Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

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

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

23: Clause 2, page 1, line 16, at end insert “, but such recommendations may only be made after the report referred to in subsection (1) has been published in an academic journal following peer review.”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures the academic robustness of the Committee’s work.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 23 and 35 give the House the opportunity to discuss the robustness of the science on which the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill is allegedly resting. I detect a lack of enthusiasm for the wide-ranging debate on this topic that might have otherwise ensued at a more timely part of the day, so I shall keep my remarks as brief as can.

I was once on the Zambezi and had the opportunity to observe the crocodiles. These are largely placid animals that sit basking in the sun but, when hungry, they can move with terrifying rapidity and can kill very rapidly indeed. The person I was with, who knew about crocodiles, said—and I will stand corrected by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, if I have got any of this wrong, of course—that the brain of a crocodile is a very small thing. The size of a pea was suggested to me, and that there was no capacity within the brain at all, neurologically, for a function that allowed for any memory. The consoling thought that was offered to me was that, since a crocodile cannot remember anything, if it did eat me, it was not personal.

We are about to enact a Bill—we are close to passing it through our House—without limitation that, as I understand it, declares a crocodile to be a sentient creature; that is, a creature that can experience pleasure and pain, and science is prayed in aid to support this. I take the crocodile simply as an example, there are other creatures with brains almost as small as a crocodile and probably even smaller that are being covered and in scope of this Bill. The difficulty of this is, they have very limited functions, partly because the size of the brain simply limits the functions that they can actually have.

No one doubts, as a matter of science, that a crocodile, as I say taken as an example, will respond in a certain way if a sufficiently strong stimulus is applied to it. That is a neurological reaction explicable by the movement of chemicals and electrons through the nervous system and in what passes for the crocodile’s brain. What we are being asked to do here goes way beyond that. How can this be extended scientifically—not by analogy, not by empathy, but scientifically—to include the concept of pain in a crocodile as we understand pain.

Pain is more than a simple neurological reaction. Pain, as we understand it, exists in anticipation. One worries about it coming in one’s direction. It exists in reflection; one thinks about it in the past. One has coping strategies for dealing with it, and so on. Most importantly, it exists as a time of abnormality. Pain is abnormal; we want the pain to go away, so that we can go back to normal. How can a creature with no memory have any conception of what normality is, let alone what abnormality is? How can it understand pain, beyond that neurological reaction, in any sense that we understand it? Yet there are scientists, or people who hold themselves forth as scientists, who say that scientifically that link can be made when it is actually almost incomprehensible for most of us. Who are the scientists in whom the Government are placing such faith for the scientific basis of animal sentience that they claim to exist? Where do they gather? Which respectable journals do that publish in? Who is this cadre of leading animal sentience scientists?

Of course, there are animal welfare scientists and veterinarians, and people like that, but this is very specialised, a very narrow and a relatively new field—only over the last 20 years. It has no leading lights at the moment; it is, I would suggest to your Lordships’ House, predominantly ideologically driven, and it is based in large measure on funding being supplied by what might be thought of as groups and foundations with a prior view.

So my question really to my noble friend, even as he trembles on the brink of his success—he is very close to getting his way and seeing this Bill through with practically no amendments—and before he commits the nation to this Bill and this version of animal sentience, is whether he should not think twice about the claims that he makes and the confidence that he rests in what is a very ropey branch of science. Should that not lead him to pull back and consider this amendment, which requires peer review of scientific reports from the committee? In fact, it requires peer review of all reports, and I realise now that that is a bit silly, because some of them will just be procedural—but we can work on the wording. On the scientific reports of the committee, could not he and I work together to get an appropriate amendment at Third Reading that would try to make sure that we rest at last on robust science and not on something ropey and partisan? If it is ropey and partisan, we will come deeply to regret it.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

My Lords, it has been a fascinating debate. I do not want to detain the House, but I was very entertained by my noble friend Lord Moylan’s trips down the gradations of sentience that might exist across the animal kingdom. I was trying to work out whether he was a follower of Aristotle—who believed that animals lacked rational souls and therefore were outside the sphere of justice—or whether he was Descartian or Rousseauan in his view. I do not want to go into a philosophical—

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

It may help my noble friend—seeing as he was so kind as to ask the question, I am sure he will be interested in the answer—to know that I stand on every occasion with Aristotle on this, as on so many other matters. I just want that to be clear.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

That is good to know. I am very grateful. However, I differ from him entirely if he thinks—which I do not think he really does—that the Government, of whom I am proud to be part, would engage with any form of ropey bunch of scientists. In fact we will come on to talk about, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, the degree of scientific breadth that went into the 300 different pieces of work studied by the London School of Economics in its reports on decapods and cephalopods. It is an indication of the expertise that exists out there.

I think my noble friend Lord Hannan has the advantage on me in that he believes that legislators do not need experts. I may have misunderstood him, but as I gaze around this Chamber I see precious few scientists, with one notable exception. There may be more—of course, there is the noble Lord, Lord Trees.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I will make sure that every single person who applies for the committee has the necessary expertise, whatever background they come from. We will be looking for a range of people, from those with agricultural experience, those with experience of animals at the end of life in the slaughter process, and veterinarians. I made a list earlier; I will not repeat it because there were some long words which I cannot remember, but they will undoubtedly be a factor in deciding who will be members of the committee.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great disappointment that my noble friend has not conceded the very sensible proposal I made. It was unsurprising, however. What did surprise me were the remarks from the Opposition Dispatch Box. A more thorough-going endorsement of government policy better presented it is rare to imagine coming across. The idea that the Government never take scientific advice that needs to be checked or disputed and that they would never take dodgy scientific advice, now endorsed by the Labour Front Bench, is one I will cherish and store up for reference, no doubt, on some future occasion. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 23 withdrawn.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to your Lordships for your forbearance, and for your views and insights on this important piece of legislation. I will also speak to the consequential Amendment 43.

As I have said during previous debates on the Bill, the Government’s approach to recognising the sentience of animals will be guided by the scientific evidence. My department commissioned an independent review from the London School of Economics and Political Science of the evidence surrounding the sentience of cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans for that very purpose. As promised, I made the findings of that review available to your Lordships for consideration ahead of today’s debate.

Sentience is broadly understood to be the capacity to feel pain. Our Animal Welfare Committee advised in 2018:

“Sentience is the capacity to experience pain, distress and harm.”


The review considered the findings of around 300 scientific studies, using a set of criteria based on brain structure, nervous system complexity and testing for adaptive behaviour to assess whether these classes of invertebrate are sentient. The report itself was subject to peer review.

The Government have given careful consideration to the contents of the final report. We accept that there is strong evidence of the sentience of these invertebrates. It is only right, therefore, that they are included in the provisions of the Bill. That means that the animal sentience committee, once established, may produce reports under Section 2 of the Bill in relation to the welfare of cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans.

However, I want to be clear that this amendment does not alter existing legislation or policy. I have heard, for example, the concerns put to me by representatives of the fishing sector, and I can assure this House that nothing in this amendment, or indeed in the Bill, changes the rules governing the activities of individuals or businesses.

Naturally, in due course, the Government may wish to consider whether it would be appropriate to amend the scope of other animal welfare legislation to include cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans. While that is not the question we are discussing today, I take the opportunity to assure your Lordships that any changes to existing laws would be subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny, and we would consider carefully how we would engage industry in their development.

Today, we propose simply to recognise the sentience of these invertebrates in line with the scientific evidence. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and my noble friends Lady Fookes and Lord Randall of Uxbridge, for their previous amendments on this subject. I hope that they, and the rest of the House, will support this amendment. I beg to move.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is with some regret that I note that my noble friend at the Dispatch Box did not thank me for my previous amendment on this subject. I accepted as far back as Committee that it was likely that cephalopods and decapod crustaceans would be added to the list of sentient beings covered by the Bill, although I did not expect it to be done in the Bill but through the secondary legislation which it contemplates.

I introduced an amendment in Committee that said, beyond vertebrates, the Government can only add, to the list of sentient beings, cephalopods and decapod crustaceans and no more. This was countered, so to speak, by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, who put down an amendment that actually added those two classes of creature to the face of the Bill. Neither amendment, of course, proceeded at Committee stage. I find it rather sad and curious that, of those two amendments, my noble friend at the Dispatch Box selected that promoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and has rather ignored mine.

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[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for those remarks. I think it might be helpful to the House if I say how this came about, as it answers the points about how we got to the stage of including decapods and cephalopods in the Bill. It is a matter of serendipity. For many years people have been pushing for work to be done, and it was done by the LSE. It just so happened that that report came into the Government’s hands over the summer while we were in the process of going through the Committee stage, and it seemed an obvious moment to take this forward when the findings of that report were so clear.

To cheer up my noble friend Lord Hamilton a bit at this late hour, I cannot think of any other species that are likely to go through this process. If there are any, I suggest that it will probably be at least a decade before someone is standing here recommending that we take that forward. It may be less; this is a fast-moving area of science, but it has taken many years—I do not know how many precisely—for decapods and cephalopods to be recognised in this way. I hope that is reassuring.

The noble Baroness asked a question about the food industry and making sure that, if the committee were to make recommendations about how one treats these organisms as part of food processing or cooking and the law is then changed because Ministers accepted that advice, there would have to be a huge amount of work with the food industry to make sure that it was prepared for it. However, this amendment does not change anything. It does not change the law; it just allows it to be within the remit of the committee to give advice to Ministers who will then take other factors into account, regarding, for example, the marine environment, fish, the economic benefits of the fishing industry to coastal communities or the importance that the Government put on fish being part of the nation’s balanced diet. These are the sort of wider factors that Governments will take into consideration.

I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Moylan feels put upon. I thought that I was the victim here, but clearly that is not the case. I will try to be kind to him when I come to his amendment.

I turn to Amendment 41, and here my remarks relate to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Trees. The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill recognises that live animals with a backbone—vertebrates—are sentient. A government amendment has been tabled to also recognise decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs as sentient, as I have said. It is our intention and expectation that the committee will concern itself with consideration of the welfare of live animals. In practice, it would be difficult for the committee and government departments to identify the way in which a policy under consideration affects the welfare needs of a foetus or an embryo, as opposed to those of the mother animal. It is unlikely, therefore, that the committee would find itself considering a policy beyond its remit. The central recommendation in the report is that these cephalopods and decapods will be regarded as sentient animals, but we carefully considered the recommendations in the review. The evidence of sentient decapods and cephalopods is clear: we are committed to being led by science when it comes to sentience, and that is why we amended the Bill.

Turning to Amendment 42 in the name of my noble friend Lord Moylan, as I mentioned, the Government are led by the science when it comes to sentience. We have considered the review’s findings carefully before amending the Bill to recognise these invertebrates as sentient. I can confirm that, at the present time, there is no intention to treat any other invertebrates, beyond decapods and cephalopods, as sentient animals. The scientific evidence that led to the Government commissioning the LSE review has been many years in the making. I can assure the House that this will continue to be the case for future extension, using the delegated powers in Clause 5.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I note what my noble friend says about there being no plans—and I fully accept that that is so, as he has assured the House—but if there are no plans, why do the Government wish to take the powers to continue to pursue them? Would it not be better if the Minister would just accept that primary legislation will be required as and when the science demands it?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I hope I can reassure my noble friend by saying that if the Secretary of State were to use his or her powers to recommend another species or group of species to be included, that would be the subject of parliamentary oversight. It would be an affirmative resolution requiring debate in both Houses and would be subject to other areas of parliamentary scrutiny, such as Select Committees and other means by which noble Lords and people in the other place would seek to hold that decision to account. I hope that we would not wish to risk this Bill becoming out of date by removing the ability to update its scope should the scientific evidence develop.

While we are not aware of any instances on the horizon, we cannot discount the possibility that new evidence will emerge in the future that demonstrates the sentience of some additional category of invertebrate. Decapods and cephalopods were the invertebrates most likely to qualify for being regarded as sentient animals. The likelihood that another category of invertebrate might one day be shown to be sentient is small, but it is not zero. That is why we wish to leave an option to update the definition if needed. Such a power must be subject to appropriate checks and balances, of course, and I will address this point shortly.

In the meantime, I take this opportunity to clarify that the Bill is all about government policy decision-making and how well particular decisions take account of the welfare needs of animals. The Bill and our amendments do not change existing law or impose new restrictions on individuals or businesses. I hope that your Lordships will agree that the time has come to include decapod crustaceans and cephalopods in the Bill and will therefore support the government amendment. I also hope that the points I have set out reassure noble Lords and that they will be content not to press their amendments. I beg to move.