Wild Animals in Circuses (No. 2) Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

There are two circuses, Circus Mondao and Peter Jolly’s Circus, with the 19 animals. Is the Minister going to ensure the welfare of those animals is secured after they have been released from performing? They are not wild animals or domestic animals. They will need to be well looked after.

[David Rutley]

As defined in this Bill, they are wild animals, but I understand my hon. Friend’s point. As I tried to make clear earlier, their welfare absolutely will be looked after. We have had assurances of that from the circuses themselves and we have legislation in place that will ensure that there are ongoing inspections to make sure that their welfare is looked after. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend. I recognise his interest as the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and the important work the Committee has done on this issue and across a wide range of other activities on animal welfare. I am grateful to him for that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate.

I welcome the Bill, but further to what my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—I do call him an hon. Friend—said, I am interested in why this is being done on ethical rather than animal welfare grounds. Government lawyers have made heavy weather of this Bill. As several Members across the House have said, we have been dealing with this for a long time; this was one of the first issues that I dealt with when I came into the House in 2010, and it rumbled on and on through various Secretaries of State, and now we have finally got there, which I greatly welcome.

When I asked a question of the Minister just now and said that the animals were not wild, I suppose that technically I was wrong, but the point I wanted to make is that they are neither wild nor domesticated because they have been so used to performing in circuses and to being taken around. I am not saying that was the right thing to do to them, but we cannot just suddenly turn them back into the wild, because they are not strictly wild animals. If we put the reindeer back into Norway or Sweden or wherever they could roam naturally, I am not sure for one moment that they would survive. That is the issue: we have to make sure that not only are these animals banned from travelling circuses but they are looked after. The No. 1 priority is that they are not put down of course, but they do need to be looked after properly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), a previous agriculture Minister, made the further point that lots of other types of animals—snakes, lizards and all sorts of things—are being kept for various reasons. We live in a block of flats in Battersea and, interestingly, mice and dead chicks are brought in. I am not sure the inhabitants of the flats are eating those chicks; I think we will find that snakes and other animals are eating them. So lots of animals are being kept across the piece and we must make sure they are looked after properly. We cannot expect this Bill to deal with that, but the point has been made that it is interesting what people will keep in their homes, and then there is the question of whether their homes are fit for it and whether they should be keeping them. There are also all sorts of other animals, such as primates, that should not be kept at home, and we must deal with that.

I do not wish to detain the House for long as this Bill has cross-party support and I welcome that, and we have done a lot of work in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on these matters previously and now. However, I also want to make the point that we really want the five-year sentencing for animal welfare crimes. We have the ridiculous situation at the moment that someone who beats a dog to death gets a maximum sentence of six months and if they plead guilty they get an automatic 30% or 40% reduction, so they end up serving four months. This is not right, and every time we want to tag this measure on to one Bill or another it never seems to be the right Bill, so I urge the Government that it is time that that was done.

We can all work together on this, but the point has been made that there are other species that we need to look at. I welcome the fact that the 19 animals from both the Circus Mondao and Peter Jolly’s will no longer be able to perform after 2020, but I reiterate that we must make sure they are properly looked after afterwards, a point that I think we all agree on across the House.