Oral Answers to Questions
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Barclay)
We are committed to maintaining high animal welfare and food standards. Since leaving the EU, we have put in place strong controls on imports, and we are using Brexit freedoms to strengthen animal welfare standards even further by banning the export of live animals for slaughter. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Can I say to the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) that we are in the middle of a question, and he has just walked right in front of the Member asking it?
Neale Hanvey
Yesterday, the UK Government implemented a border target operating model in which a veterinarian must provide a health certificate for meat imports from the EU. Meanwhile, the UK-Australia free trade agreement, which came into effect six months ago, is likely to lead to increased imports of low-cost products produced in Australia using pesticides that are not permitted in the UK and in the absence of veterinary checks. According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Australia has lower welfare standards in many sectors, such as eggs, pigmeat production and chicken. Does the Secretary of State accept that this asymmetry on standards of animal welfare is incoherent and poses a significant risk of contaminating the food chain with banned pesticides?
Steve Barclay
The hon. Gentleman is mixing up two issues. He mentioned Australia, and specifically eggs. If he actually looked at the agreement with Australia, he would see that eggs are excluded, as are pork and poultry. He is mixing that up with the issue of food standards for imports from Europe. Of course, if we did what his party would advocate and were still in the EU, there would be no checks at all.
Mark Spencer
Of course, we continue to monitor food price inflation and work with the sector to reduce it as much as possible. We co-operate with not only farmers, processors and retailers, but all those involved in the sector to try to make sure that we provide a reasonably priced food basket for our constituents. The good news is that the cost of our food basket in the UK is lower than that found in many parts of the European Union.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In response to Question 1, the Secretary of State attributed another party’s position on Europe to my party. The Alba party’s position on Europe is to opt for the European Free Trade Association, thus maintaining sovereignty over fisheries and farming. I would be grateful if the Secretary of State would correct the record.
The Attorney General
My hon. Friend highlights a horrific case. That is why it is so important that we crack down on mobile phone use, and indeed mobile phone existence, within prisons. The Government have put in £100 million to ensure that prisons have airport-style security, to ensure that it is much more difficult for phones to get in. Incidents such as he raises are very serious, and I commend him for doing so, as well as his constituent Zoey and The Northern Echo, which I understand has been campaigning on the issue.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
The Solicitor General (Robert Courts)
The Serious Fraud Office has brought no prosecutions for cases of fraud connected with covid-19. The SFO deals only with the most complex and serious economic crime, so the vast majority of such cases would not fall within its remit. The SFO works closely with other law enforcement agencies to ensure that intelligence is shared and the investigations are handled by the most appropriate agency.
Neale Hanvey
It is staggering to hear the Solicitor General refer to this as not serious, or imply that it is not serious. In 2023, the level of fraud reported by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in two covid-19 financial support schemes sat between £3.3 billion and £7.3 billion, with less than £1 billion being recovered. Considering that the UK Government have already written off an alarming £8.7 billion that they spent on protective equipment bought during the pandemic, will he commit to routinely publishing accounts including the number of prosecutions and the cost of recovery for covid-19 contracts and support schemes?
The Solicitor General
The hon. Gentleman misunderstands my point: the SFO deals with the most complex schemes. Not for a second would I have suggested that any such fraud is not serious—of course it is—but the vast majority of the crimes to which he alludes would be dealt with by the CPS. Indeed, the CPS has charged a number of individuals with precisely those sorts of crimes.
Oral Answers to Questions
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Attorney General
The right hon. Lady understands, as I hope all of us in the Chamber do, the complications of the Law Officers convention, which means that I simply cannot go into the details of my advice here. On very rare occasions, either legal advice has been leaked or, more recently, I am glad to say, a summary of the Government’s legal position, which may or may not include the Attorney General’s advice, has been provided. The sort of circumstances in which we would envisage that to be appropriate would be if we were taking military action overseas, for example. It is not something that is done on a regular basis.
What I would say to colleagues, because there has been a great deal of interest in the legal position surrounding the Bill, is that the use of a section 19(1)(b) statement is not unprecedented. In fact, I remember, as a much younger lawyer, when Tessa Jowell used such a statement for the Communications Act 2003. That Act went on to be tested in the Strasbourg Court and the Government were successful in that case, so I would not read too much into the use of a section 19(1)(b) statement. It is unusual, but not unprecedented.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
The Solicitor General (Michael Tomlinson)
The Attorney General and I regularly meet with the SFO director; however, the vast majority of covid fraud cases do not fall within the SFO’s remit, and investigations are handled by the most appropriate agency. Recently, as the hon. Gentleman will have heard, I visited the Insolvency Service and heard about its excellent work in relation to bounce bank loans.
Neale Hanvey
Given the statement by the former director of the Serious Fraud Office that red flags were ignored, and that Parliament’s own spending watchdog estimates potential fraud of £16 billion, how much has been recovered to date and what further lessons have been learned and applied to ensure that identification and prevention of fraud is embedded across all Government Departments, and why are the UK Government not recovering that fraud with the same zeal and determination that they have for impoverishing benefit claimants who have had overpayments through no fault of their own?
The Solicitor General
I entirely refute and disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s final comment, but he will be pleased to know that the new director of the SFO has set off apace. He has launched new investigations. There is a new energy and a new rigour within the SFO, but I repeat that it is not just the SFO that conducts such investigations; the Insolvency Service is also involved, and is also carrying out some excellent work.
Storm Babet: Flooding
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
I thank the Minister for her statement, but she made a significant omission in relation to the impact on the railway network, which has implications for funding and the response in Scotland, because the network is not devolved.
Following August 2020’s fatal derailment at Carmont, near Stonehaven, in which three people lost their lives, Network Rail gave a commitment to the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers that it would put in place additional resources to address the drainage maintenance failures that were responsible, but the RMT’s Gordon Martin has claimed that Network Rail’s modernising maintenance project has less to do with improvement and everything to do with cuts. As the Minister is responsible for flooding and its impact, will she raise this with her counterpart in the Department for Transport to ensure that Network Rail’s failings do not again lead to death and injury, as they did in August 2020?
Rebecca Pow
I will certainly pass on those comments to the Department for Transport.
Oral Answers to Questions
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Mark Spencer
The hon. Lady will be familiar with the huge package of support that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put in place for families across the country, including in her constituency in Scotland, to help people with the rising cost of energy and food. That is the right thing to do; it supports those families with those challenges. There is also cash available for local authorities to try to help where the situation is very challenging.
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
The Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries (Mark Spencer)
The Government have delivered the first free trade agreement the EU has ever reached based on zero tariffs and zero quotas, and our recent food strategy sets out how we will support a prosperous agrifood sector.
Neale Hanvey
National Farmers Union of Scotland president Martin Kennedy recently highlighted the unprecedented period of change, cost and uncertainty for Scotland’s farmers and crofters driven by Brexit and now compounded by energy costs and fertiliser costs. Last year, I met farmers from across my constituency. They were frustrated by a lack of clarity on a replacement for the common agricultural policy, and our beef herds are now decreasing in numbers. This Government were elected on a pledge of matching EU funding pound for pound, but that has not materialised. Where is the money and when is it coming?
Mark Spencer
That simply is not true; £2.4 billion is the budget we have committed to in the manifesto, and we are making sure, through this Parliament, that that money continues to go to farmers. Lots of the issues the hon. Gentleman raises are devolved; his own Government are not delivering for the farmers in Scotland. In England, we are rolling out those plans—grants for farmers to invest in their businesses, and help to assist with their environmental schemes and to make sure that they are prosperous. I only hope that he can influence the Scottish Government to give the same level of support to his farmers.
Online Animal Sales: Regulation
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and to speak in this important debate. I, too, thank the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) for introducing the debate, but most importantly I thank Richard Ackers, or Rick as he is better known, and the Reggie’s law team for their courage, passion, compassion and determination to bring this matter into focus and before the House today through their petition, tireless campaigning and a more than 200-mile walk from Wigan to deliver the petition. It was an honour to join Rick as he delivered it to No. 10 last week.
There can surely be no more noble pursuit than seeking to protect those who are otherwise defenceless against tyranny. That is what we are concerned with today—the tyrannical abuse of power against defenceless creatures and what action we can take to limit, prevent and ultimately stamp out such cruel practices.
Like many families, mine was blessed with a new puppy during the pandemic. Reflecting back, I realise that our wee puppy could so easily have suffered the same fate as Rick’s Reggie. We found his advert online, we visited the seller and—despite asking all the reasonable questions about the location of the mother—once we had seen the pup, we melted and just accepted the assurances that we were given that mum was resting because she was tired from suckling. Thankfully, our wee Malu is fine and is now the boss of all he surveys.
Rick’s family were not so fortunate. Since the loss of Reggie in December 2020, Rick and the Justice For Reggie team have been working with other distressed families to highlight and uncover the facts about the illegal puppy trade, illegal online sales and the mental health impact that has on families. Their work aims to use this tragedy to deliver positive legislation by gaining the support of Parliament, and it is great to see cross-party support today.
What will Reggie’s law do? It will incorporate regulations to provide a safe buying platform for potential buyers of animals sold online on animal selling sites. It is far too easy to sell a pet. It requires only an email address and a burner phone. Rick has found that too many online pet selling sites are reluctant to engage in improving standards of online animal sales and welfare. The law would require all online pet selling platforms to support a comprehensive ID check of the seller behind every pet, and require evidence of the mum to be submitted, whether by photo ID or other means. I suggest today that that should be tied to a pet passport identifier, because we know that a large number of puppies are illegally imported into the UK to be sold online.
The other question to understand is this. Will Reggie’s law make a difference? Well, Rick and the team are in regular discussion with various stakeholders from the RSPCA, Dogs Trust and others, and they have secured agreement that the ID requirements of Reggie’s law would not only put in place necessary barriers in relation to this practice, but make investigations and court action against illegal breeders and sellers much easier. We know what the international response has been. In Victoria, Australia, following the introduction of a similar law known as Oscar’s law, dog theft and illegal breeding and selling dropped by more than 90%. Reggie’s law could have such a positive impact, not only on puppy-farmed pets and stolen pets but on the health and wellbeing of owners and buyers.
As animal lovers and pet owners, we know the bond of love and loyalty that exists with the family pet. Will the Minister outline how the matter being debated is to be taken forward, given the wide public and cross-party support here today? We have a duty to honour that loyalty by protecting those creatures who are otherwise defenceless against such cruelty. This would be a real opportunity to set the tone for legislation to be developed across these islands.
Oral Answers to Questions
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Mr Speaker
I just say to Members that if they are bobbing to their feet then they should keep bobbing as otherwise I will think they have changed their mind about wishing to speak. Knowing who is standing and who is not helps me all the way through.
We now come to a more interesting matter: I call Neale Hanvey to ask Question 6. He is not here. If Members are not going to be present, they must let the Chair know. May I suggest once again that the Minister answers the question even though the Member is not here, although he was due to be?
Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
Our vanguard Environment Bill demonstrates how much we are doing on that—more than any other country. This will be groundbreaking legislation and as we build back greener from the pandemic it will transform how we protect our environment and will better protect our resources—our air, our water and, of course, our soil.
Sentience and Welfare of Animals
Neale Hanvey Excerpts(4 years, 8 months ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Patricia Gibson
I thank the hon. Lady for sharing those points. I say to the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder)—I will not call him a new Member because we have said that enough—that I have been calling for maximum penalties of five years since I was first elected in 2015, so I have got a wee bit of a head start on him. We support each other in these efforts, because, quite simply, that is the right thing to do.
Another new measure in the Scottish Government’s programme for Government is on slaughterhouses. In Scotland, 80% of slaughterhouses have CCTV fitted, but that will become a requirement for all slaughterhouses under the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Bill. Indeed, the first independent animal welfare commission to be set up will look specifically at how the welfare needs of sentient animals are being met and what legislative and non-legislative measures can be implemented to make improvements, where required, and for animal welfare to proceed on an evidential basis.
I do not think there is any dispute about animals being sentient beings; no one would deny, or seek to deny, that. Therefore, there is a responsibility on all Governments to recognise that comprehensively in policy and practice through legislation. It is as simple as that. I hope the Minister will seek to match the good work undertaken by the Scottish Government in this area, especially as we negotiate trade deals post-Brexit. That is the kind of reassurance that she knows our constituents are looking for.
Allan Dorans
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention and totally agree with her sentiments. It is my view that we need to enshrine the protection of animals in law.
Neale Hanvey
Anyone who has had a pet and loved them, with that relationship having built up over the years, knows that that creature is sentient. Does my hon. Friend share my frustration that sentience has been described as some unnecessary additional clause to be added to legislation and ascribed as an ornament on a Christmas tree? Does he agree that sentience is surely not an additional ornament, but a central and fundamental tenet of any legislation? The analogy of sentience being an ornament is so inaccurate because sentience is the tree—the central component of animal welfare. Does he also agree that, in line with the Scottish animal welfare commission, that should be a central part of policy making in Westminster?
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. Before we proceed, I see a number of new Members present, so let me make the point for the benefit of Members new and old that interventions are supposed to be interventions, not speeches. We welcome speeches. If anyone wishes to take part in the debate, please simply rise in the usual manner. An intervention should be brief.