Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill  

Nigel Evans Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 2, page 1, line 16, after “goats,” insert “(da) alpaca,”.

This amendment would add alpacas to the definition of livestock covered by the Bill.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 3, page 1, line 16, after “goats,” insert “(da) deer,”.

This amendment would add deer to the definition of livestock covered by the Bill.

Amendment 4, page 1, line 16, after “goats,” insert “(da) llamas,”.

This amendment would add llamas to the definition of livestock covered by the Bill.

Amendment 1, page 1, line 17, at end insert “(f) reindeer.”

This amendment adds reindeer to the definition of “Relevant livestock”.

Amendment 5, page 2, line 7, at end insert—

“(7A) An appropriate national authority may by regulations extend the list of ‘relevant livestock’ in subsection (4).

(7B) ‘Appropriate national authority’ in relation to the power under subsection (7A), means—

(a) in relation to livestock kept in England, the Secretary of State;

(b) in respect of livestock kept in Scotland, the Scottish Ministers;

(c) in respect of livestock kept in Wales, the Welsh Ministers.

(7C) The Secretary of State may not make a statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (7A) unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.

(7D) Regulations made by the Scottish Ministers under subsection (7A) are subject to the affirmative procedure (see section 29 of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010).

(7E) The Welsh Ministers may not make a statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (7A) unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, Senedd Cymru.”

This amendment would allow the appropriate national authority to extend, by statutory instrument subject to the affirmative procedure, the list of livestock species which may not be exported for slaughter.

Clause stand part.

Clauses 2 to 7 stand part.

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Mr Deputy Speaker, today allows us to use our new Brexit freedoms in a really positive way: to continue our country’s long-held mission to prevent cruelty to animals, implement a change for which our constituents have been calling for many years, and ensure that the animals we produce in this country retain the protection of the laws we make in this country. Along with others in this House, I have championed reform in this area for many years—as an MEP, a Secretary of State, and a Back Bencher. I strongly urge hon. Members to support the Bill in the Division Lobby this evening, so that we can end live exports once and for all.

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I remind hon. Members that the occupant of this Chair is acting not as Deputy Speaker, but as Chair of the Committee of the whole House—I did try, but anyway, we all now know.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Chair.

This is an issue that I am personally passionate about—I have spoken on animal welfare issues from both the Back Benches and the Opposition Front Bench many times since coming to this place six years ago. I am very pleased that Labour Front Benchers are supporting the Bill, but recognise the need to strengthen its provisions and for the protection of animal welfare to go much further. All animals deserve protection. I know two things about the British public: one, they are disappointed that it has taken us so long to get to this point; and two, they want to see much more. Where is the ban on keeping primates as pets? Where is the foie gras ban? Where is the action on puppy smuggling, and why has the trophy hunting ban not gone through as an Act?

The Bill is long overdue. In the 2019 general election, the Conservative party included this prohibition and many other animal welfare policies in its manifesto. Five years have passed, and we have had setback after setback. Maybe that reflects the number of Prime Ministers we have had over that period and their varying views on animal welfare, but this is the last in a series of delays that are being put right. Last year, when I was a Front Bencher, I was hugely disappointed that the Government abandoned the kept animals Bill. When I was at the Dispatch Box trying to bring that Bill back, they even voted against a number of their own policies. The British public will not forget. Maybe the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is different now, but the Minister is the same Minister who opposed us on that occasion. How many animals have needlessly suffered because of this delay? There are victims here—it is not a victimless delay.

It took a private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson) to tackle animal exploitation in the wild tourism industry, a measure that we all supported. The approach of the Government for a whole year, which they now seem to have abandoned, was to try to achieve animal welfare improvements through private Members’ Bills. I am glad that we are now back to having Government Bills on these issues, but where is the animals abroad Bill?

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Just to help the hon. Member, could he refer to the amendments or new clauses that he is addressing? His speech sounds awfully like a Second Reading speech.

[Alex Sobel]

Thank you, Chair. I will come to those now.

The amendments in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones) include a number of provisions to extend the scope of the Bill. I want to say a little bit about alpacas, which I believe are dealt with in amendment 2. In my constituency, I have seen a growth in alpaca farming. There are alpacas in Cookridge in my constituency, on the way to Leeds Bradford airport; Meanwood Valley urban farm, which is just over the border in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), has alpacas; and, on Queensway in Yeadon, I recently spotted a number of alpacas in a field. This is clearly an area of expansion in the British farming industry, but there is also now quite a lot of alpaca breeding, so there is no need to export live alpacas to this country, because there is sufficient depth of alpaca farming to carry on that work. The same goes for other animals, including llamas and deer. We are overrun with deer; we certainly do not need the export of them.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I remind the remaining speakers that they should be focusing on the amendments and clauses. They should be speaking to those, not making a Second Reading debate speech.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Of course, my party tabled amendments to the Bill that cannot be discussed and decided on because of the House’s earlier decision about the instruction to include Northern Ireland in the scope of the Bill. We will support many of the amendments that have been tabled, because we believe that the scope of the Bill should be as wide as possible and that while it mentions specific animals, there are other animals that may well be subject to exports in the future.

I do not know if those who tabled the amendments have noted the irony of what we are discussing. This is a Bill to ban the export of live animals, and we are seeking by various amendments to make sure that any other animals not named in the Bill can also be included. Here is the irony: since 2020, the area of the United Kingdom to which the Bill applies has not exported any live animals; the only part of the United Kingdom where there are substantial exports of live animals is the part of the United Kingdom that is not included in this Bill. I do not know if people have noticed the irony of that.

In fact, I remember that at the time when there was criticism of the Government for not bringing forward this legislation, one of their defences was that we had not had any live exports. Of course, we could have live exports in the future, but the Bill addresses an issue that is not an issue for the area included in the scope of the Bill and it ignores the part of the United Kingdom where there are massive exports. Some speakers have said that at least the problem of exports will be made a bit less of an issue because the land bridge is no longer available for exports from Northern Ireland to the rest of Europe. However, that is not the answer, because exporters will of course simply use a more circular and tortuous journey through the Irish Republic.

I first became involved in this issue maybe 20 years ago when I was on a motorbike holiday through the Alps in France. I had not spoken to anybody who could speak English for about two weeks, and I noticed a lorry with a Northern Ireland registration number. I was a member of Belfast City Council at the time, and we had closed our abattoir because the conditions did not meet EU standards. I thought, “There’s somebody from Northern Ireland. I’m going to follow that lorry, and when it stops, at least I’ll have somebody I can talk to.” I thought I would find somebody who could speak English and could understand my sort of English.

I followed the lorry along a long and windy road through the Alps outside a town called Nyons, and it finally stopped at an abattoir in a small village and unloaded its sheep. The sheep came from outside Ballymena, and the driver told me they had come down through the Irish Republic, across the sea, through France and up into the Alps. That journey had taken me on a motorbike—and not because I was going slow either—about three days, and these animals were being transferred to a slaughterhouse. Because I was interested in the issue, I wanted to see what the slaughterhouse was like. We had closed that slaughterhouse in Belfast, but the place to which these animals were being transferred for slaughter from Northern Ireland was like an outhouse of the slaughterhouse that we had closed in Northern Ireland because it did not meet EU standards.

That awoke me to the issue, because I did not think that animals were transported such a distance. This Bill, even with the amendments that have been tabled, will still leave that route open. The objective that the Government are seeking to achieve will not be achieved. It is ironic that we have a Bill about animal welfare that ignores the main source of concern about the transport of animals across the continent of Europe.

I know what the Minister said about the challenges, but I wonder whether he has considered the challenges for this Bill under WTO rules, which the Library has highlighted. There is a reason for not including Northern Ireland, but would he like to comment on the challenges that the Government anticipate may occur and what their response would be? Are they going to use the response of making exceptions?

Lastly—I emphasised this in my speech earlier and other Members have mentioned it—unlike the hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry), who is not here, I am more concerned about the objective of the Bill of protecting the welfare of animals than about protecting the relationship we have, through the Windsor framework, with the EU. I find it disgraceful that someone who represents a constituency where I know there is large concern about animal welfare is more concerned about keeping good relations with the EU than respecting and dealing with animal welfare considerations in the region with the biggest exports of live animals in the United Kingdom.

I wish the Bill well, and it may well be that without it there would be a return to live animal exports. It may well be that it is addressing a problem that is not there in GB. It is there in Northern Ireland, but it is not going to be addressed. I hope there will not be a loophole, because unfortunately, as a result of the agreements that the Government have made with the EU in respect of Northern Ireland, even the Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill, which the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) has spent so much time on, is in jeopardy of being circumvented, because the hunting trophy exports could come through Northern Ireland and get into GB. That is one of the problems that need to be addressed, and it will not be addressed by this legislation, which will only exacerbate the difference between the part of the United Kingdom that I belong to and the rest of the United Kingdom.