Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she plans to bring forward legislative proposals to strengthen animal welfare protections in (a) the UK and (b) abroad.

HM Government outlined our ambitious programme of legislative and non-legislative animal welfare reforms in our Action Plan for Animal Welfare, published in May 2021.

Animal welfare is a devolved matter and we continue to work closely with the devolved administrations to raise our already high standards of animal welfare across the United Kingdom.

The Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which extends to Scotland as well as England and Wales, was reintroduced in May 2022 and will continue its passage through the Commons when parliamentary time allows. The Bill delivers key manifesto commitments to end the export of live animals for fattening and slaughter, crack down on illegal puppy smuggling, and ban the keeping of primates as pets. It will also update the Zoo Licensing Act 1981, introduce a new pet abduction offence following the work of the Pet Theft Taskforce and reform legislation to tackle livestock worrying which goes back to the 1950s.

Also on the domestic front, the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 became law in the last Session and we are in the process of setting up the Animal Sentience Committee to advise HM Government on policies that impact on the welfare of animals. We have also introduced new powers for police and courts to tackle the illegal and cruel sport of hare coursing through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and we also backed bills to increase the maximum penalties for animal cruelty offences from six months to five years imprisonment, introduce penalty notices for animal welfare offences and to ban glue traps, all of which have received Royal Assent.

For animals overseas, the Ivory Act 2018 came into force in June 2022 to ensure protection for elephants and we are backing private member bills to ban the trade in shark fins and the import of hunting trophies. We have also continued to explore options in order to prohibit the advertising and offering for sale, here, of unacceptably low welfare activities involving wild animals.