Animal Welfare (Import of Dogs, Cats and Ferrets) Bill

Debate between Maria Eagle and Steve Reed

2nd reading
Friday 15th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on bringing forward this important private Member’s Bill. As we have heard from Members across the House, it is overdue. It is extremely welcome and it has cross-party support.

I congratulate Opposition colleagues who have participated. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Samantha Dixon) said that we rarely talk about ferrets in this House, and that is true. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) reminded us—or told us for the first time if we did not know—that 2 April is National Ferret Day. I suspect not many of us knew that, and I hope she will get the ferret she seems to have set her heart on.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) asked very pertinent questions of the Minister, who will be responding shortly, about the risk of rabies from illegally imported ferrets and the great threat to biosecurity in this country, which we should all be very concerned about. My hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood) talked about the absolute horrors of ear cropping—a mutilation that is often carried out without any anaesthetic at all, to the torment of the animal.

My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) talked about the cruelty of illegal puppy farming. My constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), talked about how, when going out to buy a new family pet, it can be difficult for families to identify a legitimate breeder, and how many people are concerned because that journey is so difficult. Families do not want to support the illegal importation and breeding of animals, but it is far too difficult to find out which animals have been bred legitimately and which have been subjected to abuse, including illegal breeding.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray) raised his constituents’ concerns about the Government dropping the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill after two years of development, and he urged the Government to do more to focus on animal welfare in the time remaining before the general election, whenever it comes. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) talked about the importance of rescue cats.

We heard some fine speeches from Conservative Members, too. I will leave it to the Minister to go through them in detail, but the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) made an outstanding, incredibly persuasive speech, with insights clearly drawn from his great professional experience.

I successfully introduced a private Member’s Bill in 2018, so I know very well the perils and pitfalls of steering such legislation through Parliament, and I again pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Devon for her success in building such widespread support, as is clear from this debate, for the important measures she aims to bring into law.

My private Member’s Bill, which became the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018, also won support on both sides of the House, but six years later, very disappointingly, it has still not been brought fully into force. I hear what the hon. Lady says about the need to keep pushing and, if her Bill progresses, I urge her to keep pushing. I wish her more success than I have had with the current Minister for mental health, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), who does not seem interested in carrying out the wishes of this House, as expressed in the unanimous passage of my important Bill. Other Health Ministers have taken much more interest and have helped to push the legislation forward, so I hope she will reflect on why she has not followed the will of this House, as expressed in a free and democratic vote, by ensuring that the law comes fully into force as soon as possible.

Animal welfare is of the highest concern to the British public, as we have heard from both sides of the House. I make it clear that the Opposition are pleased to support the Bill. We believe its measures are long overdue, and it has been very interesting to hear the personal testimony of Members on both sides of the House. Members have spoken of their experience of owning and buying pets, and of wanting to make sure that the animals they buy have been well treated and properly bred.

Other Members have mentioned their pets, and it would be remiss of me not to mention mine. I had a rescue cat called Tigger, who we sadly lost after 18 years in 2010. I have more recently had two rescue cats, Smudge and Pixie. We sadly lost Smudge last year to kidney disease, but the House will be pleased to hear that Pixie is still alive and well. They both achieved a modicum of fame when I entered them into the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home competition to elect the “Purr Minister”, becoming the first cats to be jointly elected. This is a matter of great pride to our family, although not so much to my partner, who is now the only member of our household never to have been elected to anything.

Our ownership of companion pets gives us an insight into how pets can be an important part of a family. We have heard about the horrible abuses of declawing, cropped ears and docked tails. That cruelty is brought home all the more because so many of us have experienced owning and loving a companion pet ourselves, as have many members of the great British public, which is one of the reasons why people are so concerned about these issues.

Puppy and kitten smuggling is an absolutely horrific abuse and legislation is required to prevent it from happening. That is why we are so pleased the hon. Member for North Devon has brought forward her private Member’s Bill today. Cracking down on the illegal smuggling of dogs and puppies was a commitment that appeared in the 2019 Conservative party manifesto. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield said, it is hugely regrettable that the Government did not in the end fully pursue their own legislation—Government legislation—to meet that commitment. I fully understand, and I am sure the Minister will repeat this when he is on his feet, that they are supporting the private Member’s Bill today, but those of us familiar with Friday sittings and private Members’ Bills know how uncertain that route can be. It is all too easy for a lone Member who is hostile to the proposed legislation to use procedural tactics to block the Bill from proceeding, even in circumstances where the vast majority of Members are fully in support of it.

My private Member’s Bill was talked out by a Conservative Member, for instance, despite having almost universal cross-party support. I was immensely grateful to Government Whips who later found time for it to come back, but despite that strong support from the Government, the legislation has still not been fully commenced. So I repeat that there are real concerns about whether and how the Government pursue private Member’s Bills even when they are enacted, which is why we would have preferred to see this Bill brought through as Government legislation rather than being subject to the vagaries of Friday sittings and private Members’ Bills.

[Maria Eagle]

My hon. Friend is right to raise the procedural issues of the private Member’s Bill process being a threat to a Bill getting all the way through. Does he agree that because many Bills have already got through Second Reading in this Session, there is going to be a pile up in Committee which will make it difficult to get this Bill through Committee in time to get it back for the Fridays that give priority to Report and remaining stages? That is also a concern, is it not?

[Steve Reed]

I am grateful for that intervention. Of course my right hon. Friend has experience herself of pursuing a private Member’s Bill through the House, and she is absolutely right. We have over 30 private Members’ Bills on the agenda just today, so it does look like we are going to have a big backlog, and we certainly need the Government to be prioritising Bills they want to support, and I hope we will hear from the Minister today that this Bill will secure Government support and will be a priority for getting Royal Assent and getting on to the statute book.

The Bill before us today started out as part of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill introduced by the Government in 2021. It contained measures to crack down on puppy and kitten smuggling but, regrettably and incomprehensibly to many campaigners—they voiced this articulately themselves—the Government abandoned that Bill. It is hard to understand why they did that given the strong public support for the measures contained and the fact that the Government control legislation as it moves through this House—they control the business of this House. The full Bill was a golden opportunity to improve the health and welfare of millions of animals. The proposals had very wide public support, and animal welfare charities had worked hard to help shape the Bill before the Government regrettably abandoned it.

Members on both sides of the House and many of our constituents—I am sure we have all had letters about this; I am not unique in this House in having had hundreds of emails about the Government abandoning the kept animals Bill—deeply regret that the Government chose to ditch such a significant and important piece of legislation. As a result of that decision, countless animals have suffered needless pain and distress through the unscrupulous practice of puppy and kitten smuggling and through the export of live animals for fattening and slaughter in countries where animal welfare standards are far lower than in this country.

As has been expressed many times this morning, there is real gratitude to the hon. Member for North Devon for her efforts to bring back important measures that were part of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, including those on puppy and kitten smuggling. The provisions that have been brought back today are important because there has recently been a shocking—indeed, a sickening—increase in the number of animals imported into the United Kingdom, with pitifully little attention paid to their welfare, either during transportation or, often, in how and where they were bred. The horrific reality is that the puppy trade has become a multimillion-pound transnational industry based on the abuse of living, sentient creatures and on the deception of well-meaning individuals who want to buy a family pet.

Two million puppies are sold every year in the UK alone. It is a trade with a total value of £3 billion. Battersea Dogs & Cats Home estimates that up to 50% of that trade is either illegal or unlicensed and takes place outside any oversight from regulation or enforcement. Half the animals involved originate outside the United Kingdom, often in completely unknown circumstances, with all the risk that that implies for low standards of animal welfare and animal health.

It is less well known that criminals who are involved in the illegal trade in puppies are often also engaged in other forms of cross-border crime. That includes drug dealing, money laundering and even people trafficking. The European Union’s “Strategy to tackle Organised Crime” recognises the illegal trade in companion animals in Europe as an ongoing concern with severe implications for human and animal welfare.

My hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester pointed out that the Government’s decision to abandon the kept animals Bill delayed the much-needed clampdown on this vile and illegal trade. The delay has left criminals feeling emboldened during the intervening period. A recent report published by the charity Four Paws on the illegal puppy trade in the United Kingdom found that more than 30% of imported puppies were from Romania alone. That is simply unacceptable. How can it be that criminals have been able to bring so many vulnerable animals into this country from conditions over which there is little, if any, welfare or health supervision or control?

[Maria Eagle]

Does my hon. Friend agree that cracking down, with proper enforcement, and having tough penalties that are enforced is a way of not only tackling this vile trade, but getting the additional benefit of taking some serious criminals off our streets?

[Steve Reed]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Indeed, the prosecution and punishment of those responsible for any crime, let alone these particular vile and heinous crimes, is essential to deter others who want to profit from the same exploitation of animals and people that we see in this vile trade in puppy and kitten smuggling. Nobody wants to see that, but we could have had more focus on this, and sanctions, had the Government pursued the original legislation, rather than delaying it and then supporting it coming back—in part at least—as a private Member’s Bill.

The circumstances in which animals are bred are also changing. A growing number of puppies are bred not only in vast, industrial-scale puppy farms, but in sheds, repurposed smallholdings, urban tower blocks and warehouses. We have seen images of these poor, desperate creatures tied up, often left shivering in the freezing cold, in filthy cages, covered in their own excrement, and sometimes reduced to eating their own excrement. It is distressing beyond words to see any of these images and videos, so thank goodness we have this Bill before us today. But what a crying shame it is that the Government have done so little about this vile trade until now and then abandoned the original legislation that could have brought in measures far sooner to save countless defenceless animals from abuse by the most unscrupulous traders and criminal gangs.

The RSPCA is the world’s oldest and largest animal welfare charity, founded here in England in 1824. It has been at the forefront of raising public awareness and concern about puppy smuggling. I pay tribute to the RSPCA for its many years of campaigning on this and so many other animal welfare issues. The RSPCA has highlighted that many dogs smuggled into this country to be sold on the underground puppy market have long-term health problems, as well as behavioural issues because of their breeding and negative experiences early in life.

We are talking about puppies like Dobby, a 19-month-old French bulldog who was taken in by the RSPCA’s Mount Noddy animal centre in West Sussex. Dobby, who had been trafficked into the UK from Lithuania, was plagued with severe and painful health problems, which eventually required significant surgery. The RSPCA points out that importing sick puppies with zoonotic diseases into the UK not only poses a risk to public health, but can lead to the very sad outcome of the animal needing to be euthanised after enduring a short, wretched life of pain and suffering.

What about mutilation, which has been by hon. Members across the Chamber? Mutilation includes horrific acts of cruelty, such as tail docking, ear cropping and the declawing of cats. Ear cropping has been illegal for over 20 years in England and Wales—thank goodness—but the RSPCA reports a 1,243% increase in incidents of ear cropping in dogs between 2015 and 2021. That is such a staggering figure it is worth repeating—a 1,243% increase in incidents of ear cropping in dogs. How despicable! No wonder so many animal rights campaign groups have been pleading with the Government for so many years to bring forward measures to curb this cruel trade.

The RSPCA tells us that the current loopholes in the law that permit the importing of dogs with cropped ears offer a defence in court for those responsible for illegal ear cropping here in the United Kingdom. That helps them to avoid prosecution for abuses of dogs that were made illegal in the Animal Welfare Act 2006. Dog lovers across the United Kingdom are desperate for this horrific practice to be stopped once and for all.

Kitten smuggling raises further welfare concerns that I suspect will distress Members across the House. Cats Protection is the UK’s largest cat welfare charity. It provides administrative support to the all-party parliamentary group on cats, which I was proud to co-chair for many years before I was appointed to the shadow Cabinet by my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition. The charity has produced a most helpful briefing paper on the Bill before us. It notes that its 2023 survey found that 3% of cats purchased in the United Kingdom over the previous 12 months had been sourced from abroad. We have no idea what conditions those cats or kittens were subject to during travel, but the long journeys they are forced to endure can cause them significant pain, fear and distress. That is not something anyone would wish to impose on a beloved family pet, or indeed on any animal, where it can be avoided.

The Bill is an important opportunity to prevent so much needless suffering. The Bill will crack down on puppy and kitten smuggling by closing loopholes in the law that have been mercilessly exploited by dishonest and criminal commercial traders. The Bill reduces the number of animals that may enter Great Britain in a motor vehicle during a single non-commercial journey to five. That will help stop smugglers who pretend larger cargos of animals are their own pets, when in reality they are intended for sale in this country. For similar reasons, the Bill reduces the number of animals that can be brought into the country by means other than a motor vehicle to just three. That will be of huge benefit in reducing the level of kitten and puppy smuggling into the United Kingdom.

The RSCPA has found criminal gangs using routes like this to smuggle animals into the country. The gangs then hire short-let properties, such as Airbnbs, to trick buyers into believing their puppy or kitten comes from a good home and has been well cared for by the animal’s mother. The animal’s new owners are incredibly distressed when they find out that their new pet may have a serious illness, an infection or behavioural problems caused by being removed from its mother far too young. It can even cost the new owners thousands of pounds in vet bills as they try to care for their animal. Of course, in many cases, the animal dies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Reed]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Labour Members consider animal welfare to be important, and it is important that the Opposition can make these points on the record so that we can influence the Bill and, if possible, strengthen it. We think that the Government have been slow to the point of negligence in bringing forward these proposals that will ensure the welfare of animals. I welcome these provisions, but few such measures have been introduced in recent years.

[Maria Eagle]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, if the Bill is to be a success, it is important that there are enforcement and punishment measures? Will he press the Minister, as I did, to be clear in his response about what those are and how they will back up the measures in the Bill to ensure that we put a stop to these evil trades?

[Steve Reed]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making those points. I can see that the Minister was listening carefully to what she had to say, as I was. I look forward to his response.

Few measures introduced in recent years have as many parallel benefits for animal welfare, human beings and wider socioeconomic stability as this Bill. The third-party ban introduced in 2021 sought to address many animal welfare concerns about domestic breeding through tighter licensing obligations on breeders and a ban on third-party sales. However, it was full of loopholes, which allowed unscrupulous breeders to continue their activities with far too little change. The law proved so weak that not a single prosecution has taken place under it, and fresh legislation is urgently needed to close those loopholes and bring that abusive trade to an end.

If the United Kingdom is to maintain its position as a world leader in animal welfare, in the face of emerging threats and concerns, and in line with the wishes of the British public, this Bill must become law as quickly as possible. Puppy smuggling is a despicable criminal activity, which causes suffering to animals and heartache and financial cost to their owners. It helps to fund organised criminal enterprises, which exploit human beings as well as animals, and presents a significant threat of disease transmission, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood pointed out.

Labour is proud to support the Bill as it progresses through this House, and we will seek to make it stronger, just as we did with the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill before the Government abandoned it. It is of course regrettable that the Government have taken so long to act on these issues, and while I have congratulated the hon. Member for North Devon on her private Member’s Bill, it is disappointing that the Government chose not to include the measures in a Government Bill, which might have proved a more secure way of ensuring that the legislation was passed swiftly and intact.

Other animal welfare measures are being presented to this House as private Members’ Bills, instead of as Government legislation. The Pet Abduction Bill, introduced in December last year, is another example, and we should not forget about all the other animal welfare commitments made by this Government that appear to have disappeared into thin air.