Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Debate between John Spellar and Kerry McCarthy

2nd reading
Friday 22nd March 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that; he expresses particularly well his point that trophy hunting is like something from a previous century. Its time has passed. Life moves on and society moves on.

As I was describing, it was interesting in the interviews I did that none of the commentators could respond when I asked, “How can you defend someone who wants to travel a distance to shoot a giraffe, stand on its corpse and bring parts of it back to this country?” Nobody seems to be able to answer that question. I am not saying it was ever right to do that, but what is absolutely clear now is that the British public are certain that they do not want any part of it.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend makes a very valid point. Some in favour of trophy hunting argue that it lends itself to supporting conservation in the country, which seems to me an entirely spurious argument. We have just seen really promising figures on tigers; there are 5,574 in the wild now. That is actually a tiny number; there should be many thousands more, but it shows that conservation efforts can pay off if we focus on certain species. Trophy hunting is not about conservation. As my right hon. Friend said, it is about people shooting animals, taking pictures of themselves parading around the corpses and cutting the animals’ heads off to take home. It is an abhorrent act.

[John Spellar]

I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend has been campaigning on this in Bristol and here in Parliament for many years, from the days when we worked in the Whips Office. She makes a very strong point.

The argument that says, “We are killing these animals in order to save them” is a bit like saying, “We created a desert and called it peace.” I really do not buy into that and, importantly, neither do the British public.

Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill

Debate between John Spellar and Kerry McCarthy

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 23rd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

Well, the hon. Gentleman did thank the hon. Member for Redcar, and he did not mention Anna, but let us not quibble over it. She does deserve a lot of credit for her indefatigable campaigning on this issue, and I have to say with no offence to the current hon. Member for Redcar that I miss her in this place.

The Government never really explained why they would not support that Bill back in 2017, and then we got bogged down in the process of bringing in a joint sentencing and sentience Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny—the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), is nodding away, because we both went through that process. It was basically all about the sentience side, and I would argue that it was about delaying the sentience side, which I will come on to later. There was no need for pre-legislative scrutiny of one clause that talked about sentencing.

We then debated another version of the Bill on 10 July 2019. I recall the Government saying then that it was really important to legislate as quickly as possible. The Bill went into Committee, and I was on that Committee. The Government wanted to get it done and dusted before summer recess, so they did not want to talk about any amendments or complicate things. There was a suggestion that there should be a more severe penalty for those who film themselves indulging in animal cruelty and post it online, partly as a deterrent, but also because such actions encourage other people to indulge in that behaviour. I must admit that quite a lot of 2019 is a bit of a blur to me. We did not know whether we were proroguing or nor proroguing, getting a Brexit deal or not getting a Brexit deal, having an election or not having an election.

That Bill did not become law either. The Government promised to legislate in autumn 2019, and then they called an election. I mean no disrespect to the hon. Member for West Dorset, but I do not see why, when this was in the Queen’s Speech, it has been left to a private Member’s Bill—it could have been Government legislation. I see the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) in his place. He was here when we debated this in 2019, and he joined me in saying that there was so much of this legislation—the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill was another example—where the Government kept saying, “We really want to do this, but we just don’t have time to bring it forward.” But there have been loads of days when we have been on a one-line Whip, having general debates. We could have got this legislation through in one day, and then everyone could have taken part, and by now it would have been law.

Although the Government will seek to get a lot of credit for supporting this Bill now, it could have become law in 2017 when Anna Turley first proposed it. That means that we have had three years of light sentences for the very worst animal abusers and three years of not being able to send out a strong message to potential abusers that they would face five years’ imprisonment. That deterrent has not been there, and that is a great shame. Having said that, I welcome the fact that we are here now. I hope that the accelerator will be pressed and the Bill will get through Committee quickly and through the House of Lords, and perhaps by year end it will be law.

While we are talking about the messages that are sent out and the importance of a deterrent, I think that children should be taught about animal welfare in schools. Far too many people, and particularly young men, think that the way to treat a dog is to be very harsh with it, to abuse it and to almost beat it into submission, as if that is the way to train a dog. There are others who abuse animals because they find enjoyment in it. Discussing animal welfare at an early age—particularly for children from families that do not have pets—would be really important in instilling the right behaviour and helping people to understand what owning a pet is all about.

I would not want to do anything to delay the Bill, but I hope that reports of a far more comprehensive animal welfare Bill are true, because they have been kicking around for quite a while—I see the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), smiling. Animal welfare is about a lot more than being nice to puppies or pets generally. There seems to be a focus on what I would describe as the low-hanging fruit, which is the “being nice to puppies” end of the spectrum. It is great that we have legislated for things such as Lucy’s law and trying to crack down on puppy farming, although I understand from Marc Abraham, who promoted that campaign through Pup Aid, that there are still some concerns about loopholes, so there is a new petition about the need to tighten that up. Finn’s law was a really good step. A petition on pet theft was discussed earlier this week in Westminster Hall, and there are also debates about ensuring that the law on microchipping is enforced.

[John Spellar]

My hon. Friend rightly mentions microchipping. It appears that there has been very limited enforcement of that by the police. Does she agree that the Home Office ought to give clear instructions to police forces that this is the law of the land and therefore they need to enforce it? I suspect that the police will find that the perpetrators are often subjects of interest in other criminal matters as well.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He is absolutely right, and of course there is the whole question about how animal welfare is enforced at a local level and what resources that are made available. In the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, we have also debated the dangerous dogs legislation—the breed-specific legislation and things like that—and it really is a question of resources on that front.

As I said, there is a lot going on about being nice to dogs, in particular, and to pets, but at the same time as we talk about Britain having the highest animal welfare standards in the world we still allow hunts to flout the hunting ban. We repeatedly see stories of people basically getting away with chasing a wild animal and ripping it to shreds; they are not being prosecuted for that. Millions of game birds are raised in factory farms in France, Spain, Portugal and Poland and imported into the UK every year and shot in the name of sport. People will have different opinions on shooting as a sport, but I think we can all agree that the conditions in which those birds are raised in those factory farms and in which they are imported are very questionable, aside from the separate issue of driven grouse shooting, which we have discussed in Parliament recently. We are also allowing the “unscientific, inhumane and ineffective” badger cull, to quote the experts, to go ahead, with thousands more badgers due to be slaughtered this autumn.

We have also seen a failure to curb the unnecessary rise in animal experimentation and to address what leaving the EU means for the duplication of experiments if we are not subject to REACH, the EU regulation on the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. I always feel that I have to say this when I speak on this issue: I am not totally opposed to all animal experimentation. I have a niece with cystic fibrosis, and I would want to see whatever is possible done to procure medical advances that might help solve those genetic issues, but I think most people would agree that a huge number of unnecessary animal experiments are still being carried out. There is so much duplication and so little data-sharing, and that will become worse once we leave the EU because we will not be part of the same regime. That is a cause for concern.

The hon. Member for West Dorset mentioned live exports. Again, a promise made during the Brexit referendum campaign was that we would end the practice. I would argue that we could have done a lot more, because the EU set minimum standards that governed the export of live animals and we could have gone further. As I understand it, there were efforts in the EU led by, I think, Germany and the Netherlands, to reduce the number of hours for which animals could travel, but the UK opposed that in EU negotiations before the Brexit referendum. Before the general election, the latest news was that the Government were going to ban live exports for fattening but not for slaughter, and there was no real explanation as to why that was the case, but we may have moved on.