Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part one
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, in Committee a lot of us argued very strongly for several amendments, and one of course was to strengthen the terms of reference and ensure that the committee was free and independent from government interference. I was very happy to spend today arguing over various amendments and we have here a whole hotchpotch of them, some of which are fine. However, we also have a naked attempt to filibuster and scupper the Bill by the right wing of the Tory party. I say: “Shame on you”. This Bill is far from perfect, but it is better than it was. Noble Lords must know that the public care very much about this issue and want to see something on the books.

It was also, of course, a manifesto commitment by the Government. I should have thought that noble Lords opposite would have supported it and been loyal Conservative Party members. I shall not speak again in this debate, because I think that it is a complete waste of my time. I shall simply vote against all the spoiling amendments that noble Lords opposite have put forward.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and see her so loyally supporting my Government—and in the Lobbies as well, no doubt.

I shall add a point to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, and, in reference to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, emphasise the question of the terms of reference and what they do to complicate the work of the committee. By the way, the chairman of this committee is supposed to spend 20 days a year on this, yet he has to look at all past policies, all future policies and all present policies in all aspects of government. That will be quite hard work for him.

The terms of reference note that the committee may seek outside input, including from “stakeholders amongst others”. If the committee is looking at process—a point that the noble Lord, Lord Trees, made—rather than policy, why consult stakeholders? Similarly, the terms of reference suggest that the committee

“may wish to prioritise policies … which are more significant in terms of Parliamentary, Departmental, Stakeholder or public interest”.

Is this about ensuring that all due regard is had to animal welfare in the process of reaching policy decisions or about the issues and decisions themselves? Will the committee focus on animal welfare issues that are of high profile as a result of campaigning by interest groups, which does not seem to have been the original intention?

The terms of reference refer to it being

“beneficial for UK Government Departments to seek advice from the Committee to assist them in understanding the effects of particular policies on the welfare of animals”.

It seems from wording like this that the committee will look not simply at process but at the policy itself that is under consideration. I hope that my noble friend will address this point, as it seems to be an issue of mission creep that we need to understand.

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group but, before I turn to them, I congratulate my noble friend on his announcement last week with regard to soil. It was a significant step forward by Her Majesty’s Government, and one that is wholly welcomed by those concerned about our farming in this country and our ability to grow crops. I thank my noble friend very much for what he did last week and for his letter on it.

I turn to the Bill in front of us, to which I have tabled two amendments. Amendment 15 basically copies that of the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, who has just spoken, but it also has a second part to it, which is trying to be helpful to my noble friend to get him out of this particular problem. The problem is the retrospective nature of the legislation. In the terms of reference and accompanying letter, we are told that Defra expects the committee to produce between six and eight reports a year. I asked what the likely policy issues of Defra were that the committee would look at—to which the answer inevitably came back that it was up to the committee and not to Defra. However, I cannot believe that the committee will be kept busy looking at future policy of Defra; it is supposed to look across government, but the rest of the departments have to take absolutely no notice of the committee, because the Government merely “hope” that the rest of departments will pay attention to the committee. That is a positive step.

My Amendment 18 would allow the Bill to go through as it is worded but with the condition that, if there is going to be a retrospective report on policy that has already been implemented, the committee merely needs the written consent of the Secretary of State. That, surely, is a sensible way forward. It encourages the committee to look forward and not back and stops it from going on wild fishing trips into past, established policy to try to meet its target of six to eight reports a year. So the amendment is formulated in the hope that it will allow my noble friend to make a tweak to the Bill that will achieve the same result but with a little bit more sense to it.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part two
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

My Lords, I am speaking in support of Amendment 2 and Amendment 27, to which I have added my name. In short, these amendments seek to restore so-called Lisbon treaty provisions, or balancing considerations, to our laws on animal welfare, old and new. The arguments in favour are substantial, relating to practices in this country, and legal, relating to the avoidance of judicial review—on which I hope the House will listen to the wise words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Etherton.

Article 13 of the Lisbon treaty, which was apparently inserted by reason of pressure from this country, says:

“In formulating and implementing the Union’s … policies”,


et cetera,

“the Union and the Member States shall … pay full regard to the welfare requirements of animals, while respecting the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the Member States relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage.”

Far be it from me to want to continue any European law, but this particular provision did in fact mirror what was already the situation in this country. My concerns if it is not enacted relate to medical research and religious traditions in killing animals.

The Lisbon provision successfully kept issues out of court, and religious minorities were content with it. Not to include this amendment is to open the door to vigorous disagreements over traditional practices and to more judicial review—and if there is one thing this Bill was supposed to do, it was to corral the committee and the Minister in policy issues. Muslim spokespersons are likely to be as worried about halal as are the representatives of the far smaller religious Jewish community. In the past, they have lived comfortably with the Lisbon balancing factors, and we want this to continue.

The committee might decide a particular point on this, but a Minister will have to take into account the wider considerations of cultural and religious organisations and form a view in accordance with them. Without the balancing factors that this amendment would introduce, both sides are wide open to judicial review.

The last time I spoke on this, I criticised the Bill as unnecessary and I worried about restrictions on medical research, inter alia. Living in Oxford as I do has meant witnessing protests by so-called animal liberationists. As recently as April this year, they were protesting just two miles away from the laboratory where the esteemed scientist Sarah Gilbert was working on the AstraZeneca vaccine—which, no doubt, some of them would be happy to take, and if not they would selfishly put others at risk. I hope that medical research is included in the term “public interest” in Amendment 2. The reference to legislative provisions in Amendment 27 is certainly meant to include the many laws we have about research on animals.

All our talk about inclusivity and diversity demands due respect for what is important to minorities and to others who have for centuries had a special relationship with animals and wildlife. We do not want today’s cancel culture extending to interference with medical research and peaceful coexistence, and Article 13 would be a safeguard. Moreover, the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights could, through the Lisbon treaty, be brought to bear in this amendment.

On religious rites, particularly at issue in the present context is religious animal slaughter. The importance of expressly preserving in the Bill the right of citizens to adhere to their religious practices is perfectly clear. That right falls within Article 9 of the European convention and is reflected in Article 13 of the Lisbon treaty. The jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has highlighted in many cases the importance of the rights protected by Article 9 in a pluralist democratic society. Our own Human Rights Act 1998, which enabled disputes on convention rights to be resolved in our own courts, contains a specific provision, in Section 13, that:

“If a court’s determination of any question … under this Act might affect the exercise by a religious organisation … of the Convention right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, it must have particular regard to the importance of that right.”


It is not necessary for present purposes to go into the nature of religious animal slaughter in the form of shechita or its Muslim equivalent. There is scientific evidence on both sides of the debate about the humanity of this. In fact, when one reads about the terrible cruelty, referred to earlier in this debate, that we routinely inflict deliberately or by accident—in the electrocution of chickens, the killing of pigs, the decapitation of rabbits, the suffocation of fish, the boiling alive of lobsters, et cetera, which we will get to—we really have nothing to be proud of in all our practices of killing animals.

It is clear that the protection of the right to manifest religious belief is enshrined in the treaty obligations we already have and our own domestic legislation. Therefore, there can be no good reason why, as in the case of Article 13 of the Lisbon treaty, the considerations and recommendations of the sentience committee should not be made expressly subject to respect for religious rites and medical research.

On 6 July, the Minister gave an assurance about respect for halal and kosher traditional killing, but in the same breath he reminded the House that anything could be changed. Therefore, it behoves the Government to proactively accept Amendment 27—and indeed Amendment 2—both to safeguard religious rites and medical research and to minimise judicial review challenges. I cannot think of any good reason why the amendment should be rejected.

We hope to change the Minister’s mind before Third Reading, and I shall continue to press for this safeguard today and later. As the Bill stands, the committee is not required to respect medical research and rites and traditions, yet the Minister will be bound to consider them when receiving the committee’s recommendations. Without this amendment, his decision and legal position will be much more vulnerable and difficult. I therefore urge him most strongly to accept the amendments which place the Lisbon treaty back where it should be in this country.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene very briefly to support what the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has just said, particularly with respect to medical research. I have looked up which kinds of animals were used in the development of treatments and vaccines for Covid-19 in the last couple of years. They include humanised mice bred to have human ACE2 genes in them. Experiments on SARS-like viruses were being done on these mice in one city in particular for many years before the pandemic: Wuhan. The animals also included Syrian hamsters, because they have similar symptoms to human beings; monkeys, because vaccine safety always has to be tested in non-human primates; ferrets, because they have very similar symptoms when they get respiratory diseases; pigs, on which vaccines were tested; and sheep, which were used for plasma for purifying antibodies. All of these were vital to the extraordinary speed with which treatments and preventions for Covid-19 were pursued in the last year.

Nobody is suggesting that the existence of this committee will result in the banning of such research or anything like that. But it is possible that, in formulating a research proposal of this kind, you might find you run up against legislation that, in deference to the sentience committee, says that an extra step needs to be taken to check that it is really necessary to use animals in this way. Be in no doubt: all of these animals suffered, and they suffered deliberately from diseases that we gave them as a result of this work. I would hate to think that this Bill would result in anything that slowed down the urgency of medical research in a situation like this.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - part three
Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Viscount Ridley]

9: Clause 1, leave out Clause 1 and insert the following new Clause—
“Animal Sentience Committee
(1) A Committee within the Cabinet Office, called the Animal Sentience Committee, will be established and maintained.(2) The function of the Committee will be to determine whether in the process of formulating and implementing policy it is satisfied that Ministers of State and the departments of state are having, or have had, all due regard to the ways in which the policy might have an adverse effect on the welfare of animals as sentient beings.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is intended to reduce conflict over membership by creating an internal committee of the Cabinet Office.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendments 9, 11, 33 and 37 in this group, which are in my name. Noble Lords will be glad to know that I have torn up three-quarters of my speech to speed things up. I declare my interest as a fortunate owner of farmland, woodland, moorland and river. I affect the welfare of sentient animals, both positively and negatively, from time to time.

Together, these amendments would cut some of the Gordian knots that we have wrestled with today, and would deliver an animal sentience committee that reported to Parliament but was independent of Defra. The role of the committee as proposed in this amendment must be understood together with the animal welfare strategy that it would be required to produce under Amendment 11. The committee would then be required to report to Parliament on the compliance of Ministers with this process, as in Amendment 33, to which Ministers must respond, as in Amendment 37.

If the sentience committee is to ensure that animal welfare is properly considered, and to act as an accountability mechanism to Parliament, to create it as a creature of Defra raises a number of problems. It may not be welcomed by other departments, which, as the draft terms of reference confirm, are under no obligation to co-operate with it. A committee within the Cabinet Office would have a clear, overarching remit, set a cross-departmental standard and be independent of other departments, whose Ministers would still be required to respond to the committee’s reports to Parliament. The other advantage of a statutory committee within the Cabinet Office is that it avoids the problems identified at earlier stages of the Bill around who should or should not sit on the committee, which we have just discussed.

A committee within the Cabinet Office that is not a Defra committee would be better placed, I would argue, to drive change across government, avoid inter-departmental resentments—as I said earlier—and ensure that all due regard to animal welfare was properly and consistently applied. Then, as with the current proposal, it would be for parliamentarians to hold Ministers to account.

Amendment 11 would ensure that there was a clear strategy setting out how, in the process of developing, deciding and implementing policies, the animal welfare implications of those policies must be considered.

Amendment 33 largely replicates the existing Bill but takes account of the animal welfare strategy, while still allowing the sentience committee to play a role where it feels that there has been a failure of process in compliance with the strategy before a policy decision has been made. This would seem a much more impactful approach to driving change across government than the current proposals.

Amendment 37 ensures that Ministers must explain to Parliament any failure to comply with the animal welfare strategy identified by the sentience committee. It would also mean, for example, that if the matter was a policy relating to the Department of Health, it would be for the Health Secretary to respond. The Bill is not, at the moment, clear on this, although the draft terms of reference make it clear that that is what is intended. That intention should be made clear in the Bill.

I hope it is clear that these amendments are intended to be helpful and are in the spirit of trying to turn a bad Bill into a less bad Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a large number of amendments in this group, so in the interests of time and the number of groups yet to be debated I shall focus on Amendment 38 in my name, which would insert a new clause after Clause 3 requiring the ASC to submit an annual report on its work to both Houses of Parliament. I shall also speak to Amendment 21, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising.

The animal sentience committee is being set up as a non-departmental public body with an advisory function. The latest available figures suggest that 63% of such bodies present an annual report to Parliament. It is clearly in the interests of accountability and transparency for MPs and Peers to be able to regularly scrutinise the committee’s work. A yearly report would also allow parliamentarians to gain a wider view of animal sentience issues over the preceding 12 months and of any emerging policy trends that impact on it. Requiring an annual report through this new clause would ensure that this essential transparency and accountability measure is sustained throughout the lifetime of the committee. I urge the Minister to consider including it in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

I thank your Lordships for amendments, and I hope that I can provide some reassurance on the points made.

I start with Amendment 9, in the name of my noble friend Lord Ridley, which would establish the animal sentience committee as a committee within the Cabinet Office. I would argue that Defra is well placed to host the animal sentience committee—which I will refer henceforth to as “the committee”. Defra’s hosting allows it to be affiliated as a constituent of Defra’s animal welfare centre of expertise, alongside other expert animal welfare committees, such as the Animal Welfare Committee. This provides for these committees to draw upon one another’s expertise much more easily than if they were hosted separately.

In his explanatory statement, my noble friend suggested that, if the committee were under the Cabinet Office, it would be easier to reach agreement on membership. It is not clear how changing the host department would achieve this. We believe that our approach to recruiting experts means that the committee will have the right experts. The same considerations would apply regardless of which department was responsible for supporting the committee.

Importantly, Amendment 9 would mean that the committee would be non-statutory, with no independent existence from government. This would undermine its purpose—one of proportionate scrutiny and accountability. A statutory committee allows experts the appropriate independence to achieve its function.

Amendments 11, 33 and 37, also in the name of my noble friend Lord Ridley, would require the animal sentience committee to publish an animal welfare strategy and for the committee and the Government to undertake actions associated with this. In this Bill, we have given the committee the power to produce reports about individual policies containing its views on to what extent the UK Government are having, or have had, all due regard to the ways in which those policies might have an adverse effect on the welfare of animals as sentient beings. We believe that it is important for the committee itself to decide which policies to report on, within the remit of the terms of reference. We would expect it to form an overview of all policy decisions with a significant effect on the welfare of animals. This need not cover every single policy decision but could cover those which are of a higher priority to animal welfare.

To ask this committee to produce reports relating to every department annually would be a significant burden and would mean less scrutiny on those policies that really matter. We want the committee to be targeted, timely and proportionate in how it operates. It is better to focus on policy decisions which have the most impact. The co-operation of departments is necessary for the committee to be able to work effectively, and Defra is already working to secure this. I believe a collaborative approach is the most appropriate one.

The committee’s role is not to set out a strategy for animal welfare nor to devise plans for future policy. These are clearly a matter for the Government. In May this year, the Government launched Our Action Plan for Animal Welfare. This sets out the Government’s current and future reform programme on animal welfare, covering both kept animals and wild animals under a series of strategic themes. I do not see the need for the committee to publish its own animal welfare strategy.

I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, feels that we have already covered Amendment 13 and the remit of the animal sentience committee in group 2. But I am happy for him to raise issues in a moment if he feels we have not.

I turn to Amendments 17, 22 and 34, in the name of my noble friend Lord Mancroft, concerning the reports of the animal sentience committee. The committee will be made up of eight to 12 members, and we anticipate it will take forward six to eight reports a year. However, Amendment 17 would require it to issue a report on all policy decisions. This is neither feasible nor desirable. We want proportionate and targeted scrutiny and accountability, and in so doing, the committee is to consider which policy decisions it deems most important. It should not be beholden to consider every policy decision regardless of its importance to animal welfare.

The question in Clause 2(2) is designed to allow the committee to express its views in an informative way to provide a proper understanding of the decision-making process followed. We believe that the committee’s recommendations are likely to be nuanced. The purpose of these reforms is not to impose a simple “pass or fail” test, which Amendments 22 and 34 suggests it should. That is not necessary, and it is likely to be unhelpful, and indeed unworkable, in many cases.

There may well be cases where the committee’s report into a policy decision does not identify major concerns but makes recommendations that would further improve future decision-making. The proposed amendments would not cater for this situation. While I understand, in principle, the rationale for limiting the requirement for Ministers to reply only to reports which identify major concerns, this would generate missed opportunities to consider valuable recommendations for improvements.

I turn to Amendments 20 and 25, in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising, which query the use of the phrase “all due regard” when describing what the committee is to consider in its scrutiny of policy formulation and implementation. The technical meaning of the phrase “all due regard” in this instance is not considered to be materially different to that of the phrase “due regard”; “all due regard” emphasises that the committee should assess the extent to which all relevant factors affecting animal welfare are being considered.

I turn now to Amendments 21 and 26, again from my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising, which seek to clarify that the committee can consider positive impacts on the welfare of some animals of a policy alongside the negative effects of that policy on the welfare of other animals. This point was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. Meeting the welfare needs of animals includes avoiding negative impacts as well as providing for positive experiences. Depriving an animal of its ability to have positive experiences, like exhibiting natural behaviours, counts as an adverse effect. I can assure your Lordships that the reference to “an adverse effect” in the Bill allows the committee to consider whether the positive experiences of an animal have been restricted.

We consider that the committee is already able to express its views on the ways in which a policy decision may not be able to maximise the welfare needs of animals, and that it may set out missed opportunities to make positive improvements to animal welfare. This is outlined in the draft terms of reference. Furthermore, I assure my noble friend that the Bill does not change existing law on pest control or impose any new restrictions on individuals or businesses.

I turn to Amendment 32 in the name of my noble friend Lord Howard of Rising, concerning the Bill’s scope with respect to the devolved Administrations. The committee will select policy decisions made by the UK Government on which it can issue reports. This will cover all matters that do not fall within the legislative competence of the devolved Administrations. As animal welfare policy is a devolved issue, it is a matter for the devolved Administrations as to how they wish to recognise and consider animal sentience when formulating and implementing devolved policies. It would be inappropriate for their Ministers to be held to account to the UK Parliament on matters that fall within their legislative competence.

Scotland has already used secondary legislation to establish an advisory body, the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission, which advises its Government on those policy areas for which they are responsible. The commission has been asked to consider how the welfare needs of sentient animals are being met by policies of the Scottish Government. The Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly are free to introduce their own legislation, should they wish. In addition, the Welsh Government have powers to set up a committee through secondary legislation if they wish to.

Amendment 38 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would require the animal sentience committee to publish an annual report. We wish to ensure that the committee is as effective as possible in undertaking its role. Reports issued by the committee will be made available on its public website. Ministers will be required to prepare a written response to these reports for Parliament, which will create opportunity to hold Ministers to account. This process will provide a great deal of transparency about the committee’s work and the policies it has chosen to consider. Further transparency will be provided through the Freedom of Information Act and the Public Records Act.

We will conduct regular performance reviews of the committee to ensure that it is fulfilling its purpose. However, we would not want to commit to an onerous annual reporting process for the committee in statute. This could take resources away from the committee’s primary scrutiny role. Ministers are required to lay timely written responses to every committee report before Parliament. This means that Parliament will be well aware of what the committee has been working on.

Finally, government Amendment 36 is a technical amendment that clarifies the time limit in which Ministers must respond to reports published by the committee. The Bill requires Ministers to lay a written response to a report before Parliament within three months of the report’s publication. This amendment excludes from that time limit certain periods in which Parliament is not sitting. We wish to make it clear that, in these limited circumstances, a Minister may submit a written response at a more appropriate time. We are committed to Ministers providing timely responses. That is why we want the time limit established by the Bill to be clear. I am indebted to my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean for raising this issue. While we did not have the opportunity to discuss this amendment in Committee, we have considered his contribution and improved the wording of the Bill.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I am obviously a little disappointed that my brilliant suggestion about the Cabinet Office committee has not fallen on more fertile ground. To use an analogy, you would keep a sheep dog in a kennel rather than with the sheep, but I will not pursue that one. I thank noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 9 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I shall just comment very briefly on what my noble friend has just said. I disagreed with him on one point, when he said that there were no leading lights in the science of sentience. I draw his attention to a wonderful book published by Oxford University Press just a few months ago by the great Cambridge psychologist Nick Humphrey. Nick says, after 60,000 words of argument, as he put it to me in an email:

“My conclusions are quite radical—and at odds with both academic and popular wisdom. I argue that the only animals that have evolved to be sentient are mammals and birds, and not all of these. We really don’t need to worry about lobsters or octopuses.”


He did not add, “or crocodiles”.

So I think that there is developing science on this, and my noble friend is quite right that it needs to be peer-reviewed and investigated. I think that we will find the goalposts move on what is sentient, and that it is not a given that everything with a backbone is sentient or, indeed, that some of the decapods and others are as sentient as we have heard in recent years.

[Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my various interests in the Countryside Alliance, including chairing the organisation. I apologise for being unable to take part in this Report stage earlier, but I was isolating and was only just released less than two hours ago. However, I was watching the proceedings very carefully, and it seemed to me that there was an emerging pattern—a serial rejection of all the amendments proposed by my noble friends and others, whether on issues of retrospectivity, on the composition of the committee, or on the matter of the risk that this committee is going to present of more judicial review. I could only admire my noble friend’s élan in batting away each of these suggestions, which came from former Ministers, from a former Leader of the House and from a former leader of the party—and from a brace at least of Queen’s Counsel, as well as suggestions and advice from a former Master of the Rolls. They were all swatted away elegantly by my noble friend.

I simply wish to say that my noble friends are sentient beings, too, and I believe that we are being treated cruelly. There is a case for reference to an independent committee to make advice as to whether all these suggestions should have been taken more seriously. Perhaps, if Ministers dismiss the advice of the animal sentience committee with the same alacrity, we will have little to fear from its future proceedings.

However, the truth is that there is less of a risk to specific aspects of farming or other activities that we can identify now than, I judge, of gluing up government with a constant process of analysis and rejection, followed by review, of proposals made by the committee. Indeed, there is to be not just one committee but two and, as we heard earlier, they will refer matters to each other, in a description that reminded me very much of a passage from “Yes Minister”. Ministers sometimes, when they occupy two briefs, as I once did, are encouraged to write letters to themselves in their dual positions. Now we have two animal committees that will be encouraged to refer matters to each other. This is an overcorrection because of a promise made earlier.

The suggestion of my noble friend Lord Moylan that, at the very least, we should ensure that the advice that the committee gives is grounded in the soundest possible science and is peer reviewed seems eminently sensible. I also join his modest suggestion that this might be the exception and the one proposal that the Minister might entertain.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 16th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, animal sentience is a fact, not a principle, let alone a policy. We have recognised this in law for a very long time. The entirety of animal welfare legislation assumes animal sentience and, rightly, that it is a thing of degree rather than kind. One of the effects of doing research in evolutionary biology is that you come to realise that there are no real differences of kind in the animal kingdom, only differences of degree.

One after another, the fortresses of assumption about what makes human beings special have fallen to the forces of science. Copernicus told us we were not at the centre of the solar system. Darwin told us we were just another animal. Crick told us we use the same genetic code as an amoeba. Ryan Gregory pointed out that an onion cell has six times as much DNA as a human’s. Even as recently as 1999, serious scientists were still saying that human beings would prove to have a bunch of unique genes to build the special human brain. It turns out that we have not only the same number of genes as a mouse but the same genes as a mouse; it is just that we turn them on and off in a different order. Dogs dream, parrots use language, octopuses reason, dolphins have a theory of mind and chimpanzees use tools. You cannot draw a line through the animal kingdom and say that on one side lies consciousness, let alone sentience, and on the other nothing. There is a gradation.

The Government’s 2018 consultation defined an animal as follows:

“an organism endowed with life, sensation and voluntary motion”.

That includes bacteria, incidentally, so it is not a very good definition of an animal. As it includes the word “sensation”, by definition it means that all animals, including parasitic roundworms and jellyfish, are sentient to some degree. In practice, we do draw lines and do not find slopes to be slippery. We swat mosquitoes and poison rats. I presume that, as a result of this Bill, we will not all eventually be ordered by a committee on animal sentience to become orthodox Jains, who sweep the pavement as they walk the street lest they step on an ant.

The sentient animals that concern me in relation to the Bill are the living, sensing, voluntarily moving creatures called bureaucrats. The Bill does little or nothing to change the way we treat animals, but it does create a wonderful feeding opportunity for Homo bureaucratius to do what it is best at: to build a nest and raise a lot of workers.

Over recent centuries, human society has increasingly improved its concern for animal welfare, in parallel with its growing concern for human welfare. We have stopped badger baiting, cockfighting, fox tossing and the popular medieval pastime of nailing a cat to a tree and competing to try and kill it with your head while not getting badly scratched on the face. We did not have a committee telling us to stop these things; we do not need a committee to do that. My late sister, Rose Paterson, did not need a government committee to tell her to improve horse welfare in the Grand National as chairman of Aintree Racecourse; she did it anyway. As my noble friend Lord Hannan said, we will continue to add to the list of things we disapprove of, but we do not need a committee to tell us to do so.

What this committee will inevitably do, because that is what this species of sentient being always does, is try to grow its budget by giving itself enough work to ensure that it can complain that it is underfunded. I predict that the committee will not stick to its task of commenting only on the process by which government has reached a decision. Indeed, in a helpful briefing note the Countryside Alliance says that this process of demanding a bigger budget has effectively already begun. It says:

“Given that the Committee’s remit covers the entirety of government policy, from formulation to implementation, the Committee will need huge resources. It should be looking, not just at wildlife management and farming practices and the Defra brief, but also policy areas such as planning, trade, and even procurement of medicines for the NHS. There is seemingly no limit.”


I predict that it will be a nearly impossible task to prevent this budget-maximising, empire-building, remit-expanding, mission-creeping process—which is in the nature of all committees, in the same way that it is in the nature of all wasps to build nests—and to avoid the committee ruling on whether, say, the building of a housing estate should be stopped to prevent avoidable suffering by a newt. My question to my noble friend the Minister is simple: how does he propose to achieve this nearly impossible task?

Heritage Organisations: Coal Supplies

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the legislation that Defra is bringing forward relates to households, and therefore we are working with the sector. It is important that we work with it not only through policy development but in looking at alternatives. Also, I understand that heritage rail has taken steps to improve efficiency and mitigate emissions. Therefore, as I said in my earlier reply, it is important that we work together on this, but this legislation relates to domestic consumption.

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as someone from whose land in Northumberland coal was being extracted until last year, including for heritage railways. The Minister will know that the Government refused permission for a further surface mine at Highthorn in Northumberland, disagreeing in the process with the county council, the planning inspector and the courts. I had no interest in that project, but I know some of the men who lost their jobs as a result. Given that this country has a continuing need for 5 million tonnes of coal a year, mostly for the cement and steel industries, as well as for the heritage rail industry, and that more of it now comes from Russia than any other country, with a far higher carbon footprint, why do the Government prefer to give jobs to people in western Siberia and take them away from people in Northumberland, and to increase emissions as a result while rewarding the persecutors of Alexei Navalny and Sergei Skripal?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the National Planning Policy Framework is very clear that planning permission should not be granted for the extraction of coal unless the proposal is environmentally acceptable or, if it is not environmentally acceptable, provides national, local or community benefits which clearly outweigh the likely impacts. Clearly we are moving into a situation where in this country we are reducing the use of coal for the very important reason of human health.

Agriculture Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, for leading the way for those of us speaking in opposition to the amendment. As a relatively new Member of your Lordships’ House, I am very glad that such a respected Member went first.

I begin by reflecting on the scope of this debate. I think it was the Minister who said that it had taken 54 hours a couple of hours ago. There has been a great deal of dissatisfaction with this Bill. That is very obvious. We have just spent a long time on the trade issues. There is also the lack of agroecology at its centre, where it should be; the lack of duties on the Government, only access to powers; food not being a public good; and the lack of regular reporting.

I refer to all of that, not to try to use this speech as a round-up but to make a specific point about the amendment. In a discussion before Committee started, the Minister said that the Government were minded to consider this amendment outside the Bill’s scope at this time. I find myself in a slightly odd situation, since I am often in the Bill office arguing for things to be in Bills that I am told are outside scope. However, I put it to the Government that they need to ask themselves whether they want to engage in this debate in this Bill when so many other issues will be hugely contentious when we get to Report. Indeed, a noble Lord who has been in the House for many years suggested earlier that Report might be as long as Committee.

I will pick up on a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, made. Some people, primarily advocates for this technology blazing ahead, try to turn this into a culture war. They try to label those who say, “Hang on, slow down, what are you doing?” as anti-science. I regret that, because my first training was as a scientist. I very much embrace and am fascinated by agroecology. I share the interest in soil science of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. I am very much interested in the science of nutrition. All these sciences take a holistic approach to our interaction with the natural world and with our food system. They are fundamentally different kinds of science and approaches from the silver bullet, single-step approach that GM technology represents.

In the past, we have seen that kind of approach and technology dominate for decades. It is the approach that produced the green revolution. We have seen quite a few reports coming out of India reflecting on the huge damage that taking that approach has caused, including enormous problems with water, pests, pesticides and a lack of variety in diet.

I refer to some of the issues that noble Lords have already raised. In an earlier debate, the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, talked about rapeseed and the difficulty of growing it here without neonicotinoids. Of course, that crop was only introduced to Britain in the 1970s. There has been quite a bit of discussion about sugar beet, a crop that is responsible for 10% of the entire soil loss of some of the richest soils, certainly in England. This crop also produces sugar, which we already have far too much of.

We need to think about what crops we grow and whether we grow them in the right places. I often discuss with farmers the growing of wheat in Scotland. There is a reason why Scotland is famous for oatcakes. Wheat is a crop that is fundamentally unsuited to the Scottish climate. We need to look at these things holistically, rather than essentially trying to ram square pegs into round holes, often for the convenience of large multinational companies that want a small number of certain crops and their food to taste the same all around the world.

I referred to the issue of time. I do not think that this is the place to engage fully with the issue of technology and its potential dangers, but I want to pick the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, up on a phrase he used, which I think another noble Lord repeated. He said that GM technology is producing precise changes. I refer noble Lords to a report in Nature on 25 June. The headline read: “CRISPR gene editing in human embryos wreaks chromosomal mayhem.” This actually refers to a series of pre-print reports that have not yet been peer reviewed, which, in the age of Covid, is very much the way a lot of medicine is going. If noble Lords want to wait and see on that one, I refer them to a debate in your Lordships’ House on gene editing, when the House considered a Motion in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell. I quote from that debate the noble Lord, Lord Winston, whom I am sure noble Lords would wish to listen to on these issues. He said:

“CRISPR is not an accurate technique.”—[Official Report, 30/1/20; col. 1530.]


So, there are far more issues and questions about these technologies than has been suggested in the debate thus far.

I want to come back to the practical arguments that those who do not really want to engage with the scientific debate might be interested in listening to. I want to make a point about subsection (3) of the new clause proposed by the amendment. It states:

“Regulations under subsection (1) may only be made in relation to England.”


If you were to bring an amendment such as this at the next stage of the Bill—whether a government amendment or otherwise—certainly, it should refer to widespread consultation and discussion with the other nations of the United Kingdom. Seeds and pollen and other such crops will not be stopped by Hadrian’s Wall—even less so by Offa’s Dyke. This issue has to be considered on a scale across the United Kingdom; then, of course, Ireland may raise some pretty interesting concerns about and issues with the land border.

That brings me to a final point and gives me a chance to engage with the noble Earl, Lord Devon, who talked about the wonders of Devon cream teas. I am going to indulge in Yorkshire parkin and the wonderful products of the rhubarb triangle. Many noble Lords at many stages in this debate have spoken about the reputation of food from the UK, its potential in export markets and how that reputation is founded on images of cleanness, wholesomeness and quality. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, reflected on international views of the use of GM technology in crops and how that affects people’s views. If noble Lords are concerned about promoting in that area of export markets—it is not my personal focus, which is on producing local food for local consumption—some of which can be small volumes of high-value products that are valuable and useful ambassadors for Britain around the world, they want to look very carefully at this amendment and consider what its impact would be.

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, this is my first contribution on this Bill since Second Reading, but I will be brief and I declare my farming interests. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, is one that the Government and the House should embrace with enthusiasm. Noble Lords will recognise that I have been raising precisely this issue of gene editing in plants in Oral Questions for some years. I have become something of a cracked record on the subject. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that the amendment would not change British policy on biotechnology; it would merely require the Government to consider doing so after consultation. Who can be against debate? If we then decide to go ahead, we would be in a position to rescue the British plant breeding industry, as my noble friend Lord Taylor said, which has a perfect safety record but is being left behind in the rush to make crops that need fewer pesticides and less fertiliser, are more nutritious and more drought-tolerant and can be grown with fewer emissions. If we fail to act today, British farming will be using more chemicals and generating more emissions than it would otherwise.

I was therefore surprised at Second Reading to hear the noble Baronesses, Lady Parminter and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, argue against this proposal. I genuinely do not understand why Liberal Democrats or Greens would argue effectively in favour of more chemicals and more emissions in agriculture. Indeed, harking back to the very lengthy debate on previous amendments today, I suggest that if we do not take steps in this direction we may find that other countries reject our agricultural exports because of the low environmental standards of this country. That is where we are headed. We will be hoist by our own petard.

Many modern varieties are produced by scrambling the genes of seeds with gamma rays or chemical mutagens and then selecting from the resulting hopeful monsters. That is an extremely imprecise technology, but it is the one, I am afraid, that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is recommending because that is the method by which much-loved organic varieties, such as Golden Promise, the barley variety used in brewing, were generated. To quote the noble Baroness, Lady Young, once these varieties are released, it is irreversible. They cannot come back. Is that not a worse technology? However, that method is not subject to strict regulation, despite the fact that it produces lots of unintended changes to DNA. It is specifically exempted from the GMO rules in the European Union.

In July 2018, as we have heard, the European Court of Justice decided, against the advice of its Advocate-General and virtually all European scientists, not to give gene editing the same exemption as that mutagenesis method. This puts the EU and the UK at odds with the rest of the world. Japan, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Israel, Canada and the US all say that if no foreign DNA is introduced, the plant is not a GMO, which is what the Cartagena protocol gathered by the United Nations also says. India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, Kenya, Paraguay, Uruguay and Norway are all moving towards enshrining the same position in law. Only New Zealand is still in the same camp as the European Union.

I refer to one other point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Young: if we use gene editing or genetic modification to make crops resistant to insects we will reduce the biomass of insects. That is not the case because, as the example of sugar beet, raised by my noble friend Lord Taylor shows, the alternative is not no resistance against insects but using pesticides—insecticides, in the case of sugar beet. We have had to give up on neonicotinoids, so it is worse pesticides. They kill not just the aphids you are aiming at but innocent bystanders—other insects that happen to be about—so the effect on the biomass of insects of introducing insect-resistant crops has been shown to be positive, not negative.

Agriculture Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the owner of a working farm in Northumberland. I support the Bill. I see it as an opportunity to make farming more sustainable environmentally, ecologically and climatically as well as commercially and technologically. So I welcome the emphasis in the Bill on productivity. I seek assurance from the Minister that as far as possible the environmental land management scheme will work by results, not by intentions. One of the great mistakes of subsidies in the past is that they have rewarded pious intentions rather than successful results.

To be sustainable, agriculture needs innovation in precision farming, robotics, drones and other technologies so as to use fewer chemicals more precisely targeted. It needs innovation in genome editing particularly—a precise new breeding technology that enables plant breeders to achieve exactly what they have achieved in the past but much more quickly and precisely, thereby reducing the dependence of crops on chemicals.

There has been a huge debate in recent years between the advocates of land sparing and land sharing. The land sharers are those who suggest that we should farm badly and have wildlife alongside us. The land sparers say no, farm as well as you can but set land aside. The argument has been won by the land sparers. Evidence from Cambridge University and elsewhere has shown clearly that you get not only more wildlife but fewer emissions if you farm as well as you can and then set land aside. That is what I try to practise on my own farm, where we farm as well as we can in the field but leave generous field margins for wildlife and we leave particular meadows—flower meadows, water meadows and so on—also for wildlife. As a result we have increasing numbers of skylarks, yellowhammers, tree sparrows, brown hares, butterflies and bumblebees. If we were to try to feed the world using organic and agroecological methods, we would need to cultivate 82% of the world’s land area instead of 38% as we do today.

The Government have rightly committed to maintaining standards, and a lot of amendments to the Bill are driven by protectionism disguised as animal welfare. Free trade is a huge export opportunity for agriculture. We already export £24 billion worth a year and British lamb, which is world-beating, is competitive in the American market and has a huge opportunity there. Stocking density for poultry in the US is roughly the same as here and there is less campylobacter per head in the US. We should work to improve these standards internationally through the OIE, the world organisation for animal health. The UK has lower standards in some areas—for example, it has lower standards than New Zealand on stunning in abattoirs. We have nothing to fear and lots to gain from world trade. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and my noble friend Lady Browning both mentioned, the issue here is that the European Union has forced us to adopt lower standards. It has forced us to spray more on crops such as sugar beet and potatoes by denying us opportunities in biotechnology.

I quote from a farmer’s email sent to me today:

“Farmers not only can but will do the green if we’re in the black, give farmers back the responsibility and ownership and all may well be amazed at the results Reignite our once bright curiosity to innovate … Allow us to disrupt from within, rather than imposed disruption from outside.”

Agriculture: Genome-edited Crops

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Viscount Ridley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to regulate genome-edited crops after December 2020.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and in doing so declare my farming interests.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. The UK Government will take a science-based approach to reconsidering the position that all genome-edited organisms must be regulated as genetically modified organisms—GMOs. Our view is that genome-edited organisms should not be subject to GM regulation if the DNA changes could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding methods. However, we have strict controls to safeguard health and the environment. Products must pass a robust case-by-case safety assessment, taking full account of scientific evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Ridley]

My Lords, there is not even a theoretical possibility that a genome-edited plant is less safe than a conventionally bred variety with the same trait. Environmental and nutritional benefits are accruing to consumers and producers all around the world from this technology, reducing dependence on chemicals —a race to the top, not the bottom. Given also the strength of British laboratories in this area, but their inability to develop these products because of strict regulation, does the Minister agree that it is vital to send a signal now to the private sector, perhaps by issuing draft regulations, that the UK is prepared to see rapid and timely approval of crops for commercialisation in this area, in sharp contrast to the impossible regime imposed by the European Union and as promised by the Prime Minister in Downing Street?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, we did not agree with the 2018 European Court of Justice ruling that all GE crops must be regulated as GMOs. There is an advantage in terms of seeking to improve the environment and productivity, and helping the agricultural sector, by exploring further how to better regulate genome-edited organisms. There is a lot of opportunity here. As I emphasised in my Answer, safety and the environment are of primary concern, but there is great scope here.