Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with almost everything that the noble Baroness has just said, and it is a pleasure to follow her. I have to say that, in more than 35 years in both Houses, I have never seen a more badly drafted Bill—which has left me wondering what on earth its purpose is. It is a most extraordinary Bill. It purports to set up a committee, but the Government do not need primary legislation to set up a committee—we already have the Animal Welfare Committee. It purports to enshrine the concept of sentience in law, but we already have the concept of sentience—although, as my noble friend Lady Fookes points out, it fails to define what it means by sentience. To me, sentience means ability to feel pain—but some of the advocates of the Bill are talking about emotions and discussing animals in anthropomorphic terms.

The Bill has six clauses—it looks simple—but listening to the speeches of noble Lords who are perhaps less sympathetic to the Bill, as well as those who are enthusiastic about it, we have already heard about how many holes there are in this legislation and how it fails to deal with a number of important points. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, pointed to the EU legislation that governed us and was introduced in the Lisbon treaty. For the first time in my life, I am actually going to praise the EU. I spent my life arguing that we were unable to decide our own affairs and that the EU came along with legislation and we gold-plated it. Well, the EU legislation said:

“In formulating … the Union’s agriculture, fisheries, transport, internal market, research and technological development and space policies, the Union and the Member States shall, since animals are sentient beings, pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals, while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions … of the EU countries relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage.”


There are no horrors there for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton. The scope and nature of that legislation was clear, in a way that this Bill is not.

There is no threat here to religious rites, or to my fly-fishing either. This Bill goes much further. There is no definition of animal sentience and, in answer to the question from my noble friend Lady Fookes about why there is no definition, it is because it is very difficult to define, so the Government have not done it. However, as so many people have pointed out, we all know what animal sentience means, and we have had it for more than 200 years. As my noble friend the Minister said, in this country we have a proud record; we had legislation concerned with animal welfare before we had legislation concerned with child welfare.

There are no terms of reference for the committee in this legislation. This very week, our Constitution Committee has complained about this Government’s continuing use of Henry VIII clauses and secondary legislation, and about not providing guidance to that legislation. Yet this is another Bill which blithely says that, if there is a change in the view about animals which do not have spines, we can—by secondary legislation—extend the committee’s work to include that. There is no reference to what kind of evidence would be required or scientific input made. Why is it necessary for this to be given as a secondary power? If there is an issue, and the evidence for it, the Government would presumably amend the welfare Act in the normal way.

The scope of the Bill is extraordinary. It says:

“When any government policy is being or has been formulated or implemented”.


The noble Baroness, Lady Young, said that there should be a duty on each department to tell this committee if there is a policy being formulated so that it can opine. How many people is the committee going to have working for it, if every single initiative going on in government which affects animals has got to be reported to it and it has to opine on it? What does it do? It produces a report, like this House does with its Select Committees, and the Government have to respond within three months. In this House, the rule is, I think, eight weeks, but some have been waiting more than a year for a response from the Government. Sometimes, the Government’s responses indicate that the recommendations have not, perhaps, been considered as seriously as they might. I do not see what the purpose of the Bill is and how it will change anything, except to create a lot of division and anger where they are not necessary or required.

There is nothing in the Bill to say how the committee is going to be staffed and resourced; it is going to be hugely expensive. My own committee, the Economic Affairs Committee, was not very keen on HS2. I cannot imagine how considering animal welfare issues would have impacted on large projects such as that, given that, as my noble friend Lord Herbert pointed out, there is no distinction being made between wild animals and those which are subject to the care and responsibility of individuals. It seems to me that the nature of the committee and its recommendations are wide open to judicial review if Ministers do not take those recommendations on board. Nothing in the Bill gives me any comfort on that.

We have an Animal Welfare Committee. If we want to have a sub-committee to consider sentience, it should be a sub-committee of the Animal Welfare Committee. If it is to cover all government departments, whose department is responsible? In his opening remarks, my noble friend said that it would be his department, so he is going to be operating across the whole of the Government. If I were him, I would hope for a change in the reshuffle, rather than deal with all that. For once I can agree, with enthusiasm, with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who said that the Bill feels like a piece of virtue signalling and PR which has got nothing whatever to do with ensuring that our animals are properly cared for.