Animal Welfare

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a good point: a national register would be good. I would like to see this go further, too. In the United States, a lot of work is done on linking animal cruelty to human cruelty within the home, and I think the two need to be linked much more. It often does not take long to go from treating an animal cruelly—especially beating an animal to death—to starting to beat people up; we have to wake up to that.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I applaud my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He touches on a pertinent point: there are stark statistics proving that people who abuse animals often go on to abuse humans—and indeed it can happen at the same time, of course. A register would therefore be very beneficial in helping tackle what is a much bigger social problem.

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for that intervention; she is an excellent Select Committee member. She makes the point about getting that link; when finding cruelty to animals we should make much more of a link to investigating what is happening in the home, to see whether there is much more going on than just the cruelty to the animal. We must open our eyes to what is happening. Most people look after animals very well, but of course those who do not can be incredibly cruel, and we need to tackle that.

I was surprised and disappointed that the Government rejected the recommendation for a higher maximum sentence of five years, and I again ask the Minister to go back to the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice to see whether we can get it increased, because six months is too low.

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[Mrs Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I wish to thank the Backbench Business Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) and the EFRA Committee for putting animal welfare on the agenda in Parliament today. I have found it distressing to listen to the brutal examples of animal cruelty we have heard about, particularly those detailed in the speech by the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley). I emphasise that animal welfare and action to prevent animal cruelty is a very high priority for many of my constituents, who contact me regularly about this. I warmly and strongly support the campaign for stiffer maximum sentences for those who abuse animals, act with unnecessary cruelty or otherwise fail to comply with our animal welfare rules in this country.

In the few minutes I hope to detain the House, I wish to focus on the welfare of farm animals, because I feel strongly that all of us who take animal welfare matters seriously should focus on the billions of animals used in agriculture across the world. If we want to ensure that, as a civilised society, we maintain high standards of animal welfare, it is vital that we extend this to farm animals. I thank Peter Stevenson of Compassion in World Farming for providing me with some help in preparing for this debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) said that he was sick of talking about Brexit, but Brexit does have relevance today, because about 80% of our animal welfare rules are currently part of EU law. Leaving the EU will give us back control over many policy decisions on animal welfare and farming. As I said when I had the opportunity to raise this matter during Prime Minister’s questions, we should use Brexit to reaffirm our support for the highest standards of animal welfare. We should also use it as an opportunity to see how we can strengthen protection for animals.

Food and farming is one of the most important parts of our economy, supporting many thousands of jobs. I welcome the fact that last October the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that high standards of animal welfare should be one of the unique selling points of UK-produced food in the post-Brexit era. If that is to be a reality in post-Brexit farming, we need to ensure that animal welfare is at the heart of our new system of farm payment support. It is crucial that we maintain that financial support for agriculture if we are to ensure that food produced in accordance with high welfare standards is not priced out of the market by cheaper, less compassionate, alternatives. In future trade talks, we should be prepared to ask those countries that wish to sell into our market to commit to acceptable standards of animal welfare, as was emphasised in the Conservative manifesto. It is my understanding that World Trade Organisation case law does allow us to do that, so long as we apply the same rules across different countries.

The compassionate treatment of animals should be at the heart of the UK’s post-Brexit brand for food and farming. We should recognise the efforts made by UK farmers already, as the majority take animal welfare very seriously. Our new system of farm support should reward farmers who adopt higher welfare standards, for example, through compliance with recognised schemes such as those run by RSPCA Assured or the Pasture-Fed Livestock Association. We need to provide incentives to move away from industrial livestock production towards free-range systems.

In particular, we should aim for an end to the zero grazing of dairy cows. Industrial systems that keep cattle indoors all year round are not capable of delivering high animal welfare standards, no matter how well-managed. I welcome the acknowledgement the Minister gave in responding to my Westminster Hall debate on this issue, when he said that

“any farmer who has turned cattle out to grass in April and watched their reaction knows that cattle prefer grazing, all other things being equal.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2017; Vol. 620, c. 95WH.]

As part of our efforts to end the practice of zero grazing, I hope that the Government will consider measures to enable consumers to make informed choices on the milk they buy. At present, most milk, other than organic milk, is pooled together, making it impossible to distinguish intensively produced from pasture-based milk. We need to consider separation, to enable farmers using good practices and pasture-based grazing to advertise this fact to consumers in the way free-range egg producers have for many years.

[Rebecca Pow]

Recently, I raised with the Minister the idea of having a “Buy British Food” button when people buy food on the internet, and I hope to talk to him shortly. How about having some sort of guidance or button about standards and animal care, too?

[Mrs Villiers]

Both are good ideas, and I hope the Minister will respond to them when he sums up.

A further very important reason why we should discourage intensive farming methods is antimicrobial resistance, a matter the Select Committee has examined carefully. Industrial-style farming can lead to the overuse of antibiotics to fend off diseases and infection caused by keeping animals in unnatural and crowded conditions that compromise their health and their immune responses. Antimicrobials are often given to whole herds or flocks of intensively farmed animals via feed and water. Unless we draw a halt to the trend that antibiotics are gradually becoming less and less able to protect us, we could face the risk of a return to the situation of previous centuries where such matters as childbirth, non-serious injuries and routine operations frequently gave rise to a risk of death. This is a very serious risk faced by our society, and many will no doubt have listened to the harrowing Radio 4 drama, “Resistance”, which was based on one of the worst-case scenarios feared by scientists. So it is necessary to find ways to reduce overall antibiotic use in farming, and our goal should be higher-welfare farming where animals are kept healthy through good husbandry practices rather than routine antibiotic use.

As we scrutinise the great repeal Bill and associated legislation, we will need to ensure that the enforcement powers currently vested in EU bodies are transferred to domestic alternatives. Here I wish to echo a point made by a number of hon. Members: enforcement is crucial. There is no point in having rules on our statute book that are not properly enforced. This has been a long-standing concern in relation to EU rules; I recall working with my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton when we were both in the European Parliament to try to improve enforcement. This debate is a good opportunity to emphasise that the proper enforcement of rules on animal welfare and preventing animal cruelty is vital for our constituents, who care so much about this matter. Analysis by the Food Standards Agency indicates that between July 2014 and June 2016 there were more than 4,000 serious breaches of animal welfare legislation relating to slaughter and transport to slaughter. We need to do better.

In conclusion, I urge the Minister to consider an end to the export of live animals for slaughter overseas. I believe that this trade would have been banned years ago if the decision had rested with Westminster rather than Brussels. The referendum vote means that very soon this House will have control over this decision once again, and I hope the Government will press ahead with a ban to end this cruel trade.

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[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I, too, commend the Chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, of which I am proud to be a member, for securing the debate. The report is another example of the very good work that the Committee is doing. I am delighted to see you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I gather that you are something of a Dr Dolittle, with a number of pets under your wing.

We truly are a nation of dog lovers and animal lovers. I was brought up on a farm with dogs, and a dog was my best friend. As a moody teenager, I turned to the dog more than anyone else to pour my heart out to. I, too, take part in the wonderful Westminster dog of the year competition. I actually borrow a dog from the Dogs Trust, just to highlight all the good work it does in promoting dog ownership.

[Bob Stewart]

Isn’t that cheating?

[Rebecca Pow]

It is not cheating; I try to do a useful education job. We have talked so much about education—[Interruption.] There is a lot of mithering going on behind me, but it is not cheating; it is all about education and getting the right messages to people about animal ownership.

I will touch on a couple of the report’s themes, namely sentencing and licensing, which have been addressed by many other colleagues. Puppy farming is a massive business in the UK. It is worth an estimated £300 million, so it is not small. To put it simply, demand outstrips supply, as we have heard, which leaves space for unscrupulous breeders to come in and operate. The report aims to address that.

Members on both sides of the House agree that the UK has very high animal welfare standards. We pride ourselves on that, which is why it is strange and puzzling that our sentences for offenders are so low. The maximum sentence, as we have heard, is six months’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine. To put that in context, Northern Ireland, Latvia and Montenegro have maximum prison sentences of five years, which makes me think that we need to look at the issue.

We have the lowest sentences for animal abuse crimes in the developed world. As has been said—I am sure that the Minister knows this, but I want to highlight it again—there is a very strong link between animal cruelty and domestic violence. One study found that in 88% of homes where child abuse had been discovered, there had also been incidents of animal abuse. Another study found that up to 83% of women who enter domestic violence shelters report that their abusers have also been abusing the family pet. That very worrying and strong link shows why we should take the issue so seriously.

People can get five years for fly-tipping—that is a serious offence, so we should not backtrack on such sentences—but if someone burns their pet or carries out gross abuse such as that described by Opposition Members, they might get only six months. That is absolutely unbelievable. Clearly we do not want to overload our prisons, but we need to have another look at the issue and not be coy about very serious cases.

An example that recently arose in my constituency involved not a dog or a cat, but a dairy farm. The dairy farmer is in the top group for animal welfare standards among dairy farmers, but unbeknown to him, a lad he had taken on as an apprentice—this was secretly filmed by Animal Equality—was going in and kicking the nursing cows in the face, kicking the calves, pressing them up against metal gates, and slamming the gates on them and abusing them verbally. It was absolutely horrific. The dairy farmer had no idea that that was happening until he was shown the video, which hon. Members can see online. The lad’s sentence is being considered at the moment, but it will probably not fit the crime.

I will quickly touch on internet sales, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) spoke eloquently. Many illegal puppy sales take place on the internet, and I am pleased that the Government are looking at the matter. I welcome the fact that breeders now require a numbered licence to sell puppies online. Many people want the Government to introduce a centralised register, as has been touched on. My daughter is always sending me pictures of cutesy little puppies in handbags or in chocolate boxes that she has seen online. She says, “Mummy, why don’t we get one of these?” but I know for a fact that lots of those puppies have been illegally bred and imported, and they have probably been subject to some of the horrible things that we heard about in detail from my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies).

[Oliver Colvile]

We will, I hope, have a nice long, hot summer. Does my hon. Friend agree that we will face the problem of people leaving their dogs in cars without taking steps to protect them, such as opening windows or leaving water in the car?

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. Many colleagues will often see dogs locked in homes for hours on end when we are out canvassing. Many of those dogs now suffer psychological problems, and I gather that vets are giving some of them Valium to calm them down. There are loads of welfare issues that we have to deal with.

The Committee’s report called for the breeders of puppies to be required to apply for a formal licence if they breed three litters a year—that is definitely a step in the right direction. There are calls for the number to be reduced to two litters, to take account of any accidental litters, which often occur. And please do not forget cats—as a lover of Mr Tips and Raffa, my family’s two cats at home, I know that we must not forget cats. I applaud our Committee’s recommendation that the breeders of cats who have two litters or more a year should also be licensed and subject to the relevant welfare conditions.

Education has been mentioned, and I wonder whether there is any way we can give our local authorities—they are often the ones who have to police these things, and they are often under pressure—a bit more education in this area. I am not necessarily saying that we should throw money at them, but education and additional support might help councils to clamp down on offenders.

I am coming to the end of my speech, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I want to make a final point about our animal welfare standards in general as we exit the EU. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers) touched on this. If the UK is to set itself up as an animal welfare exemplar for domestic pets and livestock—I believe that the Minister has that very much in mind—it is crucial that our regulatory framework is fit for purpose, and that framework should cover the use of antibiotics, which has been referred to, as well as how animals are kept and managed. That is essential if we are to build a British brand on this platform. We know what countries in the EU do, but we also need to know exactly what our global partners do, because we have to trade with them on equal welfare terms. I urge the Minister to consider that; it is something that the all-party group on animal welfare, which I chair, could have a look at.

I applaud the Select Committee report. There is still much to do on welfare, but we have taken many steps in the right direction and I know that the Minister is listening. The overall aim of all the work that is being done is to give our pets the happy, healthy and lovely life that they all deserve.