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

Sandy Martin Excerpts

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

[Simon Hoare]

Q Could you give me your justification for that?

Peter Jolly: My service is a family service. It is family orientated, so we deal with a lot of children. They do not get to see these things. Why should we deprive those children of contact with live animals? They are not wild animals; they are live animals. As Carol said, our animals, in our eyes, are exotic, not wild animals.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Q I believe you are basing some of your evidence on the idea that the animals that you have are domesticated; you mention, Ms MacManus, that camels are domesticated in most areas of the world. However, at least one person has written to us saying that elephants have been domesticated for thousands of years. They could be counted as domesticated animals.

Carol MacManus: But we do not have any elephants.

[Sandy Martin]

Q I am not suggesting that you do; I am asking whether you believe that elephants should be counted as domesticated animals. If so, why should we not allow elephants in a circus? We had a submission from the Fédération Mondiale du Cirque, suggesting that all circuses should have animals, including lions, and a submission from a circus in Germany that also has lions, making the case that having lions in circuses is perfectly acceptable. Were it possible for you to have elephants and lions, would you? Also, do you agree that if we do not ban wild animals in circuses there is every possibility that somebody else will come in with a circus that has elephants or lions, or both?

Peter Jolly: My point of view is that I do not have elephants or lions at the moment, and I do not intend to, so that would not apply to me. Obviously, I cannot speak for another circus coming in from abroad. That is up to the Government, in terms of imports and exports, and whether DEFRA would allow them in. I cannot see why, if a circus came over from another country, it should not operate.

Carol MacManus: There are not many—no, I should not say that really. The regulations with DEFRA should have carried on. I do not believe that they should have stopped. That would have stopped any issues with anybody who did not keep their animals correctly. What we had to do for the DEFRA regulations was more stringent than what zoos, safari parks or any other industry has to do. If someone does it correctly, why should there not be other kinds of animals in circuses? However, at the moment we are arguing for our animals. We do not have any elephants or cats.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Q On the definition, let us start with birds. We are told that budgerigars and canaries are not wild animals; they are domesticated in Great Britain. However, apparently macaws are considered wild. You have described some other issues. How clear do you think the definition is of what is or is not domesticated?

Peter Jolly: There are a few animals. I have a miniature cow that is on the circus licence. It should not be on the circus licence; it is a cow. Hundreds of people keep macaws as pets. Mine has bigger facilities than any pet macaw. He is allowed to free fly, and he has a large enclosure when he is not free flying. I got him from a home that kept him in a 2 foot by 3 foot cage. These animals, in some hands, are allowed and are classified as non-wild, but because the word “circus” is added to the licence they are classified as a wild animal.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

At the end of the sitting our Clerk will collect the book from you, and if colleagues are interested, they can get it copied.

Martin Lacey: Thank you.

[Sandy Martin]

Q Mr Lacey, are you saying that your lions were bred to perform and are bred in a circus environment?

Martin Lacey: My original lions, from my father, are from English zoos, and that goes back 22 generations. The last 12 generations were born in the circus.

[Sandy Martin]

Q Do you believe that the life that the lions lead in your circus can be justified by the fact that they are bred for that life?

Martin Lacey: I can justify that the animals are very healthy, and because it is a much easier life in the circus than in the wild. We have our own vets and the animals are well taken care of. Life expectancy is of course important, but you also have to remember—this is proven and I sent a link for a stress test in my written evidence—that circus animals not only live to an old age, but are very fit in old age, because they are always moving. It is like a human being: the minute you stop working, it goes downhill, so you always have to keep fit. The animals are kept fit by what they do.

[Sandy Martin]

Q Last week we had a debate about trophy hunting, and we heard about lions that are bred to be shot. They are very well cared for, because clearly if somebody is going to shoot a lion and put a trophy on their wall, they want it to look good and not to be bruised or damaged. The lions are very nicely cared for, right up to the moment they are shooed out into the field to be shot by trophy hunters. Do you think that justifies the way they were bred?

Martin Lacey: First, I was over in South Africa because I also have the Lacey Fund, which is basically a non-profit organisation that investigates trophy hunting. They are not healthy lions—they are inbred and very poorly. They are completely unhealthy. Can I justify breeding lions to shoot them? No, I cannot justify that at all.

Rona Brown: Neither can I.

[Sandy Martin]

Q On a slightly different track, you are very firm in your belief that the treatment of animals in circuses is ethical. Surely you accept that circuses used to have human exhibits as well as animal exhibits—people of reduced stature or with abnormalities. Joseph Merrick, for instance, who was also known as “the elephant man,” was exhibited in circuses. Those people were gawped at for entertainment purposes, and I imagine that you probably recognise that that was an unethical use of circuses.

Martin Lacey: Yes, but years ago we used to set people on fire and we used to have slavery. That is a different thing altogether—

[Sandy Martin]

But—

Martin Lacey: Just one second. First, we are looking at facts. I have noticed that we are now talking about ethics, which is probably a circus’s strongest point. The way that a child’s eyes open when they sees those animals—no book or picture could ever do that for children. Given what you see when they come close to the animals, ethics is one of our strongest points in circuses, and not just because the animals are well taken care of.

The picture painted is that man and beast were never together. That is not true. It is only in the last 30 years that a picture has been painted that it is very bad that people and animals are together.

If we are talking about ethics, it is a very fine line. Ethically, we love our animals. Ethics is built on religion, and if you really go back and you believe in religion—Noah’s ark; that was a myth, or not a myth—you are talking about animals and people together, and saving animals. If we are talking about ethics, how can people save animals if you do not want people to be involved with animals?

They paint the picture that it is Disney in the wild. It is not Disney. I do not know if anybody has visited the wild, but there are some beautiful places—Kenya is very beautiful. I was in Botswana 10 years ago and there were rhinos. There are no more rhinos in Botswana. As long as the World Wildlife Fund keeps taking lots and lots of money and every time an animal becomes extinct, people such as myself and my family and well run circuses—you asked whether I believe in circuses; no, I believe in well run circuses, not all circuses—are the ones who will have the future gene pools for these animals.

Ethics is completely on the circus side, if we are talking about the ethics of animal ownership. Let us go to what you were just talking about—when there were shows with small people and bearded ladies. If we are talking about ethics and slavery, does that mean every person who owns a dog or cat does cannot have an animal anymore? It has gone a little bit too far. That is where you have a fine line of animal rights and animal welfare, and people have to find a fine balance. If you do not have your feet on the floor, this thing will go out of the window and we have become a real big show when it comes to ethics and animal rights. The local cat that kills a mouse will be in front of a jury for murdering a mouse. That is how far it goes. That is where ethics is really on the circus side.

[Simon Hoare]

Q Mrs Brown, I have read your evidence. Can I take you to something that confuses me, at the top of page 3? “They”—by which you mean circus families—

“pay their taxes and obey every animal welfare law. Their ethics of running a business and keeping families together is very high. This is how they treat their animals too. I would like to suggest that government would not ban them if they were a Muslim family.”

What do you mean by that?

Rona Brown: Can you say the last bit again?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Seely]

Q Fair enough. I do not know whether you can answer this, but let me try you with one other question. Non-governmental organisations say that keeping wild, but trained, animals in circuses is cruel—we heard that very clearly this morning. The circus folk we heard this afternoon say that it is not. Do the NGOs make a good point, or do you think this is part of a journey whereby animals are effectively anthropomorphised—we project free choice and other human characteristics on to them—as part of an agenda that may or may not lead to the outlawing of falconry or bird shooting for sport in the years to come?

Mike Radford: Circuses have been subject to an offence of cruelty for a good number of years, going back to 1835. Standards, however, have changed during that time. Circuses have been subject to the Animal Welfare Act provisions since 2006. Let me give you an example of how attitudes change. This is not to do with circuses, but I think it illustrates the point. When I was young, if there was an unwanted litter of puppies or kittens on a farm in Cambridgeshire, where we lived, it was standard that they would have been drowned in the water butt. What else would you do? That is now an offence of causing unnecessary suffering, not because the law has changed—the term “unnecessary suffering” is exactly the same—but because public perceptions and attitudes have changed. It is about judgment and attitudes.

[Sandy Martin]

Q Mr Radford, in your first answer you were getting to the stage where you were telling us about the need for primary legislation to make this ban work. In the first sessions of evidence that we took today, we were discussing—several people mentioned it—the need for some provision for removing animals from circuses in extremis if there were no other way of dealing with the case and to make sure those animals are cared for. In you view, will it be more effective if those provisions were actually in the Bill, rather than simply being guidance?

Mike Radford: I think that as much should go in the Bill as possible. Guidance can be helpful, but it is not the same as legislative provisions, as you well understand. The question of how quickly a ban could be introduced was raised earlier. My view is that those who have a licence to use wild animals are entitled to have a legitimate expectation that their licence will remain in place until it expires, and they could have a claim for compensation if it was stopped earlier, but there is no expectation beyond the lifetime of the present licences.

[Sandy Martin]

Thank you very much.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Q Do you think the definition of “wild animal” in the Bill is sufficiently clear? I will just make a couple of points. On birds, for example, we have heard that canaries and budgies are considered to be domesticated in Great Britain, but parrots are not—that is one example. Then we heard from the witness Carol MacManus this afternoon that most pack animals— things like llamas, donkeys and ponies—are considered domesticated, but camels are not. What is your take on that? Is it adequately clear if we specify an animal of a kind that is not commonly domesticated in Great Britain, when some of them may be domesticated but just not seen in Britain much?

Mike Radford: There is a difference between domesticated and tamed. There is a difference between domesticated and trained. The term “wild” is not important in this, because it is further defined by the test of domestication. It is domestication and what that means that is important. In my submission, I gave the example of Scotland, where in both the legislation and the guidance they have tried to further define what domestication means. Then there is a reserve enabling power, which enables a Minister by way of regulations to specify whether a particular type of animal is or is not.