Draft Cat and Dog Fur (Control of Movement etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 General Committees

[The Minister for Trade Policy (Penny Mordaunt)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Cat and Dog Fur (Control of Movement Etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. As a courtesy, I should say that my phone is off before the jokes start. I should also declare an interest as the humble servant of four cats at home.

I am sure that all Members are of one mind that the slaughter of cats and dogs to trade in their fur is completely wrong. Since 2008, the import, export and placing on the market of cat and dog fur, and products containing their fur, has been banned in the United Kingdom, and it will continue to be. When the ban entered into force it was at EU level, but I am proud that the United Kingdom played an influential role in its introduction. The Government rightly chose to keep the ban in place upon the UK’s departure from the European Union, and today we are seeking to secure this statutory instrument to ensure our robust position is maintained.

The SI replicates, clarifies and makes operable the prohibition on the import, export and placing on the market of cat and dog fur, and products containing such fur.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I am interested in the definition of fur. Does it relate to fur and pelts, as in pelts with fur on, or does it also include combed fur that is not attached to a pelt and has been removed from a live animal?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The definition includes products containing that fur, so it is a broad definition.

The regulations are simple and do not introduce new policy; instead we are correcting technical deficiencies in the retained EU law and amending domestic law to ensure that the regulations work for the UK now that we have left the EU. The SI ensures the continued enforcement of the ban, as well as clarifies the criminal penalties for breaching it in each of the UK’s criminal law jurisdictions in accordance with the primary legislation that that applies to. In doing so, we are ensuring that any doubt regarding those penalties is removed. The SI also replaces references to the European Union and its institutions and legislation with the equivalent references to Great Britain.

I am sure that there are many things that Members wish that the SI might do, but its scope is very limited. For example, Members may want to end the existing derogation powers for educational purposes, or want the draft regulations to cover other species. But that would be beyond the powers under which the SI is made. It cannot introduce new policy and it is simply ensuring that the ban on the trade in cat and dog fur is fully maintained now that the UK has left the EU. In doing so we are sending a clear message across the world that that is the case.

Drafts of the regulations were shared with the devolved Administrations, and we are confident that there is agreement across the UK on the importance of maintaining the ban on the trade in cat and dog fur. To waiver would risk cat and dog fur crossing our borders and entering our market, and that is not acceptable to this Government. I very much hope that Members will be unanimous in their support for the SI and what it seeks to achieve.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Ms Elliott. It is also a pleasure to serve at what may be the Minister’s last gig in her current team. We wish her well.

We welcome the Government’s decision to uphold the ban on the import, export and sale of both dog and cat fur in the UK. The shocking reports about cats and dogs being exploited in fur farms disgusts all of us and our constituents. I am pleased that we have made so much progress in the UK in combating the awful abusive practices associated with fur over the past 30 years. I am also pleased to note the influence we have had in the world over that trade, although there is still more to do.

It was a Labour Government who introduced the ban on fur farming in the UK, and Labour has called for the Government to take the next step and ban the importation of fur altogether. Although we welcome the straightforward SI, there are some issues that I would like to take the opportunity to raise.

First, I know, as other Members will know, that Cats Protection still has concerns about the use of cat fur. It has called for better labelling of fur on textile products, with information for consumers to include the species of the fur used. It even appears that cat fur may now be so cheap that clothes and accessories containing it are sold on our high streets labelled as fake fur. A previous investigation by the Humane Society and Sky News found that shoes containing real cat fur were being sold on high streets in Britain, and Cats Protection has received reports of real fur being sold as fake fur, which suggests that there is a problem with the enforcement of the existing legislation. Can the Minister, or if not her, the Government, set out what steps the Government will take to ensure that the legislation is enforced and how will that be monitored?

I am sure that the Minister will say that the issue is largely one for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but if we wait for that Department it may be like waiting for Godot. Back in 2021, DEFRA opened its consultation on the fur market, as Ministers admitted that we could go further. Yet it is now September 2022, and 15 months later we are still waiting for the Government’s response to that consultation. One delay alone could be dismissed, but look at the wider pattern. It has been briefed that senior members of Government were battling to block efforts to ban the import of foie gras and fur, with one Cabinet Minister claiming that a ban “limits personal choice”.

We then saw the Government go even further when they appeared to drop the Animals Abroad Bill, which was a manifesto commitment of the Conservative party. A “senior Government source” blamed that move on

“A handful of very wealthy peers”

who were

“pressing for all the animal welfare measures to be dropped because they fear eventually it may mean their weekends could be affected.”

I think that says it all.

Although we welcome the overdue move to place the ban on the import of cat and dog fur in UK domestic law, there is more that can be done. We need a comprehensive approach to animal welfare issues within our trade policy. That means using our leverage and our influence in the world to ensure that our trade deals have animal welfare at their heart. Yet we have seen the UK sign a free trade agreement with Australia, a country with much weaker animal welfare standards than our own. It has not banned sow stalls, or hot branding, nor dehorning calves and mulesing lambs without pain relief—and much more. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals made that clear last year when the Government were negotiating that free trade agreement.

When our soon to be Prime Minister was Trade Secretary, she championed those deals and brandished them across her Instagram account. But did she ever once consider the very real impact that those deals will have on animal welfare and on consumer standards? Both of those really matter to British people. There was a very clear direction of travel—an “any deal will do” approach—that saw animal welfare and a whole host of other issues thrown on the bonfire. But trade does not happen in a vacuum; whoever is appointed Secretary of State cannot and should not continue the deeply damaging approach that we have seen over the past three years. The UK has a chance to be a world leader on these issues, but instead appears to be squandering the chance to put ethics and justice at the heart of our trade policy.