Wild Animals (Circuses)

Debate between Simon Hart and Russell Brown

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

I am sure that the Minister will come to that. There is always sensitivity when it comes to the publication of legal advice, particularly when cases are, or are possibly, in play. I do not think that there is necessarily anything to be suspicious about; I do not necessarily smell a conspiracy just because a Department fails to publish advice when we demand it. I am sure that the Minister will, as usual, give a compelling answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question.

The Department is absolutely right rigidly to stick to principle and evidence when it comes to decisions on legislating in favour of abolition or of regulation. In many debates on animal-related issues in this House over the years, Ministers have stood up and thumped the table, stressing their commitment to evidence and principle, and have then promptly gone and legislated in the absence of both. That has had long-term consequences for the animals concerned, which have failed to benefit from the legislation, and also for the taxpayer, who has been forced to pick up enormous legal bills—several of which I have been unashamedly responsible for—as the process is challenged in every court in the UK and further afield. It is absolutely proper that the Department should avoid getting itself into that particular pickle.

I can see us moving to a situation, over a period of time—a time scale with which I would be entirely comfortable—in which we no longer see wild animals used in circuses but neither do we subject the taxpayer to undue expense as a result of our over-enthusiasm to do something that is simply popular on the back of an electronic campaign that might catch the mood of the day.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned the taxpayer. The taxpayer comes in a variety of forms, one of which is the council tax payer. The scheme that DEFRA has proposed would place an additional burden on council tax payers, because it would fall to local authorities to license and to inspect but, ridiculously, they would not have the power to prosecute.

[Simon Hart]

I am grateful for that contribution, but I am not entirely sure that I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman’s position. The local authorities are in a more powerful position than he suggests in that they have the ability, presumably, not to regulate or not to license. Despite what the Government may say, that is, to some extent, a local authority decision. I do not want to steal the Minister’s ground on that issue as well, because he will almost certainly deal with it himself.