Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

I think this matter was dealt with extensively by my noble Friend, Lord Benyon. The key thing is that an adverse effect can mean a failure to make a change or consider a change that would have a positive impact on the welfare of animals, so I do not share any concerns about that expression.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for his Committee’s work in scrutinising our proposals.

The Bill proposes four things. First, it establishes an Animal Sentience Committee, whose members the Secretary of State will appoint on the basis of expertise and experience. Secondly, it tasks that committee with scrutinising Ministers’ policy formation and the implementation of decisions. In each instance, it will publish a report containing its views on whether Ministers have had all due regard to the welfare needs of animals as sentient beings.

Thirdly, Ministers will be held to account through a duty to respond to the committee’s reports by means of a written statement to Parliament, and Parliament must receive such responses within three months. Finally, the wording of the Bill offers recognition that non-human vertebrates—that is, animals with a spine—and additionally decapod crustaceans, such as lobsters, and cephalopod molluscs, such as octopuses, are sentient. That means they are capable of experiencing pain or suffering. The Bill contains a delegated power for Ministers to add by regulation other species to the definition of animals. That is to be used if there is good scientific evidence that those particular species are sentient.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend confirm whether the Bill as drafted contains birds?

[George Eustice]

The Bill does include birds, since they are vertebrates, and it includes fish, since they are vertebrates. I point out that those particular animals have been recognised in our law as sentient since at least 1911.

I want to be clear about what the Bill does and does not do. While its aim is to improve the policy and decision-making processes of Government, the committee’s reports will not bind Ministers to any particular course of action. Ministers will remain free to determine the right balance between animal welfare and other important considerations.

Devolved matters are also excluded from the Bill’s provisions. The Scottish Government have their own counterpart to the Animal Sentience Committee already, while Wales and Northern Ireland have the powers to establish equivalent bodies, should they wish to do so.

It is also important to understand that the Bill tasks the Animal Sentience Committee with scrutinising the process by which Ministers arrive at policy decisions. It is not there to tell Ministers what decisions they should make or to critique those decisions. Instead, it is there to provide technical assessments of how well a given Department obtained and assessed relevant evidence on the animal welfare effects of the policy in question.

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[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to catch your eye in this important but short debate, on a short and, in my view, unnecessary Bill. Of course we can all accept that animals can suffer and therefore we are obliged to ensure that we maintain our high standards of welfare. That animals can experience pain and suffering has been implicit in British animal law, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State so rightly laid out, since 1835 when Parliament passed the landmark Cruelty to Animals Act. However, the lack of definition in this Bill or use of science to decide whether an animal is sentient is concerning; it even lacks a definition of what sentience means. It is concerning that we should be passing a Bill with such a lack of detail.

There is a huge rural community in this country that is passionate about wildlife and eager to protect the environment and their activities. The Angling Trust and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation—I declare an interest; it is the secretariat for the all-party group on animal welfare and environment which I chair—represent more than 3 million fishing and shooting enthusiasts in the UK. The Bill could deliver another weapon into the hands of litigious animal rights groups that could damage both Government and those who live and work with animals.

Shooting, conservation and angling are highly important for the UK economy. Shooting contributes about £2 billion to GDP and supports the equivalent of 74,000 full-time jobs. Angling is estimated to be worth £4 billion to the UK economy and responsible for upwards of 40,000 jobs.

We need to make sure that the Animal Sentience Committee set up by the Bill does not have any unforeseen or perverse consequences, and that the Bill is not introduced simply as a public relations exercise to meet the demands of activist groups and the tabloids. A sentience committee does not require legislation. It could have been established by the Secretary of State at any time. He has already told us that the members will be Secretary of State appointments, but that covers a multitude of types of people who might be appointed. Perhaps the Minister could give us a little more idea of the type of people who will be appointed to the committee.

According to clause 2(1), the scope of the Bill encompasses:

“When any government policy is being or has been formulated or implemented”.

In other words, it gives huge breadth of remit to the committee. So what will be the committee’s resources in terms of funds and secretariat? Would it not be more sensible to limit its remit to the areas currently covered by the European law on sentience, on which my party’s manifesto said we would legislate?

Will the new committee by statute confuse who advises Ministers on animal welfare when the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs already has an Animal Welfare Committee with a wide remit covering all animals, but not by statute? Will the new sentience committee, which is implemented by statute, be superior to the Animal Welfare Committee, which was established decades ago and works perfectly well? Or will it be a sub-committee of the Animal Welfare Committee? If so, will the Animal Welfare Committee be required to approve its reports before publication? What will be the difference between the remit of the two committees?

There is no requirement in the Bill for the committee to consider the public interest or the legislative or administrative provisions and customs of the UK relating in particular to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage. In a meat-eating society where vertebrate animals are farmed and hunted for food, and used in scientific and medical research under strict legal limits, the fact that the committee is not required to consider the public interest could lead to a conflict between activist groups and the Government.

Will the Minister therefore balance the requirement to have “all due regard” to animal welfare with a requirement to have regard to the public interest? Can the Minister give an assurance that the medical, scientific, farming, fishing and shooting interests will be represented? This is crucial, because otherwise it is going to breed a great deal of resentment in the rural communities.

There are other ways of recognising sentience in legislation. We could have followed New Zealand’s example and amended the Animal Welfare Act 2006 merely to include sentience. That is all that needed to happen.

Policy and legislation should always be science and evidence-based. It is extraordinary that there is no definition of sentience in the Bill. Even though 80% of the respondents to the Government consultation supported the inclusion of a definition, it still is not there. Instead, clause 5(2) says that the Secretary of State

“may by regulations … bring invertebrates of any description within the meaning of “animal” for the purposes of this Act”.

But there is no requirement to show scientific proof that non-vertebrates are sentient. Philosophers and scientists have been arguing for centuries about which non-vertebrate animals are sentient and what that actually means, and here we have a Bill that does not clarify that debate.

The Bill originated in demands for sentience to be explicitly written into law after Brexit, but it does not contain the safeguards within the EU law on sentience. EU law on sentience is limited and balanced. It applies to agriculture, fisheries, transport, the internal market, research and technological and space policies. Member states—this is a particular part of European law—are required to have

“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.”

I will try to get an amendment included in the Bill—I hope that the Government will support the amendment, which I will table shortly—stating that “the recommendations by the committee must respect the legislative or administrative provisions and customs relating in particular to religious rights, cultural traditions and regional heritage”. I say tactfully to my right hon. Friend that, as that is the wording in European law, I hope very much that he might consider such an amendment, so that we can at least focus the committee’s work, instead of it having the very wide-ranging remit that it now has.

Will the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), give us an assurance that nothing in the Bill will have an impact on activities conducted with all regard to animal welfare within the law? Does she believe, as some do, that sentience confers rights and, if so, what rights are conferred?

In conclusion, clarity, clarity, clarity is required on animal welfare advice in government. I am talking about the composition and remit of the committee, the balance between the public interest and sentience, and assurances that legal activities, such as research, farming and country sports, will not be damaged by the Bill. I say to the Secretary of State and the Minister: please could we have an answer to that final question when the Minister sums up?

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[Sir Bill Wiggin]

It is difficult for me to answer that, because I am a member of the ELMS pilot scheme, so I am deeply involved in the formation of ELMS. What I would say is that public money for public goods is the right way forward, with carbon captured in the soil and a corresponding payment made to farmers so that we can balance up the subsidy deficit that British farmers will face compared with their European competitors. At the end of the day I do not believe in subsidy for anything other than agriculture, and we subsidise only in order that our goods are competitive globally—if do not pay our farmers enough, our produce will not compete internationally and our farmers will be at a huge disadvantage.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend alluded to the fact that the committee’s work will be retrospective. Any citizen could suggest to the committee that the Government should change policy in a certain area. The committee would then look into that and make a recommendation to the Minister. That is a real gift to lobbying groups to achieve what they want, and the Government would be under difficulty to withhold it.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

As always, my hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The real shame about this legislation is that here we are at Second Reading and every single colleague on both sides of the House has thought of better things for the Government to deal with, whether it is ELMS, as suggested by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), or any of the other suggestions I have heard from Opposition Members. This Bill is a waste of time; it is utterly unnecessary and therefore wrong. We should not pass Bills that state the obvious and that are hostages to fortune, we should not create more quangos, we should not vote for unnecessary legislation —and we certainly should not vote for this Bill.

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[Jo Churchill]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, but I gently point out that there are plenty of other devices for ensuring plenty of parliamentary time. I am sure that we will unpick that in Committee.

Ministers will remain responsible for balancing animal welfare against other important matters of public interest. We are and will remain fully accountable to Parliament for that. My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon spent some time asking whether the Bill increases the risk of judicial review, and it has been carefully considered and worded to ensure there are only two areas in which we could instigate grounds for judicial review if Ministers fail to fulfil them: by not appointing a committee or by not bringing forward a report in a timely fashion.

I was also asked how the Animal Sentience Committee differs from the Animal Welfare Committee. The latter offers substantive expert advice, whereas the former is a scrutinising body—that is the essential difference. The Animal Sentience Committee is there to give another line of evidence and to help Ministers make decisions, but policy decisions are and will remain a matter for Ministers, for which they are accountable to this House.

Ministers are under no legal obligation to follow the committee’s recommendations. However, there is no point in having a committee that brings forward evidence unless we take it seriously. As I say, it will be balanced in the round to make sure competing interests such as the rural economy or a particular enjoyment, angling or whatever—all those things that are good for people’s mental wellbeing—are considered when we make our decisions.

The key point about the terms of reference is that the Animal Sentience Committee will be classified as an expert committee. It will be funded from within DEFRA’s existing budget and supported by a small secretariat. This will not run and run and be an unsupported Government quango, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire. The Bill is drafted to keep sentience at the forefront of policy making and implementation, in line with its statutory functions.

Wide-ranging points were made by colleagues, which flowed into medical research and respect for people’s religious needs. The Bill is tight, and the reason it is a small, tight Bill is that it is important that we are aware that it does not change existing legislation. The committee does not make value judgments.

Hon. Members asked about the inclusion of decapod crustaceans, crabs, lobsters, molluscs, octopus and squid. I want to be absolutely clear about the reasoning behind the effects of that decision. At every point, it is about respecting and recognising animal sentience, and being scientifically led.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I sense the Minister is coming to a conclusion, but she has not answered one of my questions about the composition of the committee. Will she give an assurance that it will take into account rural and agricultural interests?

[Jo Churchill]

As I represent the constituency that I do, my hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that I will give him that assurance. The Opposition made the point that breadth of expertise is extremely important in order to have confidence in this Committee.

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

While we will vote for the Bill, it feels like a missed opportunity. It is clear that, while the Government talk a lot about the great work they say they are doing on animal welfare, the reality is they need to be more comprehensive, and they need to go much further and much faster. This Bill may well be a start, but it cannot be the end.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I will speak to amendment 2, in my name and those of 30-odd colleagues.

The problem with the Bill is that it goes beyond the commitment made by Ministers to recognise animal sentience in British law in the same way that it is recognised in European Union law. My amendment is designed to ensure that the safeguards of the EU law are duplicated in British law. Currently, those safeguards are not in the Bill, as was the original ask of the animal welfare lobby.

It seems to me that we should have a bit of equivalence here. If this committee is set up by statute, its remit should also be defined by statute. I therefore ask the Government seriously to consider accepting my amendment as a sensible, fairly minor, but nevertheless important amendment to the remit of the committee, which recognises local customs,

“religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage”.

That seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing to do. With these few words, I strongly urge my hon. Friend the Minister to see whether she cannot, on behalf of the Government, accept my amendment.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I will speak in favour of new clause 5, which would ensure an annual report including,

“the number of sentient animals killed or injured”,

as a result of pollution, a description of water companies’ actions to protect animals and an assessment of the impact of Government policy on those two things. I will also speak briefly in favour of new clause 6, which we do not intend to push to a vote, which would establish an annual report into the ways the Government have taken into account animal sentience when establishing new trade deals.

Turning to new clause 5, Cumbria contains two national parks, the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District, the latter being a world heritage site. The richness of our biodiversity throughout Cumbria is of great importance, not least in our rivers and lakes, whose ecology is of global significance as home to countless species. Yet Government policy threatens that diversity and damages animal welfare. In 2020, across the United Kingdom, water companies were permitted to dump raw sewage into our waterways on 400,000 occasions for a total of 3.l million hours, at enormous cost to the lives of aquatic and semi-aquatic sentient animals. At the River Lune near Sedbergh, we saw the longest discharge in the country lasting for 8,490 hours. At Derwentwater, a discharge of 8,275 hours took place. Is it any wonder that only 14 % of Britain’s rivers are classed as being in a “good” state?

The Government’s Environment Act 2021 acknowledges the problem and sets an ambition to reduce the pollution in our rivers caused by the dumping of raw sewage. Of course, as we all know, the Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming by Opposition Members, their own Back Benchers and members of another place to even do that.

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[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate. It has been interesting to listen to hon. Members on both sides. I would argue that the Government have probably got the Bill about right, for the simple reason that Opposition Members are saying that it does not go far enough and Conservative Members are perhaps saying that it goes plenty far enough.

This legislation is better than the previous version because it will not be taken to judicial review. In about 2018, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee looked at the Bill as it was then and rightly decided, having taken legal advice and advice from others, that many of the actions that could take place could be judicial-reviewed and land up in the courts. There could have been a situation where much of our animal welfare was judged in the courts, rather than here in Parliament. Instead, it creates a committee that is put in place by the Secretary of State and then has to present a report to them. He or she will then make a decision about which route the Government will take on animal welfare. I believe that that is the right situation.

I support the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). We have argued many times in this Chamber, and I even argued in the European Parliament, that European legislation often had no flexibility about it. On this occasion, of course, it did have flexibility when bringing animal welfare legislation forward. As we brought legislation over as a result of Brexit, however, we did not include those clauses, which is why we are in this predicament. I have real sympathy for the Minister because she is dealing with an interesting situation: she is trying to balance the needs of animal welfare with the perceived needs of animal rights. That is the issue.

It is interesting that, in tonight’s debate, we have talked all about DEFRA. Much of it is about DEFRA, but we must remember that the Animal Sentience Committee will deal with the whole of Government. So when someone is building a bypass or building houses, the effect of all those issues on sentience will be considered. I admit that I am still interested to know how the committee will deal with all that. How will the Secretary of State for Transport or the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities deal with it? It will have a big job to do.

If the committee is set up in the right way with the right people on it, so that they can make a judgment about what is right in practical terms for animal welfare, it can work, but it is very much about how it is set up, who the chair is and who the members are. We must ensure that we have a balance of opinions so that, with the right methods of building, we can build our roads and our homes and we can carry on farming in our traditional ways.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

To the point that my hon. Friend has rightly made about the cross-cutting nature of the Bill across Government Departments, I quite like that. For example, the Department for Education might educate people on how to look after pets properly. There are many useful areas where the Bill could have a role.

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[Jim Shannon]

It is a joy to follow the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson). He set out comprehensively what he hopes the Bill will achieve. He also outlined some things that need to be done, but on which we are perhaps not there yet. I put that on the record. I am pleased, as I always am, to see the Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food, the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) in her place. I know that both she and the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) will respond to our concerns.

The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food has responded to a number of debates I have attended on puppy smuggling, an issue I feel incredibly strongly about. The steps the Government are taking tonight will be very helpful in tackling that issue. The intention is clearly to tighten the requirements of the pet travel scheme to tackle this very cruel trade. The hon. Gentleman and others referred to increasing the age at which a puppy can enter the country, as well as banning the importation of dogs with cropped ears and heavily pregnant dogs. Those measures are vital. However, I am aware that the Dogs Trust is calling on the Government and the Minister to introduce visual checks to ensure that that good work will not be in vain, and to put a stop to puppy smuggling once and for all. I seek reassurance from the Minister that the Bill will achieve that. I hope we can achieve that, but if we cannot, what will be done to ensure that it can be stopped and to ensure that the Bill contains the correct protocol for carrying out the law?

In conversations I have had with the Minister, through debates in Westminster Hall and in this Chamber, one of my concerns has been about working alongside the Republic of Ireland and its legislation. Northern Ireland, of course, has a border with the Republic of Ireland, so it is important to get that right in relation to puppy smuggling. In the past, the Minister has reassured me on that point. Perhaps she could confirm that on the record.

Northern Ireland has led the way on microchipping dogs and cats. Indeed, in Northern Ireland we are doing many things on animal sentience. Dogs are more than a cosmetic piece for show, whenever you go somewhere. Dogs have always been incredibly important to me—all my life, I have always had a dog. I see dogs mostly as hunting dogs. I am very pleased to be a fully involved member of the sporting community, as are many Conservative Members. In particular, I commend the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for the hard work he has done with the Minister to deal with some of tonight’s issues. It is good to see that in place.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I use this intervention to inform the House that my constituent has brought 55 different databases to produce one horse database, with all the biological markings of horses on it. He is working—and I am working with him—with senior civil servants in DEFRA to produce a similar database for dogs and cats. As a further refinement, there are some rogues out there who remove microchips from dogs and put in a substitute microchip. I am working with the police to put the DNA that forces like my own collect into the database so that we can see when microchips have been removed and replaced.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and he is right in what he says. A lot of dogs have been stolen during the covid period and having microchips in place was one method of trying to find out where they had ended up. He has referred to one methodology to make sure we can improve the system, which is what he is committed to. I hope that tonight we can see more of that improvement happening.

This legislation is mostly UK-based and England-based. Like the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), and indeed the Minister, I am keen to see steps in the right direction on water quality. I very much welcome the stance we have taken in this House on fur and foie gras. Like others, I seek the Minister’s assurance that we have a duty to prevent the importation of fur and foie gras. Will she confirm whether that is something that could rightly be achieved in this Bill? If it is not, what forthcoming legislation could address it? I, for one, agree with the comments on this of the hon. Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones), among others. I am probably a plain eater, but the general public out there are probably very much opposed to those two things.

The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border referred to the issue of food quality, and it is important to have that in place.

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[Jo Churchill]

I would make two points. First, the hon. Member is presupposing that there will not be members of those devolved authorities on the committee. If people hold the most appropriate expertise, they may be there as a full member, or they may be co-opted in to look at a particular area of reference. There are other mechanisms that we always use in this place to hold the Minister to account. The Minister is bound to report to this place within three months of parliamentary sitting time. All the mechanisms will be in place, as well as those behind the scenes where we talk to devolved Ministers and so on, to make sure that things are raised in the appropriate way.

Amendment 2, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), would require the committee’s recommendations to respect religious rights, cultural traditions and regional heritage. We have heard the strength of feeling on this matter both here and in the other place, and I assure him that we have listened and decided to support the amendment.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for her careful consideration of my amendment. I think it is a sensible, proportionate amendment that will allow a committee with limited resources to focus on those really egregious areas where animal sentience is being abused, and not run into some of the less important areas. I thank her for accepting the amendment, and I thank all my hon. Friends who supported and signed it.

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

rose—