Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

I would probably make an exception for amendment 2, but my hon. Friend makes a good point that amending legislation sometimes does not work in exactly the way we want it to work. I do not often give much praise to the Government, but on this occasion they have probably worked hard on the Bill to get it where it is. It is in a much better place than it was.

I will also talk briefly about new clause 5, which is an interesting amendment about water companies and pollution. The key to the water companies and pollution in our rivers is that we are about to have a new chair of Ofwat. The Secretary of State is looking at candidates and the EFRA Committee is about to look at whoever he or she might be. The new chair has a very big job to do, because—let us be blunt—the water companies have paid their shareholders and directors too much and have not put enough into infrastructure.

At one time, a previous Secretary of State was keen to bring forward legislation to ensure that more pressure was put on the water companies to deliver, because it is not just about putting up bills to get more infrastructure to stop pollution; it is about ensuring that water companies invest in building the infrastructure. I would not go as far as the Opposition parties want and nationalise the water companies, but I would apply some thumbscrews to them—only metaphorically—so that they really make a difference on the investment that they make. Hon. Members on both sides of the House know well that water companies should not be discharging into rivers when there is an overflow from treatment plants, many of which have not had the investment that they should have done over the years.

In fairness to the water companies—I do not like being fair to them—we should remember that, after going through education, health and all the other sectors, when they were nationalised they had not necessarily had the amount of investment that they had needed over the years. Since they were privatised, therefore, there has been a lot of investment by those companies, but it has not been enough, which is why we now have an opportunity to get it right. I am not sure, however, that the Bill is the right place for such a provision. I think we should be beefing up Ofwat and taking on the water companies directly.

The Opposition are saying that we are not creating greater biodiversity, but I do not accept that. I believe that we are and that all our policies are destined to do that, but we have to get the balance right. We see Putin and his dreadful regime inflicting this horrendous situation in Ukraine, murdering innocent people. Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe and, in many respects, of the world. Therefore, as we move towards greater biodiversity, we must also ensure that we have good food production, with enough food being produced. We have to get that balance right.

I may have journeyed slightly away from the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, but we have to be concerned about getting enough food. Food and energy security—these basics of life—are so important to us now. Let us get the Bill through and ensure that we set up the right committee, with the right chair, to ensure that proper animal welfare is considered, that there are practical ways of dealing with this issue across Government, so that it does not end up in the courts, and that the committee makes sensible decisions that are passed to Parliament, through the Secretary of State, to make sure that the Bill works in practice.

I support amendment 2 and I will support the Bill, but I think we have probably made very heavy work of getting here.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), is quite right that we have made heavy work of getting here. We have probably at times shared the view that we would not get here, so I welcome the fact that we have done so. I am not sure why some Government Back Benchers are so upset about the Bill, because it is pretty weak, although the test will be who is on the animal sentience committee once it is up and running, and what decisions they make and are allowed to make, so we reserve judgment on that.

I will speak briefly in support of new clause 1. It was rejected by the Government in Committee, although I am not sure why. It would require the preparation of an animal sentience strategy and annual statements on progress towards that. That would lead to a more proactive approach to sentience from Ministers. One of the amendments I tabled in Committee would have removed the word “adverse.” The new animal sentience committee’s job is to look at the “adverse effects” of policy. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) said that it would be able to look at kids learning in school about how to be nice to pets, but that is not the purpose of this committee. Its purpose is to look at negative things, but I think it would help if it could also look at the positive side of things.

Having an animal sentience strategy in place would force the Government to set out how they would respond to relevant reports, assessments and research, and it would be more proactive. Improving animal welfare should not just be about protecting where we are; it ought to be a constant, iterative process, because where we are simply is not good enough, whether because the laws are not strong enough or because enforcement does not happen.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree with me that although the Bill is a step forward, it is unusual to have a committee of this type without its having a strategy? As Government Members have pointed out, the committee needs to be making sensible decisions and recommendations. How can it do that without a strategy? I am sure the public would expect it to have a strategy, because the public expect us to be focused on animal welfare.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, particularly as we have a Government who cannot be trusted to keep their promises, as we have seen recently on imports of hunting trophies, fur and foie gas, for example. We need a mechanism that keeps the Government on track and creates that forward momentum, and new clause 1 would provide that.

It is clear from the Government rowing back on their promises to legislate on those imports that the Government are scared of some of their more unreconstructed Back Benchers—actually, some of the current Cabinet are pretty unreconstructed too, if the press are to be believed. On Second Reading it was noticeable how many Conservative Back Benchers stood up to criticise the Bill. The lack of enthusiasm for it—even the fear of it—was palpable, and we have read about efforts behind the scenes to neuter it, and I think that is what amendment 7 is about.

The hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) wrote a rather amusing article for ConservativeHome recently, saying that he had rumbled my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and me and sussed us out—I paraphrase. After close scrutiny of our comments in Committee, he had worked out that we had a hidden agenda: we were against fox hunting. That was remarkably clever of him; it was like when Scooby Doo suddenly unmasks the villains at the end. If there is anyone with a hidden agenda, it is he and the hon. Member for The Cotswolds, and I think he ought to be clear as to what amendments 6 and 7 are about.

Why would we want to exclude anyone with past or present commitment to animal welfare issues from serving on the animal sentience committee? Amendment 7 says that anyone who is an

“employee, former employee, or is a consultant or former consultant to, a charity”—

that could be the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, which are pretty benign organisations—

“or campaigning organisation concerned with animal welfare or animal rights, or is or has been in receipt of any payments or funding from such a charity or organisation, whether directly or indirectly”

should not be allowed to serve on the animal sentience committee. I do not understand why we would want to exclude people who have shown commitment, interest, knowledge or expertise in animal welfare from the animal sentience committee, unless the aim was to try to ensure that it was as weak on welfare and soft on sentience as possible.

[Sir Roger Gale]

According to the hon. Lady’s analysis, would that also mean that any member of the Countryside Alliance would have to be excluded?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I was actually just coming to that point. I was going to say that if the hon. Member for Buckingham thinks that nobody who has aligned themselves to a particular cause can be impartial, then that also ought to cover his friends in the Countryside Alliance and the rest of the hunting and shooting lobby. When he refers to extremists, I would say, certainly having been on the receiving end of it, that there are extremists on that side too. For example, Chris Packham has been subjected to a huge amount of abuse just for speaking out about the persecution of hen harriers, so there are clearly unpalatable elements on that side as well.

Amendment 7 would mean that someone such as the eminent zoologist Michael Balls CBE—father of Ed—who served as an adviser to the Government on the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and was a founding member of the Animal Procedures Committee, which advised the Home Secretary on all matters related to animal experimentation, would not be allowed to serve on the animal sentience committee, despite that expertise, because he had been a trustee of FRAME—the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments. He also, alongside the Prime Minister’s own father, came to Parliament to campaign against a huge new puppy farm in Yorkshire, where beagles were being bred specifically for purposes of animal experimentation. He is now an emeritus professor and might no longer wish to serve on Government committees, but surely someone with that sort of background would be absolutely perfect for this committee. That is not to say that we cannot also have a balance, with people who have other views.

I think it is nonsense to suggest that such experts, who are drawn to campaign on animal welfare precisely because of their in-depth understanding of the science behind animal sentience—it is because of their expertise that they are concerned about animal sentience and animal welfare—should not be allowed to serve.

Finally, turning to amendment 2, I think the same thing is actually going on. The hon. Member for The Cotswolds was very brief in speaking to his amendment, but he happens to be chair of the all-party parliamentary group on shooting and conservation. It is somewhat ironic that some of those who were so vocally supportive of leaving the EU, apparently to take advantage of new freedoms, are now arguing that they want to carry over the Lisbon treaty wording, chapter and verse. I think one of the reasons why this provision was in the Lisbon treaty was to protect things such as bull fighting, which I would hope we all think should not be protected in the name of culture and tradition.

I do not have a huge problem with the amendment being made to the Bill, because I have argued from the start, going back to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill debates, that the Lisbon treaty provision should be carried over. However, having heard what the hon. Member said on Second Reading, I think what he is really trying to do, by the back door, is to turn back the clock on the hunting ban or to create legal uncertainty around its enforcement by saying—this was the old argument we had when the Labour Government banned hunting—that it is all part of our tradition and of rural culture. The fact is that, for most people, as polling shows, it is a tradition they want confined to the history books, along with bear baiting, cock fighting, sending children up chimneys and so on. The hon. Member has to accept that times have changed, and that there is no place for fox hunting in a civilised world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Hudson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I urge Ministers to move quickly on this. We must identify horses so that we know why they are moving and can stamp out the illegal movement of hundreds, potentially thousands, of those animals that are moved for slaughter. That is important. Much as I am keen on making decisions from an evidence base, there comes a time when we do not need to keep consulting. The evidence is out there. Let us act; let us do it now.

I have raised this point with Ministers many times, as have Government and Opposition Members: if we are bringing in animal sentience legislation, let us have joined-up animal health and welfare legislation in practice now. For instance, as we speak, pig farms in the United Kingdom are still in crisis with more than 40,000 pigs having been culled on farms and not gone into the food supply chain. That is horrific. It is incredibly upsetting for the farmers, the vets, the slaughter workers and everyone concerned. It is an awful thing to do. Again, I firmly push the Government on that. I know that the Minister has been convening summits and working well with the sector, but we need action to put pressure on the food processors as well as work with the Home Office to sort out the visa situation to mitigate the crisis.

Many of those are workforce issues that have been exacerbated by Brexit and covid, but they are now having implications for our food security, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). They may also become an animal health and welfare problem. Let me give an example from the veterinary sector from a professional viewpoint. Since Brexit, the number of EU vets registering in the United Kingdom has reduced by a factor of about two thirds, and about 90% to 95% of vets working in the meat hygiene sector come from the European Union, so that reduction is producing a real crisis. We are short of not just workers but vets in the slaughter sector. In parallel, in the veterinary sector there is a huge increase in the time and demands on veterinary surgeons. Throughout lockdown, people have been taking in pets—we had the puppy boom—so the pressure on small animal veterinarians has gone through the roof, and, with Brexit, the pressures from export and import certification have also gone up. We therefore have a real crisis in the sector; it is a perfect storm that we really need to address.

On the EFRA Committee, we have made recommendations about keeping an eye on veterinary workforce issues and, again, that goes cross-departmental. For instance, I have been calling for an EU-UK veterinary, sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, which would smooth the movement of animal and plant produce between the UK and the EU. That would help with trade and help solve many of the issues we face between GB and Northern Ireland. I ask the Government to work across Government and with our European colleagues, because, if we could secure such agreements, that would take pressure off some of our workforce issues. That would also be of huge benefit to the country’s biosecurity.

Finally, I urge the Government not to lose their nerve on some of the welfare promises we made in our manifesto and in policy. I sincerely hope that media reports about the Government potentially dropping the ban on imports of farmed fur and foie gras are false and that they will keep going with what they promised. Some in my party have been reported in the media as saying that it is a matter of frippery or of personal choice—they should tell that to the animals farmed for their fur and to the birds with a tube rammed down their throat who are force-fed to make their livers pathologically fatty for some culinary delicacy. I firmly believe that we should hold our nerve in the Chamber and in the Conservative party and forge ahead with our promises, because that is the right and proper thing to do.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Member is making an excellent speech. I entirely agree with him on the iniquities of fur and foie gras. Is it not that we deem it cruel enough to have banned its production in this country, so all that we are squabbling about is whether we will outsource that cruelty and allow imports? I think it was the chair of the 1922 committee, the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), who talked about having to smuggle foie gras into the country on Eurostar. Surely there is hypocrisy at the heart of it as well.

[Dr Hudson]

The hon. Member makes a valid point. Those practices and procedures are rightly banned in this country. I firmly believe that we should not import things that we believe are wrong in this country. There has been a lot of discussion about trade deals, hormone-treated beef and chlorine-washed chicken. Rightly, those practices are banned in this country. That is one area where I do actually take the Government at their word. They are still banned, so those products will not be imported. I firmly believe we should keep our promises. If we make a promise, we should keep it.