Wild Animals in Circuses (No. 2) Bill (Second sitting)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st May 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Q Clearly, you are very fond of your animals and have had them for a very long time. Mr Jolly, you said that you would not continue, but you are Peter Jolly senior, so obviously your children and grandchildren are involved.

Peter Jolly: There is a junior.

[Mrs Latham]

Would they continue with the circus or would they close it down?

Peter Jolly: They might continue with the domestic animals, but they would not part with the exotics. They would move on to other work with the exotics.

[Mrs Latham]

Q You said you would take them to county shows if the ban came into being. What sort of things would you be doing at county shows?

Peter Jolly: A circus.

[Mrs Latham]

Q So if we decide to go down the route of banning wild animals in circuses, we also need to look at the definition of a circus. You said you have llamas and goats. What other animals do you have? Do you have dogs?

Peter Jolly: Yes—dogs, fan-tailed pigeons.

[Mrs Latham]

Q Do you have doves?

Peter Jolly: People call them doves, but they are actually fan-tailed pigeons. People always call them doves for some unknown reason. We have dogs, goats, llamas, ponies, donkeys.

[Mrs Latham]

Q What about you, Ms MacManus?

Carol MacManus: We have eight horses, five ponies, a mule, a donkey, five llamas, two camels, one zebra, 38 pigeons, six doves, two reindeer, 10 dogs, six ducks, four chickens, two cats.

[Mrs Latham]

Q If the ban came into place and you could not use the wild animals, you would continue with the other animals.

Carol MacManus: Yes.

[Mrs Latham]

Q You both said that you either would not get rid of them or would not know what to do with them, and that they could not stay at home. If you were doing county shows, though, that would not be every week.

Peter Jolly: No.

[Mrs Latham]

It would be occasional use, presumably.

Carol MacManus: If we got work every week, would there be a difference? If we were working through winter-time with our reindeer jobs, we could be out every single day.

[Mrs Latham]

Yes, because of Santa Claus.

Carol MacManus: And we could be taking them up and down the country, all over the place—much further than we ever travel.

[Mrs Latham]

Q I don’t know about that, but I have seen reindeer in situations at Christmas. I do not know where they have come from or whether they are resident there, but I think it is the fact that they are moving every single week that is seen as the problem.

Carol MacManus: But it is fine for reindeer and racing camels to be going up and down the motorway to different places and strange county shows, with maybe a drag-racing car going off next to you. I have had the circus in a county show area, when we were at Bakewell, and it is not nice.

[Mrs Latham]

Q You were talking about being in safari parks, where cars were going past them, but in the confined space of a circus ring there are hundreds of people around them, in very close proximity, tapping, cheering, shouting,

Carol MacManus: I think they quite like it, actually. Our zebra doesn’t like it if he does not perform; if, for any reason, he does not perform, he gets stressed. He knows when the music is on. He stands waiting at his door for the young lad to take him across to the ring to work with me—there is only one handler who handles him. He likes performing. When I had my old zebras, they used to free-range around the site. They would always be in the big top, where the shade was, or wandering round the site.

[Simon Hoare]

Q I think you have given us food for thought. To pick up on what Ms Newton said, it is clear that you care very much about the welfare of your animals, and you are operating under a strong and robust regulatory regime at the moment. I am slightly confused about the point about car noise in a safari park.

Peter Jolly: I was talking about fumes.