Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. The Government have committed £4 million of additional investment through the smaller abattoir fund, recognising the importance of reducing animals’ journey times. As we have discussed separately, I am happy to meet him to discuss what more we can do in the context of smaller abattoirs, particularly recognising the specific issues of geography in his constituency.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I warmly thank my right hon. Friend for his kind comments about my long-term involvement. It is great that we no longer have EU barriers, but how can we be sure that we will not run into World Trade Organisation issues? What work has he done to ensure that the Bill survives any potential challenge on trade grounds?

[Steve Barclay]

I drew attention to my right hon. Friend’s long campaigning, and I will return, if I may, to the trajectory of this issue before addressing her point.

Calls for a ban intensified after 2012, when the Animal and Plant Health Agency intercepted a consignment of sheep due to sail from the port of Ramsgate and 42 sheep were humanely killed after being found unfit to travel. I welcome that, since the 1990s, we have seen export numbers decline significantly. In 2020, around 6,300 sheep were exported from Great Britain to the EU for slaughter, and around 38,000 sheep were exported for fattening. I am pleased to say that, thanks to the UK’s exit from the EU, there have been no recorded exports for slaughter or fattening from Great Britain to the EU since January 2021, and now is the time to enshrine that in law.

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[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

If you will allow me, Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to start by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend Mark Drakeford MS, the First Minister of Wales. Mark announced that he was standing down from the Senedd last week. I want to thank him for his friendship to me and pay tribute to his service to the people of Newport West and of Wales over many years. I wish him a very long, happy, healthy retirement.

Where is the Minister for animal welfare? Disgracefully, he is sitting in the other place, having been appointed to the House of Lords last week. The sudden appointment of an unelected peer in the days before Christmas does not inspire confidence that this Government care about animal welfare. The Prime Minister seems to have such little faith in his MPs, such a lack of trust with his Back Benchers, that he cannot find a single Member sitting on the Benches opposite to be the animal welfare Minister.

I welcome the Bill, on behalf of Labour Members, but it beggars belief that it has taken so long to bring this unnecessarily cruel trade to an end. With Christmas in a few days, I acknowledge that this is the season to be kind and festive. On that basis and with Tory Ministers finally doing the right thing, Labour will support the Bill, even if it is long overdue.

I gently say to the Secretary of State that Labour called for a legal ban on live exports for slaughter and fattening from or through Great Britain in 2019, and has been encouraging the Government to act ever since. The Opposition have long called for a ban on live exports because millions of farmed animals risk facing long-distance journeys every year when exported for fattening and slaughter, causing them unnecessary suffering. As we have heard from the Secretary of State, those journeys can cause animals to become mentally exhausted, physically injured, hungry, dehydrated and stressed. That is why the Bill and the changes it will bring about are so important. The Bill prohibits the export of relevant livestock from Great Britain for slaughter, and provides that a person who commits an offence in England and Wales under those clauses in the Bill is liable

“on summary conviction in England and Wales, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term for summary offences, to a fine or to both”.

The Bill will make it an offence to send, transport or organise transport, or to attempt to send, transport or organise transport for livestock for export from or through Great Britain for fattening and slaughter outside the British Isles. The ban in the Bill applies to a range of livestock, including cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs and wild boar but, we note, not poultry. The Bill is narrow in scope and reach, and the majority of its provisions will extend to England, Scotland and Wales, so the House will be interested in hearing from the Minister about what concrete discussions took place with the devolved Administrations. The Secretary of State has already mentioned research and consultations, but what actual discussions were had with the Administrations in devolved areas?

I am proud of the Labour party’s track record on delivering progress on animal welfare in Government. We ended the testing of cosmetic products on animals in 1998 and stopped the cruelty of fur farming in 2000.

[Theresa Villiers]

In the last Parliament, Labour MPs and their leader did everything they possibly could to keep us in the single market. If they had succeeded, we would never have been able to ban live exports.

[Ruth Jones]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention, but I am not sure that it is relevant to what we are talking about today. We introduced the Hunting Act 2004 and the landmark Animal Welfare Act 2006.

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[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Bill as further evidence of the Conservative commitment to improving standards of animal welfare in this country. The presence of the Bill on our agenda means, in my view, that this is a good day for Parliament.

This has been a long time coming. I am talking not about the demise of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, but about the decades-long concern about this issue. It was at the end of the Victorian era that the public first started to express their grave concern about the suffering of animals transported overseas for slaughter. Demands that this trade be brought to an end led to Committees being established by Ministers as far back as 1957 and 1974. An attempt to restrict exports in 1992 by the Major Government was blocked by the European Court of Justice on the grounds that it impeded the operation of the EU single market.

The trade peaked at over 2 million animals a year in the early 1990s and opposition to live exports also grew in the 1990s, as we have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning). Very large-scale protests took place, including what became known as the battle of Brightlingsea in 1995. This saw a somewhat unlikely alliance between local Essex residents and animal rights protesters banding together to try to prevent the export of livestock through the town. While, thankfully, exports from the UK have stalled over the past few years, around the rest of the world about 2 billion animals are still subjected to excessive long-distance transportation.

As we have heard many times in this Chamber over the decades, live exports can involve animals crammed into trucks and on to ships for journeys in shocking conditions that can last several weeks, during which they suffer distress from mishandling, overcrowding, excessive heat and cold, motion stress, injuries, prolonged hunger and thirst, restriction of movement and an inability to rest. Of course, the UK livestock sent to Europe should in theory be protected by the EU’s rules on live transport—rules that I certainly fought to toughen up when I was an MEP—but as successive reports from the European Parliament confirm, these rules simply are not always complied with or enforced, so the suffering continues.

Moreover, there is a danger that some animals exported to European destinations, particularly Hungary or Bulgaria, may be sent on to the middle east, suffering even longer journeys and slaughter conditions that are frequently inhumane. Even the animals that stay in the EU can be subject to lower welfare standards. For example, Spain permits barren conditions to be used for calves, which would be illegal if deployed in this country, and cruel and illegal practices in abattoirs in France have been highlighted on a number of occasions, including in reports by the French Parliament.

Practical reasons may have brought this trade from Britain to a halt for now, but we must legislate to ensure that it does not start up again. Vital ethical principles are at the heart of this very long-running debate: the principle that, as sentient beings, animals cannot be treated simply as a commodity; the principle that a civilised society must ensure that all animals, particularly those used by humans as part of our food supply and for other purposes, are treated with compassion and spared unnecessary suffering; and the principle that sending livestock to other jurisdictions, over which we have no control, violates our moral responsibility to prevent unnecessary animal suffering.

Today is an opportunity for us to listen to our constituents, who tell us again and again that they want to end live exports for slaughter and fattening once and for all. I pay tribute to every one of my constituents and other members of the public who over these past decades may have signed a petition, attended a protest, written to their MP or just played a part in this long-running campaign. Like others, I want to thank groups such as Compassion in World Farming, including the redoubtable Peter Stevenson, the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, the RSPCA, World Horse Welfare and all those who have worked so hard to get us to this point, as well as figures such as Selina Scott and Joanna Lumley for their commitment and dedication to the cause over many years.

I welcome this Bill, because it will deliver the ban for which I have been campaigning for a quarter of a century, first as an MEP and then as an MP. I committed the Government to it when I was the Environment Secretary, and I secured its inclusion in the 2019 Conservative manifesto. That was the first time that Conservative promises on this issue extended beyond live exports for slaughter to include fattening as well. That was a crucial change, and it is a crucial part of this Bill.

The loss of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill was frustrating, but now we have left the EU and the single market, this House finally has the power to determine what our laws on this crucial question will be. With that freedom, now is the time to get this done to set an example to countries around the world where these hellish long-distance international journeys still continue, to ensure that animals produced in this country remain subject to our very high standards of animal welfare—standards determined by this Parliament—and to implement the long-held wishes of the constituents of each and every one of us. Mr Deputy Speaker, as I am sure you will agree, now is the time to ban live exports.

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[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

The first thing I want to do is thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth). She paid a lovely tribute to her predecessor, who would be very proud of the remarks she made.

I am here today not only on behalf of the numerous constituents across North Norfolk who have emailed me about live exports, but because this is a matter that I am passionate about personally. I have spoken on animal welfare matters in this place time and again, and I have posted on my social media many times about the importance of respecting, caring for and looking after animals of all shapes and sizes, right down to the tiniest. As Members will know, I am the UK glow worm champion, which always gets a slight chuckle here. Of course, the House will remember my record-breaking dark skies debate on the glow worms that inhabit Sheringham park in my constituency, which I led back in October. On a serious matter, however, we must put animal welfare at the forefront of all spheres of our decision making, and I am really proud that this Conservative Government are doing that time and again.

As the Minister will know, livestock farming—particularly pigs and cattle—is a crucial part of my North Norfolk agricultural market; I have been to see him enough times about it over the years. Locally, we ensure that animal welfare is maintained. Norfolk produces 6% of England’s livestock output, totalling just under £600 million. With that economic backdrop in mind, I am a firm believer that this Bill, when enacted, will bring substantial advantages to local farmers in North Norfolk as well as to our agricultural heartlands, as we have heard from Members of different parties this evening. It will not only bring economic advantages, it will also enhance our local farmers’ capabilities to produce high-quality local food.

In North Norfolk, we go to extraordinary lengths to look after animal welfare. Last summer, I visited the Paterson farm in Worstead, in the wilds of North Norfolk, and saw the wagyu herd. I did not even know what wagyu was at the time.

[Theresa Villiers]

It is delicious.

[Duncan Baker]

It is.

There was relaxing zen spa music playing in the calving shed. I said, “Is that for the farmhands?” No, it was not. It was to keep the calves and the birthing herds calm, so that they were relaxed and, in turn, all those animals were looked after. Of course, the meat was less stressed as well. That is taking animal welfare to the absolute limit. I do not suggest that every farmer implements a public address system in their calving shed, but it shows the level of care that my farmers take over the welfare of their herds.

This Bill is supported not just by my constituents, but by industry representatives across Norfolk and the UK more widely. I do not think that anyone has mentioned that the National Farmers Union supports it as well, as does the RSPCA. Although it is great that we will no longer see the fattening and slaughter of animals transported overseas, which will be outlawed—it is great that we have not seen that since 2021—it is also important that we get on and pass this legislation swiftly through Parliament, and put it permanently into practice. I will have particular pride when residents come up to me and say, “Name me a benefit of Brexit,” because I can now turn round and say there is yet another one. This legislation is only possible because we have been able to take back control and sovereignty of our lawmaking. By doing away with decision making being bound by the European Union’s animal transport laws, we have been able to introduce this Bill.

No animal should be reared for slaughter and have to suffer in this way. We have changed track, and we have been able to do that by leaving the European Union. We will now continue our world-leading status on animal welfare.