Animals (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 3rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Scott Benton (Blackpool South) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) for bringing this Bill before the House. Animal welfare, whether at home or abroad, is an important issue to my constituents, and I often receive emails supporting greater protection for animals. I am proud of how far we have come in this country, and I commend the current Government for the work they have done to stop the needless suffering of animals. Since 2010, it is quite a record: a ban on the use of conventional battery cages for laying hens; mandatory CCTV in slaughterhouses across England; a ban on the use of wild animals in circuses; the strongest ivory ban in the world; mandatory microchipping of dogs; and the modernisation of the licensing system for dog breeding and pet sales.

In 2021 we met our manifesto commitment when the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act came into force, raising the maximum sentence for animal cruelty from six months to five years. Its sister Act, the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which is passing through its stages in this House, will also introduce some of the world’s strongest protections for pets, livestock and kept wild animals. Those include a ban on keeping primates as pets and on exporting live animals for slaughter and fattening. That Bill also addresses puppy smuggling by reducing the number of pets that can travel under pet travel rules, and I look forward to supporting it as it continues its parliamentary journey.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way, and I am glad that he is supporting the Bill. He has outlined some good measures, but does he share my frustration that it has taken an awfully long time to get them through? They are usually pretty simple Bills for which there is cross-party agreement; the Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019 took forever to get through the House—although that was probably before the hon. Member’s time. Does he share my frustration, and hope that we can get more measures like this one through the House more quickly in future?

[Scott Benton]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She certainly shares my passion for improving animal welfare, and I am sure that the Government business managers have heard her plea for Government time to take forward the additional measures she alludes to.

Clearly, this is an area of policy in which the UK has progressed rapidly and has quickly become a world leader, reflecting the deep respect for animals that the people of this country have.

As recently as the 1980s, exotic animals were used in circus performances in my constituency, which would be unthinkable today.

The Bill rightly recognises the unintentional and often unforeseen suffering that tourist activities can inflict on animals. That is particularly true when animals are taken from their natural habitats and trained, often cruelly, to act as part of a show or to be docile when being petted or fed. I am sure that many tourists who visit such shows are unaware of the impact on the animals’ health and of the conditions in which the animals are usually kept.

In conclusion, while I am broadly opposed ideologically to restrictions on companies to advertise, I hope the Bill will mean companies with the leverage to encourage higher standards in regulations in attractions abroad will use that leverage. Rather than stopping people seeing exotic and interesting animals in other places, I hope the Bill will allow them to do so in a way that protects those animals from harm and exploitation.

Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend is clearly a champion of her special part of Kent. The best way I can put it is that a plan was set out and monitoring is taking place. We are not trying to hide anything—far from it. We have opened up to the problem and have a laser-like focus on tackling sewage. It is imperative that we continue to hold the water companies to account. In that regard, the investment will start flowing. That is all part of the impending price review.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I have had a pretty good read of the plan, and it is disappointing that there is not more about the urban environment and the contribution that it can make, particularly in terms of the nature section. As the parliamentary species champion for the swift, I am keen to see more swift bricks installed in buildings. A lot has been said about trees, hedgerows and so on, but when it comes to reversing the decline in swifts, we need to look at buildings. Is that something that the Secretary of State can go away and look at, and perhaps introduce it, despite the fact that it is not in the plan?

Bee-killing Pesticides

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will come to the science and the process for approval based on scientific decisions in a moment, so I hope he will hold his horses on that point. He makes a strong point on glyphosate. Last year, I held a roundtable with environmental charities, farming representatives and scientists, including representatives of Cancer Research UK, to consider the impact not only of neonicotinoids, but of glyphosate. There are real concerns here, and if we are to make progress in achieving a more nature-based form of agriculture relying on fewer chemicals and pesticides, we need to consider the impact of these chemicals not only on nature, but on human health.

The issue is not only food production in the UK. Now that we have signed trade deals with countries that use neonicotinoids, glyphosate and other chemicals on a greater, more industrial scale in their food production, and we allow that food to be imported to the UK, we are seeing those chemicals in the UK food chain, and we might see even more of them in future, even though we might be taking positive steps to address them. That is an important issue, and I am glad the hon. Gentleman raised it. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that point.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, as he does every year on this topic. I hope he does not have to do so next year. We are focused on agricultural use today, but there is an issue with the use of glyphosate in cities. Does he agree that we ought to create pollinator corridors in our cities and prevent the use of pesticides, so we do not damage the health of our pollinators, and that councils need to be supported to go down that route?

[Luke Pollard]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree. Bee corridors and pollinator corridors offer an incredible opportunity to green many of our urban environments, and provide habitats not only for bees, but for other insects. Insect health might not be the sexiest of topics, but it is essential if we are to reverse climate decline and biodiversity loss.

There are superb examples across the south-west—in Bristol and in Plymouth—of bee corridors. I encourage everyone to support their local council in establishing bee corridors, especially at the point in the year when bee corridors do not look their best and plants start to brown; that is precisely when the biodiversity boost is greatest. How can we explain that to residents?

Agricultural Transition Plan

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

The hon. Lady raises an important point, because our peatlands are under huge pressure, particularly in the lowlands, where they are disappearing. We need to try to embrace and support the farmers who are farming that land, because they are very productive in growing vegetables, particularly in the Lincolnshire wolds. We must make sure that we continue to sequester carbon in the peatlands in her constituency, as they are a huge carbon sequestration asset. That is a huge priority that this Government will continue to monitor and support.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I share the Minister’s excitement about the potential of the landscape recovery schemes, but we also need to leverage private sector finance if we are to reach net zero and halt biodiversity loss. What conversations has he had with colleagues in the Treasury, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and across Government about ensuring that nature-based carbon credits actually have credibility? At the moment, it is difficult to quantify their value and to get people to be confident in investing in them.

Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 25th January 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Henry Smith]

I very much appreciate the support for the Bill from the people of York, Crawley and elsewhere in the country. I wish the Bill’s extent was the whole United Kingdom, but because of the Northern Ireland protocol, that is not possible at the moment. I will address that point later when I discuss the detail of the relevant clauses. The hon. Lady makes a very important point: we do not want what are technically trophies—I call them body parts—hunted from endangered species to come through some sort of back door in Northern Ireland. I will talk a bit more about that in a few moments.

We can send a very strong message to the world and show international leadership in the face of a global extinction crisis. We can stop British people killing the world’s most endangered species for entertainment and symbols that some people sadly think represent an achievement they can be proud of.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The Bill is obviously about preventing the import of trophies into this country, but the hon. Gentleman just spoke about showing leadership. A Danish company called Limpopo & Diana Hunting Tours is promoting hunting trips in Bedfordshire—on the Woburn estate, I think. People pay up to £25,000 to shoot stags. Clearly, people from other countries come to this country for trophy hunting, so I hope the Bill influences other countries to follow suit.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful for that intervention. I paid tribute to the hon. Lady last night in a different animal welfare debate in the main Chamber, and I am happy to repeat my appreciation for all the work she does to highlight animal welfare issues in Parliament. She has a strong record on that. I was not aware of the very sorry example that she mentions. The Bill is about preventing the import of trophies hunted from endangered species, but I very much support her wider point. Personally, I find it abhorrent that people should be flying into this country to shoot stags, but that is beyond the scope of the Bill.

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I hope that the Minister will address the question of what can be done. While the protocol is in place, that will be difficult, but I hope that thought will be given to the issue, because we do not want to become the channel through which an illegal trade can continue.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on it. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right that the Bill could mean that Northern Ireland acts a back door. Another way of tackling the issue is to persuade EU countries to implement bans. Finland has passed a law that will, from June, ban the import of hunting trophies of endangered species. Does he agree that we need to encourage other EU countries to go down the same path?

[Sammy Wilson]

Yes, I do. There is an international battle to be had here. If we really believe that hunting is endangering animals, then we should encourage nations across the world to act—and not only nations in Africa; do not forget that there are 30 countries across the world where endangered animals are hunted almost to extinction. We need to persuade those countries that there is an alternative to this trade. We also need to persuade countries that allow trophies in, and therefore encourage the trade, of the view encapsulated in the Bill, so that there is a whole approach to the issue. I would be more than happy if, instead of Northern Ireland having to comply with EU law, the EU decided it would comply with UK law. That would be a gain for us. I have no doubt that the UK population shares its opposition to hunting trophies with the populations of many other countries.

I give my full endorsement to the Bill, and congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley on pushing it to this point. I would like to hear from the Minister about how the loophole that will exist until the protocol is dealt with can be handled.

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

It really is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark.

As other right hon. and hon. Members have done, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley for doing such a sterling job in bringing the Bill before us and for his work on conservation and animal welfare more generally. I also thank all right hon. and hon. members of the Committee.

There have been queries about how the Government will support the Bill. As the Minister dealing with the Bill, I will work with my colleague in the other place, Lord Benyon, and I will speak to all Members across the House to ensure that the Bill has the support that it needs. I pay tribute to officials across DEFRA who have supported my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley, me and previous Ministers in making progress with it.

[Kerry McCarthy]

As has been mentioned, we have had quite a bit of lobbying by people who are involved in talking to the Government about this issue. At one point, basically, they said that the majority of what was said by Members on Second Reading was factually incorrect. Will the Minister confirm that she, with her officials, has carefully considered the evidence, that she has looked at whether their arguments are valid and that she has come to the conclusion, as we all have, that the Bill is the right thing to do?

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank the hon. Member for the opportunity to do exactly that. As the new Minister taking up this responsibility, I have had detailed conversations with Members and my officials, who have done a diligent and highly professional job of assessing all the evidence, supporting me and my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley in making progress with the Bill.

We are taking decisive action to respond to the British public’s concerns about trophy hunting abroad. We are acting to protect some of the world’s most iconic animals, including lions, rhinos, elephants and polar bears.

Animal Welfare in Overseas Tourism

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful for that intervention from the hon. Lady, who is a steady campaigner for animal welfare issues, and I always appreciate her support. I will come on to this later in my remarks, but she is absolutely right that animal tourism has nothing to do with conservation. It is quite the opposite; it not only presents a danger to the survival of species, but potentially creates human health hazards. As part of an effort to ensure that in this country we do not allow the advertising and sale of animal experiences abroad, we should send a clear message, as she outlines, that that is unacceptable.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of wild animals are exploited for entertainment in the global tourism industry. Activities and attractions that are considered wildlife entertainment are those allowing tourists close contact with wild animals or to see them perform. Popular examples include tiger cubs made to pose for selfie photographs, elephant rides and swimming with dolphins experiences, as well as captive dolphin shows. Those activities may appear benign on the face of it, but in fact they rely on cruel treatment that harms the captive animal’s welfare.

Responsible tourism is an increasingly important factor to many travellers and some tourists have been shocked to see the high level of suffering by wild animals involved in unethical attractions abroad, including Asian elephants, which are sometimes snatched from their forest homes and families as young elephants to supply tourist attractions, for nothing more than commercial profit, monetary gain and entertainment for the tourist trade. A UK ban on advertising of overseas attractions where Asian elephants and their babies are brutalised for tourism fun has deep and comprehensive support across Great Britain.

Such a ban would steer demand and therefore supply to ethical venues where elephants and humans are safe from abuse and fatalities. Companies selling wildlife entertainment venues lead tourists to assume such activities are acceptable, when in fact they are inhumane and cause harm to wildlife. There needs to be new legislation banning the promotion of holidays and tours that include exploitative animal encounters in their advertisements, helping to end the miserable abuse by making such unethical advertising illegal.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is good that the hon. Gentleman has brought up such an important issue. I was in Chiang Mai in Thailand a few years ago and went to a restaurant called, I think, Tiger Time. He mentions tiger cubs, but they had full-sized adult tigers with people crawling all over them taking selfies and so on. It took a while to realise that obviously the tigers must have been drugged. Does he agree that this is not just about advertising—that restaurant was not advertised to me over here—but is also about the fact that the Government may have a role to play in having words with the Thai authorities about cracking down on that sort of activity, which does not give a good impression of the country at all?

[Henry Smith]

I am delighted to be intervened on by the hon. Lady, who also has a long record of standing up for animal welfare issues in this House. She gives an horrendous first-hand account of the sort of abuse that majestic wild animals—animals that should be in the wild—experience in countries such as Thailand. That, too, is an issue I will expand on later in my remarks.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) on her Animals (Low-Welfare Activities Abroad) Bill, intended to prohibit the sale and advertising of activities abroad that involve low standards of welfare for animals. I encourage colleagues across the House to support the Bill at its Second Reading on Friday 3 February.

Antimicrobial Resistance: Farm Animals

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) and congratulate him on calling the debate.

The Government recognise antimicrobial resistance or AMR as a policy issue of huge importance and public interest. It is right and proper that there is scrutiny of the matters we have discussed today. Antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest public health threats that we face. A landmark study published last year, the Global Research of Antimicrobial Resistance report, reported that more than 1 million human deaths worldwide could be directly attributed to antibiotic resistance in 2019. That was the lower estimate. The report indicated that the figure could be as high as 5 million deaths globally, as the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall indicated in his speech.

Antibiotics are the cornerstone of human medicine. Without them, things we take for granted, such as routine surgery, would become life-threatening. Bacteria cause disease in animals, too, and veterinary medicine, like human medicine, needs to be able to rely on access to antibiotics that work. Not only do animal health and welfare depend on it, so in turn do the food systems that we depend on. It is vital that we protect those medicines for future generations.

To start, I would like to talk about how the Government are tackling antimicrobial resistance and what the UK strategy is. We know that AMR will not be an easy problem to overcome. In 2019, we put in place long-term plans to address AMR and published our UK 20-year vision to contain and control AMR by 2040. That strategic vision is supported by our current five-year national action plan for AMR, which runs from 2019 to 2024. That plan is progressing well, and I will come shortly to some of its highlights.

Meanwhile, we are already developing the next five-year national action plan. Both the vision and the national action plan were developed across Government Departments and their agencies along with the Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, supported by a range of stakeholders. Our 20-year vision lays out the UK’s ambitions to create a world where AMR is contained, controlled and mitigated. In it, we have outlined our ambitions for lowering the burden of infections, our plans to optimise the use of antimicrobials across all sectors, and our aims to support the development of new therapies, diagnostics, vaccines and interventions.

We are taking a local, national and global approach. We are tackling AMR in people, animals, food and the environment, which is the One Health approach. The UK’s five-year national action plan takes those ambitions and breaks them down into actions for the UK over the short term. One key ambition of the national action plan is to reduce the use of antibiotics in the UK farming sector.

Let us talk about reducing use in animals. In the UK, the livestock industry is responsible for the health and welfare of more than 1 billion farmed animals in its care each year and for the production of safe, high-quality food. Across the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, we have been working collaboratively for many years with the veterinary and livestock sectors to promote responsible antibiotic use. UK agriculture has undergone a transformation over the last few years, as livestock sectors have embedded the principles of responsible antimicrobial use in their farming practices. That transformation has led to a clear understanding from all stakeholders of the importance of preserving antimicrobial efficiency and the responsibility that we all have to protect those essential medicines.

Due to the strong working relationship that we have with our vets and farmers, the UK has taken a different approach to other countries in reducing the use of antibiotics in animals, one that has been praised globally. We have engaged with the different sectors and collectively driven a culture change of responsible antibiotic use within food-producing animals. That has led to a 55% decrease in use since 2014, making the UK one of the lowest users of veterinary antibiotics across Europe. In particular, RUMA is establishing and chairing a targets taskforce for vets and farmers. It was pivotal in the industry taking ownership and driving forward that change.

Those industries have worked to protect antibiotics that are important for human use, reducing the use of those critical medicines in animals by 83% since 2014. Of course, the purpose of reducing antibiotic use is to reduce bacterial resistance to antibiotics. At the same time as reducing use, we have been monitoring antibiotic-resistant trends in bacteria in healthy livestock since 2015.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

This is an issue that I have followed for quite some time, and I would like to pin the Minister down on it. Does he think that there is a problem with the routine overuse of antibiotics in farming? Does he think that current levels need to come down significantly, and does he think that it is in any way connected with industrialised factory farming?

[Mark Spencer]

We should be absolutely clear that the reduction in antibiotic use has been demonstrated. There has been huge engagement with the sector.

[Kerry McCarthy]

But is it still too high?

[Mark Spencer]

Of course, we could always reduce it further. But at the same time, we have to balance that with animal welfare and ensuring that no animal is affected detrimentally. No farmer in this country can administer antibiotics to an animal without a veterinary prescription. It requires a professional vet to prescribe that medicine for an animal. I have huge confidence in our veterinary service, and their professionalism and ability to make those decisions.

[Mark Spencer]

I do not like blanket, overarching rules. There may well be a circumstance where a flock of birds or a group of animals are suffering from an infection and need to be treated. To rule out the use of group therapy when there is a group of animals that need veterinary intervention would be very silly. Of course, we want to ensure we target medicines at poorly animals, and that we use antibiotics to treat those animals. But to have a block rule where we rule out the use of a medicine to a group of animals that are suffering from an infection would be silly.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The Minister seems to be saying that vets issue prescriptions only when there is a proven need to deal with an infection or disease outbreak. However, we know prescriptions have been issued to prevent disease outbreaks. Does he not think that is a problem? It goes back to the issue of routine use as a preventative measure rather than to treat disease. The Minister seems to be saying that prescriptions are not issued for that purpose, but I am pretty sure that they are.

[Mark Spencer]

I did not say that. To be clear, what I said was that I trust the professional reputation and professionalism of our veterinary services, and that where a veterinary officer is concerned that an animal may well become infected in the near future, it seems reasonable that they could come to a professional decision that that animal is better off receiving preventative medicine to stop it becoming infected and to keep it healthy. We rely on the professionalism of our veterinary service, which is one of the best in the world.

The UK’s success to date has been achieved without specific legislation. However, we are in the process of updating our laws regulating veterinary medicines and that gives us an opportunity to embed into law some of the excellent core principles of antimicrobial stewardship, which vets and famers are already promoting through a culture of responsible use.

To support the progress made in recent years and to lay the foundation for ongoing reductions in the unnecessary use of antibiotics in animals, we are seeking to strengthen our national law in this area. We will soon be publishing a consultation on the Veterinary Medicines Directorate’s proposed changes to the Veterinary Medicines Regulations 2013. The consultation will include proposals to stop the use of antibiotics to prevent disease in animals in all but exceptional cases, where the risks to animal health are high and the consequences likely to be severe, which was the point I made to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy).

Our proposals bear similarities to recently updated EU legislation on veterinary medicines. However, our proposals also take into consideration the fact that we use significantly lower levels of antibiotics than most other European countries. We have already developed a culture of responsible use across the veterinary and livestock sectors. We will keep working with the farming sector to prevent animal diseases through vaccination, biosecurity and good husbandry, and through that we will further reduce unnecessary antibiotic use and underpin the availability of safe and sustainable food.

It is worth putting on record that when we compare ourselves with our European colleagues, we have a much lower use of antibiotics. We have lower use than France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Romania, Croatia, Greece, Malta, Bulgaria, Portugal—I can keep going with a whole list of countries where we are performing better than our European colleagues—but that does not mean that we cannot continue to push in the right direction.

AMR is not just a UK issue, but a global problem. The UK is a strong voice on the international stage as an engaged global partner on AMR. We have led the way for many years. In 2016, the global-facing independent AMR review, chaired by Lord O’Neill, catalysed a wave of political and public momentum to address the issue.

Recently, in 2021, under the UK’s G7 presidency, we made commitments to better understand supply chains and improve resilience, investigate market incentives and novel valuation strategies for antimicrobials, and adopt standards for manufacturing of antimicrobials to reduce environmental pollution. The UK played a significant role in updating the international guidance to the Codex standards on AMR. Those standards ensure that food is safely traded across the world. We must tackle the threat head-on and galvanise countries across the globe to do the same. AMR is not only has a monumental health impact, but harms our economies and global security.

To conclude, the human population is predicted to reach 9.8 billion by 2050 and livestock products play an important role in feeding the world’s population. The goal must be to produce food in the most sustainable way, minimising environmental impacts while respecting animal welfare. Food systems will need to adapt and take account of the need to reduce disease pressures and the need for antibiotics. Preventing animal disease through vaccination, improved biosecurity and good husbandry will increase the availability of safe and sustainable food.

The UK’s sectoral approach successfully harnessed the power of the livestock industry to set its own targets and address the challenge of the food system as a whole. Producers’ deeper understanding of their own sectors will enable them to plan more effectively for the future and consider how they can produce food in the most sustainable way.

In the UK, we have shown that by having shared Government and industry goals we reduce the use of antibiotics. Real, sustainable change can be delivered and I am confident that our new legislation will further empower farmers and vets to continue to work together.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to those people who are working on avian flu, including the chief vet, who was recognised in the new year’s honours list. I can assure my hon. Friend that we continue to talk to, and work with, industry to make sure that farmers can be profitable and confident that their business will succeed next year.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

There have been reports this week that the UK might be about to adopt ludicrous proposals that were, quite rightly, rejected by the EU to ban producers of plant-based products from using terms that are traditionally associated with meat and dairy. I do not think that anyone buying a hot dog actually thinks that it has canine content. Does the Minister think that the British public is so stupid to think that a product called “oat milk” comes from a cow?

[Dr Coffey]

My advice is not to believe everything that we read in the papers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Trudy Harrison]

Clearly, when statutory consultees do not respond promptly, it causes delays and deeper problems for developers and communities. I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend and esteemed colleague to discuss what went wrong with Brocks Pine, but I would say that Natural England are making significant progress across a number of measures, from countryside stewardship scheme agreements to the coastal path, national nature reserves and many others. There will be creases to iron out, and I will discuss those when I meet him.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Yesterday I met the chair of Natural England, which is doing excellent work. Will the Minister say a bit more about what she sees as Natural England’s role in nature-based solutions to tackle climate change?

[Trudy Harrison]

Natural England is a vital organisation that I work with closely to ensure that we meet our environmental targets set out in the world-leading Environment Act 2021. Whether it is working with farmers, local communities or environmental organisations, Natural England is at the heart of everything we are doing.

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

Following consultations on the two schemes my hon. Friend mentions, intensive work is going on in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to make all the schemes link up, because these are complicated issues. I can assure him that we are aiming to publish our responses to the outstanding consultations by the end of this year.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T4. Under the previous Prime Minister, it was reported that the best and most versatile land would be re-categorised to include category 3b, with a view to blocking development, including solar power, from that land. Is that still the Government’s intention?

[Dr Coffey]

It is really important that we make the best use of our land, to have the food security that was referred to earlier. It is also important, when considering land use, that we think about the best place to put renewable energy. By and large, I think most people in this country would agree: let us have good agricultural land for farming, and let us use our brownfield sites for other energy projects too.

Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

My right hon. Friend, as always, speaks good sense. He is absolutely right; with focus and a proper attempt to meet the challenges we face, it is remarkable what can be done. But this needs leadership and, as ever, it is missing.

Let me turn in detail to the public interest test and our amendment 3. The potential benefits of gene edited crops include creating plants resistant to extreme weather conditions and diseases, which could reduce the need for pesticides and create higher yields to address rising food insecurity driven by climate change and other factors. Genetic editing could also be used to improve the nutritional quality of food. For example, giving farmers the tools to beat virus yellows without recourse to neonicotinoids is a prize worth having.

However, we must recognise that any new technology also carries risks: risks of unintended consequences; risks of technology being misused; and risks of commercial pressure being exerted in ways that might not be for the benefit of the wider public. Those are all risks that must be properly recognised and addressed, because unless public and investor confidence is maintained, research will stall and opportunities will be squandered. Unfortunately, the Government’s blind faith in the market means this is a laissez-faire, minimalist Bill, which does not come close to an effective regulatory framework to guide and oversee the work of researchers and developers.

Amendment 3 would therefore require that a gene edited organism has been developed to provide one or more of the public benefit purposes listed, if it is to be released into the environment. The amendment neatly recycles much of the wording in section 1 of the Government’s own Agriculture Act 2020, which lists the public goods that can be funded. We are simply applying the same approach to the development and use of gene editing technologies. We believe they should be used only where that is clearly in the public interest, including, for instance, in protecting a healthy, resilient and biodiverse natural environment; mitigating climate change; improving the health or welfare of animals or plants; and supporting human health and wellbeing.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

During the Bill Committee, we heard that one of the potential benefits of these innovations was a possible reduction in the overuse of antibiotics on farms, because we would be able to breed things that are more resistant to disease. Although I welcome that, does my hon. Friend share my concern about the comments on antibiotics made by the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), when she was briefly Health Secretary? Is he concerned about her seemingly relaxed attitude towards these entering the food chain and the impact on public health?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is absolutely right; people should not be careless about antibiotics and that was not an approach to be encouraged at all. I share her concerns.

Amendment 3 would strengthen the Bill by harnessing the good that can be created through such technologies and ensuring that they are not developed and used for purposes that would not deliver beneficial outcomes—surely that is an objective we can agree on across the House. We believe that would take the Bill much further forward in establishing the kind of regulatory framework that really would place the UK in a leading position. That sits alongside our new clauses, which would establish a single, robustly independent regulator, along the lines of the very successful and genuinely world-leading Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. That regulator does not just approve an application, but tracks, traces and checks over time. That is an important and very different approach, and one discussed in Committee by expert witnesses.

Our new clauses would ensure that Ministers’ decisions on gene editing are properly guided by the environmental principles set out under the Environment Act 2021, and that there is no regression from the environmental standards agreed in the trade and co-operation agreement, which is pretty important when it comes to trade issues. Our new clauses would build an environment in which the UK really could attract the worldwide talent and investment in gene editing research and development that we all want to see.

On animal health and welfare, I turn to our amendment 4, which I am delighted to see has been endorsed by Compassion in World Farming and 12 other animal protection organisations, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation. The amendment would require a range of animal health and welfare factors to be taken into account by the Secretary of State when deciding whether to issue a marketing authorisation for a gene edited animal. We appreciate that gene editing can be used in the same way as “traditional” selective breeding to produce fast growth, high yields and large litters, which, sadly, we also know are capable of causing suffering in farmed animals.

Clearly, we have existing legislation to protect animal health and welfare, but the concern is that we should be very clear at the outset that we do not want to see gene editing used in ways that make it more possible for animals to endure harm and suffering. As the Nuffield Council on Bioethics put it,

“animals should not be bred merely to enable them to endure conditions of poor welfare more easily or in a way that would diminish their inherent capacities to live a good life.”

Some researchers aim to use gene editing to improve disease resistance in livestock. Of course, that could be hugely beneficial and could help to reduce the serious harm caused by the overuse of antibiotics, for instance. It would be hugely beneficial if we could find ways to tackle porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome in pigs or avian flu. But the public would not want to see gene editing used to allow animals to be kept in poorer, more crowded, stressful conditions by making them resistant to the diseases that would otherwise result.

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Leipzig University has explored the possibility of changing the eggshell colour so that a male egg can be identified much earlier and sentient beings are not hatched and then killed. I think precision breeding techniques could phase out that very bleak practice of killing day-old male chicks, which is a clear part of the laying hen system.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am very pleased to hear what the right hon. Gentleman says, as I have spent quite a lot of time trying to convince people that that does happen to day-old chicks. Is it not the case that some other European countries have introduced legislation on that point, so it is not necessarily linked to genetic technology? I think they have acted to prevent so many chicks being killed.

[George Eustice]

What a number of countries have done—the UK was in the vanguard of this—was to move away from maceration of day-old chicks towards the use of carbon dioxide and argon gas as a means of dispatching them. However, I think we could accelerate the process of identifying the eggs through the use of genetic technology.

Dehorning cattle is another mutilation that we would like to phase out over time. Progress has been made for some breeds on polled cattle—that is, cattle born without horns, so that we do not have to use a hot iron, albeit under anaesthetic, to de-bud them. Again, it is difficult to perfect without precision breeding techniques, but if we had that technology, we could have more polled cattle and reduce the need for conventional dehorning of cattle, or even pave the way for a regulatory change to prevent it.

There is also the prospect of breeding more resistance to diseases. In the dairy herd some selection is already done for natural resistance to bovine tuberculosis. It is limited in its ability, but if we had the technology, we might be able to go further.

At the moment, the Government plan to phase out and remove badger culling is predicated on a lot of confidence that a cattle vaccine will be viable and deployable, but it would be helpful to have additional tools in the box, and resistance to TB could be one of them. Of course, we are about to face another very difficult winter when it comes to avian flu, and this technology might have some application there.

However, my sense when I read amendment 4 was that whoever drafted it had had one sector in particular in mind—the broiler chicken sector. There is a genuine concern that the production speed of broiler chickens, reduced now to around 32 to 33 days, is so fast that they are having all sorts of leg problems, and we might be able to make some changes there. That is a legitimate point, because while we might say it has improved the welfare of a broiler chicken that it is bred to finish within 32 days, we might say it is in its welfare interest to ensure that it does not have leg problems. There is a second question, which is whether it is the ethical and right thing to do to produce a chicken within 32 days rather than, say, 37 days, in which case the welfare problem goes away.

A less obvious and less talked-about situation might be commercial duck production. We know that ducks need and want open water—it is part of their physiology and the way their beaks work. However, many commercial duck producers do not give ducks access to water. I have come across vets who will argue that it is in the interest of ducks not to have access to water, since that can spread disease and that is not in their welfare interest, but that goes to the root of the issue with animal welfare. We can either see animal welfare in the conventional five freedoms sense—freedom from pain, hunger, thirst and so on—or we can see it in the more modern sense of a life worth living.

The amendment does not work, because the more we put into an amendment the more we inadvertently exclude. If we accepted an amendment that proscribed certain things but missed certain things, at a future date a breeder might bring a judicial review and say, “Well, this wasn’t covered by the Bill and everything else was.” Therefore, we would not be future-proofing the importance of animal welfare.

However, that is where guidance could work. After Second Reading of the Bill, I asked our officials to give some thought to the idea of guidance, which might give organisations such as Compassion in World Farming and people such as Peter Stevenson, who is very thoughtful on these matters, the reassurance they need in the absence of a legislative change on the face of the Bill, which is difficult to do. The Minister may find that there is some guidance helpfully drafted—or it may be that it was not drafted, but it is not too late, because the Bill has time in the other House.

Will the Minister consider whether this issue of how the animal welfare body should approach its task and how it should assess the impacts on animal welfare could be dealt with in a non-statutory way through guidance. He and his officials will have to issue terms of reference anyway to the animal welfare body, which is likely to be a sub-committee of the Animal Welfare Committee, and it would not take much to set out some parameters for the things we want it to bear in mind when making assessments.