Cat and Dog Fur (Control of Movement etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Grand Committee

I am pleased that trade measures can play such an influential role in helping protect our cats and dogs. This instrument is an important step in maintaining the ban on the import, export and placing on the market of their fur, and products containing such fur. I hope that, with this rather detailed explanation, noble Lords will be unanimous in their support for this statutory instrument and for its critical objective. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on bringing forward this instrument. I am sure everyone would wish to support it—I think the fur would really start to fly if there was any sign of any trade whatever.

I have just one question for my noble friend. It is good to know that there is no evidence of any trade either from third countries or the EU—which is now a third country to us as well. What steps are taken at UK borders—airports, sea ports and indeed the Channel Tunnel—to ensure that there is no fur from cats or dogs in any part of the luggage? Obviously it is quite small and would be quite easy to hide. I would like to put my mind at rest that measures are in place to ensure that no fur is being brought in wilfully by passengers and can pass through untraced.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, for his thorough explanation. I very much support his sentiments and comments around this area. I do not want to prolong the debate but, as we have heard, the instrument makes no change to policy and we welcome the Government’s continued commitment to maintaining pre-existing trade measures. I particularly recognise the Minister’s comments on how it is possible to use trade measures to make sure that these important matters are implemented, and I echo the sentiment and understanding that the fur trade is an abhorrent and cruel industry, and we have to do everything in our power to make sure that we interrupt any such practices wherever we can.

I have a couple of brief questions. I am sure the Minister will be aware of comments from Cats Protection raising concerns that regulations will be effective only where goods are explicitly sold as cat fur and do not address the problem of real fur being imported and sold as faux fur in poorly labelled goods. It has seen evidence of cases where fake fur used in products and garments such as shoes was in fact cat fur. What assessment have the Government made of that and have they given any consideration to further steps to stamp down on such practices? It cannot be right for UK consumers to be unwittingly supporting this cruel trade due to improper labelling.

On a wider but related note, have the Government considered changing labelling requirements so that any products containing animal fur or other parts of animal origin are clearly listed, so that consumers can be further aware of when they are and are not buying animal products, where they may have come from—both which animal and which country—and how they have been manufactured? I understand the possibilities around this; in the United States, there are detailed labelling requirements under the Fur Products Labeling Act.

I welcome the sentiments and intent of the proceedings today, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.