Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I rise in support of this Bill, and I declare a strong personal and professional interest in animal health, welfare and sentience as a veterinary surgeon. I welcome the Bill, and I think it is so important that we recognise sentience in legislation, and I welcome the inclusion of cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans.

As I said on Second Reading, I still think we need to be clearer on the specifics of the Bill, albeit that it is a brief and general Bill. I am disappointed, coming back from Committee, that the recommendations to put a definition of sentience into the Bill were cast aside. I draw attention to the definition put forward by the Global Animal Law Project, as adopted also by the British Veterinary Association:

“Sentience shall be understood to mean the capacity to have feelings, including pain and pleasure, and implies a level of conscious awareness.”

I do understand the reservations about putting this into primary legislation, but as I have said before, I think this could be tackled by putting it into secondary legislation. I am aware that the science will evolve and definitions may evolve, and that could be tackled in secondary legislation.

I welcome the formation of the future Animal Sentience Committee. It must have the right breadth of expertise and talent, but I want it to have some teeth and power. As has been mentioned, it has the ability to roam across Departments, and I welcome that. Clause 2 talks about how, in relation to reports from the committee, the Government will have

“all due regard to the ways in which the policy might have an adverse effect on the welfare of animals as sentient beings.”

I agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) that it is a shame the Bill still talks purely about the adverse effects. If we could put in the positive effects, that would go along with the United Kingdom being a beacon of standards on animal health and welfare. We could still consider putting that forward.

I firmly believe that animal welfare needs to be joined up across Government, and I think this Bill actually starts to do that. We need to look at Government policy across different Departments, and the Bill can reinforce that. However, there are some things that I firmly believe that we, as a Parliament and as a Government, need to act on quickly. I again urge Ministers to keep doing that, and I will quickly whip through some of the things that I think we really need to crack on with.

On pet theft, we are bringing it into law, but I want it very much expanded from dogs to include cats, but also horses and farm animals, which are being stolen as we speak. We still need to close the loophole in the Government buying standards for domestic food procurement. The loophole allows public sector bodies to buy things at lower animal welfare standards on the ground of cost, and I think that loophole needs closing now.

International trade has been mentioned, and we need to show the rest of the world that we are a beacon on animal health and welfare. Again, putting sentience into legislation confirms that, but I firmly believe we have missed an opportunity by not placing core standards into the trade deals with Australia and New Zealand. We should just draw a line, and say there are certain red line products that we find unacceptable in this country and that we will not accept them. We should say firmly that we will not undermine our fantastic British farmers, who farm to the highest animal health and welfare standards. In my constituency of Penrith and The Border, the Cumbrian farmers are right up there among the best of our British farmers, and we must not undermine those farmers in these trade deals. The Bill will help with that, and we need to put pressure on the Department for International Trade in future trade deals, as well as with the current trade deals that the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the International Trade Committees are scrutinising.

[Sir Roger Gale]

Does my hon. Friend recall that when we left the European Union, one of the advantages that we were told would arise from that was that we would be able to maintain our own high animal welfare standards, and not import goods that were produced to a lower standard?

[Dr Hudson]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, and it is important that we have the highest standards. I note there is an animal welfare chapter in the Australian trade deal, which I welcome, but in that chapter there are non-regression clauses, and all those do is say that neither partner will get worse. I think we can do better than that. I believe we must uphold our own animal welfare standards, and drive up animal health and welfare standards around the world.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has been looking at the movement of animals. The Government have looked at some our recommendations, but the standard response, again, is that they are “consulting” or “will consult.” Let us stop consulting on a lot of these matters, and just crack on with it. On puppy smuggling, let us raise the age of the dogs coming in to a minimum of six months. Let us ban heavily pregnant dogs and cats from being moved into the country. Let us ban the import of cropped-eared dogs.

[Alex Davies-Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is a vociferous campaigner on animal welfare and he makes some excellent points. On that final point, does he share my concern that at Crufts this weekend, the “best in breed” was a British bulldog? There is concern about the breeding of those brachycephalic dogs and the impact it has on them. Does he share my concern that the Government need to do more to protect them, as well as concerns about puppy smuggling and puppy breeding of such dogs in the future?

[Dr Hudson]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. She is a proud champion for animal welfare on the Labour Benches. We must look at that issue closely. Brachycephalic dogs, and dogs that have had horrific mutilations—I touched on the point about cropped ears—are being popularised in culture, with celebrities having those dogs, unwittingly endorsing such procedures. We must be careful about publicly endorsing dogs and animals that have had some of those procedures, as well as some of the breeding procedures that make those animals struggle in later life. Owners take on some of these dogs in good faith, and have no idea of some of the unintended consequences of such breeding patterns.

I mentioned ear cropping in dogs. The RSPCA has reported that in the past year, the incidence and reports of such dogs has gone up by about 86%. We do not need to wait for a law to come in or for primary legislation; we can crack on with secondary legislation and ban the import of dogs that have had their ears cropped, and potentially of cats that have had their claws removed. Instead of consulting, with secondary legislation we can crack on with some of the important health checks. If animals are being moved into this country, we should be doing checks on those dogs for things such as brucella canis. We should be reinstituting the rabies titer checks. We can reverse the change that the European Union made when it removed the need for mandatory tick treatment for small animals coming into this country. We can reverse that in secondary legislation to protect the health and welfare of those dogs and animals being brought into the country and, importantly, to protect the health and welfare of animals in this country. This is about biosecurity, and health and welfare needs to be thought about in the round.

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has had some thoughts and comments for the Government about sorting out the digital identification of horses. Again, I welcome that the Government are consulting on that, but we need to crack on. If we can identify those animals, we will stamp out the illegal movement of animals to the European Union for slaughter.

[Neil Parish]

We have a system up and running with which we can electronically identify the horses. We have to roll that out here and get it recognised by the European Union. There is a good animal welfare reason, as well as a good movement reason for it, and I urge DEFRA Ministers to move—dare I say it?—a little faster.

[Dr Hudson]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I urge Ministers to move quickly on this. We must identify horses so that we know why they are moving and can stamp out the illegal movement of hundreds, potentially thousands, of those animals that are moved for slaughter. That is important. Much as I am keen on making decisions from an evidence base, there comes a time when we do not need to keep consulting. The evidence is out there. Let us act; let us do it now.

I have raised this point with Ministers many times, as have Government and Opposition Members: if we are bringing in animal sentience legislation, let us have joined-up animal health and welfare legislation in practice now. For instance, as we speak, pig farms in the United Kingdom are still in crisis with more than 40,000 pigs having been culled on farms and not gone into the food supply chain. That is horrific. It is incredibly upsetting for the farmers, the vets, the slaughter workers and everyone concerned. It is an awful thing to do. Again, I firmly push the Government on that. I know that the Minister has been convening summits and working well with the sector, but we need action to put pressure on the food processors as well as work with the Home Office to sort out the visa situation to mitigate the crisis.

Many of those are workforce issues that have been exacerbated by Brexit and covid, but they are now having implications for our food security, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). They may also become an animal health and welfare problem. Let me give an example from the veterinary sector from a professional viewpoint. Since Brexit, the number of EU vets registering in the United Kingdom has reduced by a factor of about two thirds, and about 90% to 95% of vets working in the meat hygiene sector come from the European Union, so that reduction is producing a real crisis. We are short of not just workers but vets in the slaughter sector. In parallel, in the veterinary sector there is a huge increase in the time and demands on veterinary surgeons. Throughout lockdown, people have been taking in pets—we had the puppy boom—so the pressure on small animal veterinarians has gone through the roof, and, with Brexit, the pressures from export and import certification have also gone up. We therefore have a real crisis in the sector; it is a perfect storm that we really need to address.

On the EFRA Committee, we have made recommendations about keeping an eye on veterinary workforce issues and, again, that goes cross-departmental. For instance, I have been calling for an EU-UK veterinary, sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, which would smooth the movement of animal and plant produce between the UK and the EU. That would help with trade and help solve many of the issues we face between GB and Northern Ireland. I ask the Government to work across Government and with our European colleagues, because, if we could secure such agreements, that would take pressure off some of our workforce issues. That would also be of huge benefit to the country’s biosecurity.

Finally, I urge the Government not to lose their nerve on some of the welfare promises we made in our manifesto and in policy. I sincerely hope that media reports about the Government potentially dropping the ban on imports of farmed fur and foie gras are false and that they will keep going with what they promised. Some in my party have been reported in the media as saying that it is a matter of frippery or of personal choice—they should tell that to the animals farmed for their fur and to the birds with a tube rammed down their throat who are force-fed to make their livers pathologically fatty for some culinary delicacy. I firmly believe that we should hold our nerve in the Chamber and in the Conservative party and forge ahead with our promises, because that is the right and proper thing to do.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The hon. Member is making an excellent speech. I entirely agree with him on the iniquities of fur and foie gras. Is it not that we deem it cruel enough to have banned its production in this country, so all that we are squabbling about is whether we will outsource that cruelty and allow imports? I think it was the chair of the 1922 committee, the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Sir Graham Brady), who talked about having to smuggle foie gras into the country on Eurostar. Surely there is hypocrisy at the heart of it as well.

[Dr Hudson]

The hon. Member makes a valid point. Those practices and procedures are rightly banned in this country. I firmly believe that we should not import things that we believe are wrong in this country. There has been a lot of discussion about trade deals, hormone-treated beef and chlorine-washed chicken. Rightly, those practices are banned in this country. That is one area where I do actually take the Government at their word. They are still banned, so those products will not be imported. I firmly believe we should keep our promises. If we make a promise, we should keep it.