Draft Animal Welfare (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2022

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 General Committees

[The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Animal Welfare (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2022.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hosie. This instrument makes several minor, technical amendments to retained European Union regulations. They relate to the protection and welfare of animals during transport, and to official controls on the import of animals, animal products, plants and plant products, including food and other imports relevant to the agri-food chain; they do not bring about any change in standards.

In Great Britain, the Animal and Plant Health Agency issues authorisations to commercial transporters of animals who can show that they meet the regulatory requirements —for example, by having appropriately trained and competent staff. For long journeys, APHA also approve journey plans, known as journey logs. Approval depends on the transporters demonstrating that they can meet the welfare needs of the animals they are transporting.

The draft regulations clarify the role and powers of the competent authority deal with requests for journey logs and transporter authorisations. They also change a power of the competent authority to recover costs. Instead of being mandatory, the order will be discretionary. This allows the particular circumstances of those subject to enforcement measures to be taken into account and allows the authority not to enforce cost recovery, for example, where that would not be financially sensible.

The draft regulations also remove defunct references to various EU systems and organisations—for example, contact points, mutual assistance schemes and an oversight committee. They also remove the legal requirement to report to the European Commission. Multiple references to “EU member states” are replaced with “Great Britain”. An outdated requirement to provide rules on penalties for infringements of animal welfare in transport regulations by 5 July 2006 is removed, as those rules were laid by that date, I am glad to say, and are currently in force. Finally, outdated references to other regulations relating to training for competent authority staff, other veterinary legislation, and animal welfare inspections for animals destined for slaughter are corrected, ensuring that the regulators’ ability to enforce welfare standards is maintained.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

Before the Minister concludes, will she give way?

[Victoria Prentis]

I would be delighted to give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful. Obviously, the debate in the House over the coming week is about the law-breaking Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. It is a matter of great concern to Members in all parts of the House that there is an appropriate inspection regime, especially of live animals crossing into Northern Ireland. How will the amendments the Minister is describing interrelate with that Bill?

[Victoria Prentis]

The amendments relate to existing EU regulation, which has been in force for some time, and to animal welfare in transport regulations that are already enforced. I do not see any read-across from these draft regulations, which are technical measures to address matters such as changing the competent authority from the European Commission to a GB competent authority. They have no bearing on the debate to which the right hon. Gentleman refers. He may be comforted to know that the devolved Administrations have consented to the draft regulations.

The amendments contained in these regulations are necessary to ensure that, in line with current Government policy, we can enforce our high animal welfare standards and protect the UK’s biosecurity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

It is always delightful to see the hon. Gentleman. Clearly I have not been engaged in enough statutory instrument debates with him, and I look forward to many more.

It has been interesting to hear the exposition of Labour party policy on leaving the European Union today. A long series of SIs have been needed to make highly technical changes to secondary legislation written when we were a member state. I have no need to write to the hon. Gentleman; I can give him examples now ad infinitum. The phrase “member state” in legislation is being changed to “GB”, and the competent authority is being changed to the new competent authority. Instead of matters being referred to the European Commission, we have to replace that with the GB authority that is to take over that role. A large quantity of regulation has had to be, not corrected, but updated in this way.

However, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there has been absolutely no detriment to animal welfare in transport. The protections are exactly the same, and they will not be affected by the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. What is important is that regulatory background meets the current situation, which is that we are no longer a member state of the EU.

On cost recovery, I can give two examples of when the competent authority might choose not to go for mandatory recovery. The first is if the company subject to enforcement became bankrupt. Secondly, the company may be from a third country where we do not have enforcement rights. I am not saying that the authority would make that decision—it would be a matter for the authority—but we thought it sensible to give it the flexibility and the discretion to make a choice, on behalf of the taxpayer, only to enforce where that would be a financially sensible thing to do.

We have a plan for animal welfare in transport and we have been working on this whole area very hard for the past 18 months or so. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of the Government response to the extensive consultation that we carried out on animal welfare in transport, which we published at the end of last summer. Currently, we are engaged in a large number of workshops with stakeholders, conducting detailed work, which we aim to conclude this calendar year so that we can regulate for the welfare of animals in transport where we need to do so. We are proud of our standards of animal welfare, and the amendments made by the draft regulations will ensure that existing regimes for animal welfare during transport will continue to operate effectively.

Question put and agreed to.