European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 5th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on introducing the amendment very clearly and effectively. I support it strongly. I also commend the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who spoke straight from the heart. However, there was nothing at all sentimental or false about what she said; it was said straight from experience and was very matter of fact.

I too have the benefit of living in the country—I see it as a benefit, anyway—and I see many animals. I have cattle grazing on my land and I have a dog; I should declare that interest. I have many times been able to verify how intelligent these animals are, how sensitive they are and what an extraordinary relationship they can have with human beings. All of this is orthodox science. It was demonstrated by Pavlov or Konrad Lorenz and has been demonstrated over and over again, so I do not think there is any doubt about it. It has always seemed to me that caring about sentient animals is one of the marks of a civilised society. There is terrible cruelty to animals in this world. The situation is obviously worse in many poorer countries, for reasons one understands. I think that the European Union has probably the highest standards of anywhere in this matter—certainly far higher than the United States. I hope that we can keep things that way if we have to leave the European Union and that we will at least not resile from those standards. That is why I want to comment on what has just been said.

I am not sure that I have ever said this before, but I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said in his excellent speech. That being the case, I might normally be tempted simply to record my agreement and then sit down. However, I have some slight hope that if I make similar points to those he made—it was my intention to make exactly the points he pre-empted me in making—but from a rather different perspective, and the Government hear a similar message from different parts of the House, they might for once consider whether there might be something in those points—and it would be very desirable indeed if the Government thought again about the matter.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, made a couple of very important points. I will not follow him on Northern Ireland as we shall have other opportunities to debate that in the course of our proceedings, and I look forward to taking part in those debates. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made it very clear that the Government clearly intend that there should be protection for sentient animals in our legislation, but not to the same high standard that applies at present. Over and over again—countless times—we have heard in these debates that the Government’s only intention in bringing forward this Bill is to transpose Union law into British law so that there is no legal vacuum or legal confusion if we leave the European Union. We understand that that is a perfectly reasonable and logical response to the situation and I think that most of us on this side of the House want desperately to take the Government’s words in good faith.

However, over and over again we find that that is not true, that there is a surreptitious agenda and that rights and protections which exist by virtue of our membership of the European Union are not being carried forward and that the Government appear to have no intention of carrying them forward into domestic law after Brexit. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made this absolutely plain and cited the Government’s proposed wording to replace the article in the Treaty of Lisbon on animal welfare. It is quite clear that the Government want to weaken that language. Why do they want to do that? I had always thought that there was a consensus among civilised, humane people on the protection of animals which went across this House and the other place and had nothing at all to do with political parties. Is that not the case? Why should the Government therefore decide in this case not to carry forward into British law the existing levels of protection in the Treaty of Lisbon but to deliberately reduce them and dilute them? Why is that? I cannot understand it.

Secondly, on another point made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, there should be no illusion about this matter as regards international trade. If we are serious about animal welfare, we must impose exactly the same standards that we impose on our own farmers in this matter on any imported animal products, otherwise we will make complete fools of ourselves without any gain to animal welfare at all. All that will happen is that the business will go to farms in other countries which apply appalling standards of animal protection or none at all and who therefore have an economic advantage and can undercut the British farmer with produce that is produced in barbaric fashion. I include in that the way the Americans produce their beef, which is absolutely revolting. They now have zero grazing for over 95% of their beef, which means that you have two animals in an area slightly smaller than the Table in front of me. They never see the air or a blade of grass in their life. That is appalling but it undoubtedly gives the Americans an economic advantage.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

The noble Lord is repeating a point he made last week about American agriculture. I let it pass then, but on that occasion he said that if you go to Texas, there are no cattle outdoors, and that you would not see a lot of Texas longhorn outdoors. I go to Texas quite regularly and see an awful lot of cattle being raised outdoors. The noble Lord should be careful not to exaggerate what is happening. I do not know what relevance this has to EU withdrawal, but it is important not to go too far in this respect.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I will come to the relevance to EU withdrawal in a moment. I will just say that I feel that I have not lived in vain, because the noble Viscount has listened to what I said and thought about it for several days. I was perhaps speaking figuratively; in this life you can never apply the word “infinity” or “zero” in a completely literal sense. He may have been to the wrong part of Texas, or to parts where there are expensive ranches and the oil billionaires who own them like to have some longhorn on display. Those ranches exist, and I have seen one or two of them. Perhaps the noble Viscount has some friends who invited him there. That is not the heart of the beef economy. If the noble Viscount knows anything about Texas—he obviously does—he will know that Fort Worth used to be the centre of the Texas meat industry. I used to go there very frequently because I had a lot of dealings with Lockheed Martin, which is based there. I went there at different times of the year and I got to know the countryside around Fort Worth and towards Dallas quite well. That would have been cattle country 100 years ago; there would have been cattle on every horizon. I have literally never seen a single live animal in the area around Fort Worth, which was the headquarters of that industry. That is not a part of the United States where wealthy people have ranches with animals on display, which is a very different matter.

The point I was making—I will not say before I was interrupted, because I was pleased to have the intervention from the noble Viscount, particularly if he has been listening to my speeches carefully—was that there is no point in having any kind of regard to animal welfare and persuading ourselves that we are being humane and civilised in doing so if we then let in, in our imports, meat or other agricultural products which derive from inhuman practices. All we are then doing is making sure that the business and the activity moves from this country abroad with not a single iota of gain to animal welfare or happiness, and causing the destruction of the British livestock industry in the process. That makes no sense.

If we are to do this, we have to do it properly. We should make it a matter of moral commitment that when we leave the European Union—if indeed we do—we stick to the high standards which the European Union has set in this matter and certainly do not dilute them, and secondly, that we ensure that we impose those standards if we have left the European Union and are in a position to sign free trade agreements with other countries. I have explained why I think it is unlikely that we will be in that position in practice with the United States, but supposing that we were, we should in that eventuality impose exactly the same standards on anybody who wants to sell us meat or other agricultural products in future.