the intervention that I very generously allowed has rather put me off my stride. I conclude by saying that I hope the Minister will answer the question on what on earth happened to the sentience provision. I congratulate the hon. Member for West Dorset on bringing the Bill forward. I very much hope that it becomes law, and that we will soon see animal cruelty in this country treated with the seriousness it deserves.