Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Luke Evans and Victoria Prentis(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)
The Government are committed to the animal welfare agenda. Currently, we are working on proposals to ban live exports for slaughter or fattening, banning primates as pets and introducing compulsory microchipping for cats. We will increase sentences for animal cruelty, enhance the welfare standards of farmed animals and bring forward proposals relating to animal sentience.
Dr Evans [V]
I thank the Minister for her answer, and I am grateful for all she is doing, but both the demand for puppies in the UK and their price have skyrocketed over lockdown. I declare an interest: I bought two of the same breed several months apart and saw a doubling in the price. I have been speaking to reputable breeders, and they are choosing not to breed their dogs because of concerns about welfare. What are the Government doing to ensure puppy welfare, clamp down on puppy farms and stop puppy profiteering?
Victoria Prentis
My hon. Friend raises an important question, which I know he has campaigned on before. Regulations in England require anyone in the business of breeding and selling dogs to be licensed. Last year, we banned commercial third-party sales of puppies and kittens, and also launched our national Petfished campaign to educate the public on how to source pets responsibly.
Exiting the European Union (Plant Health)
Debate between Luke Evans and Victoria Prentis(4 years ago)
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Victoria Prentis
The hon. Gentleman is a great champion for his farmers. This SI is related to GB only, but I assure him that I speak very frequently to the Minister in Northern Ireland. I have not done so this week, but I do generally often and I probably will in the course of the next few days. I know that he and I are both committed to very high standards in British agriculture.
In making these operability changes, we are focused on ensuring that the phytosanitary controls reflect actual risks to Great Britain. The risk assessment process follows the UK’s well established risk management methodology using our UK plant health risk register as our principal screening tool. Applying this evidence-based process to determine our lists of regulated plants, products and pests for the future has resulted in increased focus on the threats about which we really need to be concerned. For example, some pests that pose a risk only to citrus, rice and other tropical crops, which we do not grow, have been deregulated. This has positive impacts, as it allows our inspectors to focus their efforts on the higher-risk commodities about which we are concerned, such as Xylella hosts, and tree species such as plane, which we are really worried about. This approach means that items that have previously been subject to restrictions or prohibitions even though the risk is in fact negligible, such as mangos, curry leaves and so on, are now able to be imported into Great Britain free of restriction.
Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)
It will not have escaped the Minister’s notice that we are actually in a pandemic, and protection and prevention for our environment before getting to that stage are really important. How robust does she believe the implementation of this legislation will be in ensuring that we are indeed as protected as we can be?