Domestic Animals: Welfare

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Black, for initiating this debate. I have had a number of briefings from Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, the Dogs Trust and the Kennel Club. Of course, if I read out the briefings it would take far longer than probably all the speeches combined.

I particularly thank the Dogs Trust because I found our family pet from it: a rehomed, extremely stupid cockapoo. Although he is much loved, the actual cost of keeping a dog and dealing with some of the things he has, such as anxiety issues, should not be taken lightly. One of the problems we face across the board is that many people buy dogs and cats on impulse. This is a particular issue: they see a cute kitten or puppy and see it as something that should be owned automatically. Of course, this leads to the problems of the industry: puppy farms, which I know regulation is needed for, and smuggling of puppies. I hope the Government will start thinking about age restrictions on puppies that can be imported. This would solve some of the problems, especially since some of the diseases that the puppies might carry, especially tick-borne ones, which can be imported to this country, might be an issue in future, as has happened with Alabama rot, whatever that is—I have not seen very much about it, although people on Hampstead Heath are getting very worried about it. I believe that it is mostly around Manchester.

We are a nation of animal lovers. Indeed, the trade body I work for calculated that the energy used for watching cat videos is the equivalent of running Ashford in Kent—67,000 houses—for a year. Obviously, they are terribly important. I went on Gumtree this morning to see how easy it is to acquire an animal. It was interesting that a lot of the owners on that website were talking about the fact that their dogs were registered with the Kennel Club, which showed best practice. You can also then happily google, “Where can I find a cheap, cute puppy?”, which obviously feeds into exactly the wrong attitude, which we are trying to look at.

I introduced two Private Members’ Bills, which I think the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, remembers, to try to overturn some of the worst aspects of the Dangerous Dogs Act, which increased the problem by creating status dogs. People are owning Staffordshire bull terriers, which are excellent dogs and look like pit bull terriers. They make them aggressive, which is a very dangerous thing to do with a dog of that order. I ask the Minister: since there are new duties on local authorities—and I commend the work done by dog wardens around the country, and their dedication—are there adequate resources to undertake the work they have been given? Secondly, following the Home Office regulations, will there be a review of public space protection orders to make sure that they are not being implemented against animal welfare?

Bat Habitats Regulation Bill [HL]

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I have the honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, whose dedication to the historical environment should not be overlooked. Through many years, I have followed the work he has undertaken. I also have a great love of the archaeology in this country and helped to found the all-party archaeology group. I understand the issues faced by many churches throughout the country.

In preparation for this debate, I thought first that, as we are discussing churches and places of worship, I would look at how the Bible deals with bats. There are three mentions of bats in the Bible: in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which say you cannot eat them, and in Isaiah, which has a particularly fine reference stating that you should take gold and silver idols and throw them to moles and bats. I am sure the right reverend Prelate will have some views on the essence of that teaching. I will leave that to him.

I know quite a lot about how the process around bats takes place because I had to replace the roof on my house two years ago, and there are bats in most of the houses on the estate. I had to call in the Bat Conservation Trust, which was particularly helpful and did a bat survey in the roof. You listen out for the ultrasonic sounds of the bats. You can listen to them when the frequency of the device is lowered. I was keen to see whether there were any bats in that roof, but the bat survey officer said that it was so damp they would probably have drowned, which was the reason for replacing the roof in the first place. When I replaced the roof, I made sure that there were three bat entrances so it could be recolonised, not just because I think that bats are wonderful creatures but because a small bat will eat more than 1 million midges in its lifetime, and if you live in the wilds of Northumberland, anything that eats midges has to be a good thing.

One of the issues I had is that work has been carried out on the estate on roofs where we know there have been bats. Clause 1 talks about mitigation measures, such as putting up bat boxes. I have put more than 30 bat boxes up with an ecological group that works in some woodland I have, but so far we have not seen any evidence that they have been used. This is a real issue that should be taken forward when we talk about bat conservation. So much of the legislation we look at says that we can replace a habitat quite easily by putting up bat boxes or roosts. That is simply not the case. This raises a fundamental issue about bats, which is that we have destroyed the habitat of ancient woodland, there are no caves left, everything else is paved over and new buildings do not have the same crevices or even roof felting, which bats quite like. That means churches are one of the last sanctuaries for bat species in that area. That is a real issue because if we remove that roost it does not mean that the bats will move somewhere locally; it could mean that the bats leave the area altogether.

I am quite involved in the conservation of our local churches, Holy Trinity at Horsley and St Cuthbert’s at Elsdon, an 11th century church with a mass of history. They both have bats, but they do not have the problems that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned because most bat droppings, unless there is a concentration, are very dry because they are made up of the exoskeleton of insects and crumble into dust. Obviously the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right that the concentration can have an effect, but for most species of bat and most churches, it will not have the major effect set out. While I understand the real danger to much of the heritage in churches, I am rather wary of this Bill because Clause 2 states,

“the provisions of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010 and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 shall not apply to bats or bat roosts located inside a building used for public worship”.

That is probably the wrong way round. Should we not look at the damage being done in certain churches and then have an exemption if it is of particular note rather than excluding all places of worship, which would include mosques and temples? That would be a more proportionate approach to the Bill rather than a blanket ban, which I think is draconian. It also raises the fundamental problem that we have at the moment, which is that development and species conservation often cause major problems. I have not come across a congregation that cannot find reasons to disagree with itself on certain issues, and I am sure that bats in roofs is particularly one of those.

So while I understand the need to conserve churches, I hope that the work of the Heritage Alliance, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned, should have heritage funding from the lottery, is taken forward so that worshippers in church can look at the most effective ways of mitigating the problems of bats rather than the removal of bats. For centuries, churches have been seen as a place of sanctuary. Because of the way we have destroyed the habitat of bats, churches are some of the last refuges in the countryside for many species of bat.

Environment: 25-year Plan

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I should also like to welcome this report, but with caveats. I must declare my interests as the CEO of the Energy Managers Association and of the Water Retail Company. I am a landowner and some of my tenant farms are in the Higher Level Stewardship scheme. Obviously I will not ask many questions because I will not get them answered, but it is worth making the point that we have already planted tens of thousands of trees and have undertaken many of the measures. However, without some of the subsidies that upland farms receive at the moment, they will face a very difficult future. There is a great deal of interest in exactly what support, rather than subsidy, will mean.

Many members of the Energy Managers Association are responsible for achieving the company’s targets. This morning I wrote a short article on LinkedIn, which is a great use of social media, asking which questions should be asked in this debate. So far 10,000 people have clicked on the article and I have had 50 responses. I promise that I will not ask all 50 questions; if you ask more than two or three, you might as well forget it. It was interesting to note that most of the responses from these individuals highlight the very problem that many sustainability managers have: without clear regulation or legislation and targets, it is difficult for them to make companies undertake things. Of course, many of these targets fight against each other. Some of the issues concerning recycling and waste cause difficulty when you talk about companies’ growth.

This comes down to the one question I would like to ask the Government. The document’s wording is extremely good. It is aspirational, although many of the issues are covered by present European Union regulations. Many of them are targets that we already have. If we are to have a clear and concise view—there has been discussion of a Climate Change Act-type body, which would be excellent—could the Minister say when regulation or an environmental Bill will be brought forward to achieve these aims? Without that, many of these will remain aspirations and will remain extremely difficult for those people who have to undertake implementation.

One of the points raised—it is quite good when you get a vast number of people who have read the document as part of their working lives—is that the word “renewables” is not listed at any point throughout the document. I must commend the drafting team for their drafting gymnastics; the document talks about decarbonisation of the energy system, but does not include the word “renewables”. That is rather impressive. I understand why it mentions it because it then goes into the clean growth strategy, which is covered elsewhere.

However, one of the really interesting pieces of research I have been looking at could be very helpful, and it concerns the growth of solar. The large solar farms we will need to meet our green growth strategy, rather than solar panels on people’s rooftops, are already taking tens of thousands of acres from fields, but there is a real opportunity: we have tens of thousands of acres that could be used for environmental purposes. A great deal of evidence shows that the insects that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, talked about could thrive in these areas. They are of course, by their very nature, somewhat deprived of light, but there are areas around them. Nesting birds could also be encouraged. This area is growing. There is planning permission for around 10 gigawatts of solar, so we will see a great deal more of it on the horizon.

The second point is one I will come back to, which is water. We have a real problem with agriculture. As my noble friend Lady Miller pointed out, we are destroying our topsoil. Using solar farms as a way of renewing that topsoil, or not using it and ploughing it up, would be a great way to reduce the amount of drainage run-off.

Many noble Lords have talked about natural capital, but we do not understand how important it will be to look at. I had a long missive on one of the areas we are talking about, on understanding the cost of natural capital. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, talked about ancient woodlands and HS2. If you take the natural capital value of that into account, you would put a tunnel underneath the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty and it would be cost-neutral. Often we do not take into account the fact that trees have a value because you can just cut them down—it is easy.

I deal with water on a daily basis as CEO of one of these new retail companies. Our aim is to increase water efficiency, although the market has been set up just on price, but we have been warned about a drought in the south-east that is coming this summer. We have had two dry winters. Without a great deal of rainfall, we will have a problem. This is a real issue because the Government do not take water seriously unless there is a drought or a flood. Of course, with climate change, droughts and floods are two sides of the same coin because we are seeing a major change in the rainfall pattern. If we have a drought in the south-east, we should understand exactly what will happen: the Itchen—a habitat that is unique throughout the world—will get even more abstraction. That will be an issue for the water authority in that area.

I have one point on one of the faults with the document. I take on board that there is a great deal of good will in it but if we take the document as read, the abstraction licence regime change will take place only between 2022 and 2027. Considering the damage that we are doing at the moment, that is a real issue.

I should finish with this point. The Secretary of State has mentioned red squirrels and the problems with grey squirrels. I ran a campaign, which I have talked about a great number of times. We took out 27,500 grey squirrels. If he would like information on how to kill grey squirrels, I am very happy to give it. They are natural capital; you can eat them.

Brexit: Food Prices

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the owner of two hill farms: I understand the economics of hill farming. The Minister said that he was confident in British agriculture but, without subsidies, hill farming, which is already almost uneconomic, will become disastrous. Can the Minister say whether the subsidies, including the environmental subsidies through entry-level and high-level stewardships, will be confirmed to the end of this Parliament? Sorry—I had better say “by 2022”.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the Secretary of State and the Minister have made very clear that the continuing support—I think that the word is “support” rather than “subsidies” for agriculture—will continue until the end of this Parliament in 2022. It is important that we look to new arrangements countenancing public benefits, which I believe agriculture and management of the land undoubtedly do. Obviously we are considering agri-environmental schemes, which I think will be of considerable benefit to agriculture, farmers and the environment.

Breeding: Dogs and Cats

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, it is important that we respect our animals as they are in their native state. It is important that we address this point; it is not reasonable, and in fact it is self-indulgent, to breed animals with these genetic defects. So we want to deal with it, and it is important that we do so. This crosses a number of breeds whose conditions we need to improve. This is why we are working in particular on things such as pet advertising—we want to raise standards on the online side of these things. We are working on this because we recognise how important it is for the welfare and health of these animals.

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister has mentioned online sales of animals. Will he take the recommendations of the Pet Advertising Advisory Group, which is chaired by the Dogs Trust, to make it obligatory—not just voluntary—for websites to make sure that the picture of the pet that is on sale is of the animal itself? Many pets are advertised with beautiful pictures of healthy animals, but when the prospective owner comes to pick up their pet they find a sickly, badly-bred animal and of course feel sorry for it and therefore pay for it, which increases the trade in this way.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right; the Pet Advertising Advisory Group is driving up standards, and we support that. However, this takes us back to one of our problems, which is that of demand from the public who want to buy a puppy. One of the most important things they should think about is whether they can go to a rehoming centre to buy a dog or cat. If they want to buy a pedigree puppy or kitten, they should look to responsible breeders and in particular see the animals in the environment of the mother. It will become illegal to buy a puppy under eight weeks old, so I hope that we will make some progress on this.