Leaving the EU: Live Farm Animal Exports

David Drew Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, as I was to serve under that of Mr Wilson earlier. I congratulate the petition organiser and the many signatories. I shall not go over ground that has already been covered, as that is unnecessary, but we have explored some different approaches to the issue, so I shall start with some direct questions to the Minister, allowing him plenty of time to answer them.

I want to give an immediate answer to the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay), who is not paying attention at the moment, about some things that the Labour Government did. There are not many Labour Members present; there are three of us now. Perhaps Labour could be criticised for not introducing a ban on live exports previously, but we are united: we will introduce a ban on live exports. Obviously we shall have to consult about how we do it, but it is our clear intention. The previous Labour Government made progress on animal welfare, with the fur farming ban, the Animal Welfare Act 2006—I am pleased the Government intend to update that, and we shall support them where appropriate—and the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007. That is aside from what we did on the foxhunting issue. There are two Conservative Members here who strongly supported the ban—the hon. Members for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), who were staunch in their support—but unfortunately many did not. It took rather too long to get the measure through, and we make no apologies for saying that we will look again at some of the implications of the ban.

To begin my questions to the Minister, I want to hear categorically that, in line with the manifesto commitment and the Live Animal Exports (Prohibition) Bill promoted by the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), he intends to bring forward legislation to ban live exports. I want to hear, with no ifs or buts, that the Government will be committed to that, notwithstanding some of the nuances—if not major differences—on how it can be done. It is important that we should hear how it will be done—whether by an amendment to the forthcoming agriculture Bill, or through an animal welfare Bill. We do not mind, and we will support it, but it would be good to know the timescale and mechanism. We obviously have some differences to sort out, not least with the territorial Administrations. It is interesting that we are not on the same page as the Scottish National party, or perhaps the Liberal Democrats, but we will do what we think is right and fair.

Secondly, I ask the Minister directly whether the issue is a deal breaker. Will we say now that we will not agree to any trade deal that does not prioritise animal welfare in exports? It is no good just saying that we will ban exports to the EU if we do not ban exports in every other potential trade deal. I know it is less likely that we will be bringing live animals from Australasia, but it would be pretty stupid to ban live exports to the EU if we do not state categorically up front that we will not do a trade deal unless a ban is in the fine print. It would be good to hear what the Minister has to say about that.

Thirdly, although I thought the Conservative party was fairly clear on the ban, it is not very clear in its relationship with the National Farmers Union, which is less than sure that the Government intend to pursue their manifesto commitment. If the NFU will be pushing for caveats and exemptions—it is entirely clear that that is also the case for the territorial farming organisations—it would be good to know quite early on what exemptions could be considered. Maybe the Minister will want to take that point away.

We know about the problems with the Irish border, which will be considerable whether or not we are in a customs union or a single market. We in the Labour party are fairly clear about where we are on those things—eventually. The situation will not be easy if the NFU believes that it really has nothing to worry about, because there are certainly some issues that it does need to worry about if it wants to maintain this trade.

Fourthly—this is a slight tangent, but nevertheless important—it is all well and good talking about banning live exports, but we are not completely on top of some of the things that happen in this country. Some hon. Members will have seen the headlines in The Guardian over the weekend about some of the problems in our meat trade. We know about the scandal over horsemeat, which of course came from the Republic of Ireland. If we are going to do the decent thing and kill animals in abattoirs here, we need some pretty clear guarantees. I agree entirely that we need more local abattoirs, but the problem is that we are shutting even more at the moment. We shut a lot in the new Labour era, but that has not stopped. It continues.

Through foot and mouth, we learned of some of the mad ways in which our meat trade operates. We move animals up and down the country for a few pence on a sheep, largely depending on which abattoir the supermarkets want to send them to. It would be quite sensible to look at the regulation of that as well as the live export ban. We have to be clear that we have something substantially different in place. I say clearly to the Minister that the Russell Hume collapse has brought it to our attention that there are things going on out there that we should be much better at, regardless of where we kill the animals. It is all well and good saying that we have very high welfare standards, but we have to prove that, and sometimes we are not able to do that because of some of the things that are going on.

My last point is, dare I say it, the usual one: it would be great if this was all happening along with an improvement in the quality of inspection and, where necessary, of prosecution. Sadly, there have been major cuts in that area. The Animal and Plant Health Agency is now a much reduced body, and does anyone really think that our trading standards departments are in a stronger position than they were seven, 10 or 15 years ago? They have been cut to ribbons. That is where the cuts have taken place in local authorities.

The idea that there is a lot of inspection going on out there is sadly a myth. There is stuff that goes on out of sight and out of mind. That has an impact both on local government, through trading standards departments, and on the meat trade through the Food Standards Agency, which has also been cut back. If we are serious about this issue, we cannot pretend that we have to do anything other than make sure that those cuts are reversed. It is no good passing new legislation unless we put the resources in place to ensure that we are doing things properly.

I want to look quickly at some of the issues that have perhaps not been highlighted as much as they could have been. The documentation from the Library, produced by Elena Ares, is very useful. For one thing, following up on a parliamentary question that I asked, it shows the variability in the number of animals going for export. The variation is quite dramatic year on year. I do not know what causes that, and whether it is because of domestic price changes, but we are talking about hundreds of thousands more animals going one year than the previous year. There are some peculiarities in the trade that need to be highlighted.

If we are consistent in wanting to improve on and enhancing what the EU does, we need to go back to European Commission regulation 1200/2005, which effectively reinforces the allowing of live exports. It sets down standards such as the 65 km rules and the eight-hour rule, which have been talked about today. We have to ensure that we improve on those rules. It is no good just transposing them into British legislation without genuinely improving on them. I ask the Minister, as an aside, what guarantees he will give that we will enhance the existing situation.

There are a number of ways in which the EU already accepts that there are infringements. It does not do a very good job of regulation, and there has been a European Court of Justice ruling on live exports showing that there are inadequacies in inspection and prosecution across the whole EU. That goes back to the issue of trade; the Opposition want to be sure that WTO rules can be amended in such a way that they will not be a hurdle. It is no good leaving the customs union and single market if we cannot be clear that we can deal with WTO rules. That is an easy one for the Minister, because I am sure he will say that we will be able to do that, but we need to be absolutely up front about it. Finally, while the EU and its trade strategy and treaties have regard for animal welfare on one level, we need to be clear that our new regulations will be better than those already in existence.

I have asked questions of the Minister, and we have had an interesting debate. We have heard from the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who introduced the debate, the right hon. Members for Chipping Barnet and for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), and the hon. Members for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), for South Thanet, for Gordon (Colin Clark) and for North Thanet. We also heard from the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for the SNP—maybe we need to sit down and work out where the opposition to the ban is coming from. There were other interesting and helpful interventions.

The onus is now on the Government to say what they will do. The legislation needs to come forward; we will support it if it comes forward quickly, although we may choose to amend bits of it—if anything, we may try to toughen it. We need clarity on what the Irish border situation really means. I saw one of the Democratic Unionist party spokespeople here earlier, and the DUP will have strong opinions on how that is going to work.

If we are serious about animal welfare, this is an issue that cannot be ducked any longer. We all saw some of the horrific pictures from Ramsgate, Dover and so on. To some extent, we have got rid of the worst aspects of that, but it has not gone away. Unless we legislate, and have the resources to ensure that we can enforce the legislation we introduce, it will be but a pyrrhic victory—but a victory, nevertheless, whose time has come. I hope we can get on and do that properly in due course, and that the Minister will assure me that that is what the Government are going to do.