Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill  

Debate between Natalie Elphicke and Alex Sobel

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel]

I thank the right hon. Member. Obviously, there are wild deer and deer farmed for venison; both types exist in this country.

I do not want to hold up the debate for too long, so I will conclude. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West said, the Labour party is the party of animal welfare—that is a strong priority for Labour. We have long called for a ban on live export for slaughter. Every year, millions of farm animals are at risk of facing long-distance journeys, including the new animals that we have tabled amendments to cover. Amendment 5 aims to future-proof the Bill. Particularly as the climate changes, farming will change, and we need to be able to evolve and update the legislation as practices change. I support amendments 2, 3, 4 and 5, which stand in the name of my hon. Friend, and I hope to see the Bill go much further.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I strongly welcome the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill. It is absolutely right that we ban the disgusting practice of live export for slaughter. We have driven it from Dover, and when the Bill becomes law, it will mean that it cannot come back. That is fantastic news.

This is an issue of great interest and impact for my constituency, because at the peak of that activity, we saw 100 transportations through the port of Dover. Excellent local campaigners, particularly Yvonne and Ian Birchall from Kent Action Against Live Exports, have worked tirelessly over decades to get us to this position, and I congratulate them on that. They have been very diligent in keeping me and many Members from across the House informed of the pernicious activities involved in this particularly despicable trade, but I have never heard them mention a concern about reindeer, which are dealt with in the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). I will come on to the other breeds mentioned in the amendments that are before the Committee.

This issue is still live in the constituency that I have the honour to represent. It came to the fore with the introduction of Irish Ferries, which became the third ferry provider into Dover a short time ago. I strongly welcome Irish Ferries to Dover, but when that company arrived, I had to seek assurances from it that it would not be engaging in live exports across the channel. The reason for that has been very well explored in the instruction debate: it is something that can and does happen in the island of Ireland. In relation to the land bridge issue, it is concerning that a difference between parts of our United Kingdom will continue to exist. It is unfortunate that a change as important as the one we are making today, which is enabled by our Brexit freedoms, throws fresh light on a gap that has been growing since the implementation of the Windsor framework. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on the effectiveness of the road bridge, because we are legislating, which means that this issue is important enough to legislate on. An answer that relies on a commercial solution suggests a weaker position in relation to that land bridge than some of us would like to see.

Let me turn to the Opposition’s amendment 5, tabled by the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). I note that it seeks to apply a regulatory extension—secondary legislation—for deer, llamas and alpaca in relation to this important issue. I am mindful that even the campaign group Compassion in World Farming has said in the last 48 hours that it is not aware of any activity that would fall into the fattening and slaughter definition we are looking at today for those particular breeds. The reason I draw this to the Minister’s attention is the context of the comments he made about the World Trade Organisation and other international trading laws to which the UK is subject. I pause at that point to repeat that those are laws to which the UK as a whole is subject, not just Great Britain.