Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part two
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

I am concerned that this matter is resolved today. The Government will not be moving any further on this issue or have any more to say ahead of Third Reading. If the noble Earl wishes to test the opinion of the House, it is absolutely his right to do so, but I say to him, regarding the offer of a meeting involving the Front Benches and my officials to try to resolve this issue, that this is only half the process of this Bill; there is of course the other place for it to go to. I will certainly work with his expertise and the concerns that he and others have brought to try to find a way forward, but I want to resolve this matter today. I hope I have been able to reassure noble Lords and that the noble Earl will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My noble friend repeatedly emphasised during the course of his reply that the decision on these matters would be made by Ministers, but he will know, as we all do, that the decisions of Ministers are subject to judicial review. We have heard from no less an authority than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton, that, without the language contained in Amendment 27 in particular, the risk of judicial review of those decisions by Ministers is increased, not reduced. What is my noble friend’s answer to that point?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My learned noble friend will know that there will be attempts to judicially review Governments at every stage of a process of policy, particularly in areas that are emotive and that carry great weights of public opinion in one way or the other. The question is not whether judicial review will be attempted but whether it will be successful. Last week Defra won a court case—as we do many times—against an attempt to take things to judicial review because the judge said it was not permissible to take the matter any further. That is why we have strictly limited the duties on Ministers that lie behind the Bill to only two areas. So I am not saying at all that there will not be attempts to judicially review, but I hope I can convince my noble friend that those attempts will not be successful because we have been so careful to limit the scope of the Bill.