Moved by Lord Benyon That the Bill do now pass. The Parliamentary
Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con) My Lords, I said at Second
Reading that this Bill is our opportunity to build on the UK’s
record as a world leader in animal welfare. Animal sentience is a
matter of scientific fact and it is only right that it is
recognised in UK law and properly considered in policy
decision-making. I am therefore pleased...Request free trial
Moved by
That the Bill do now pass.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs () (Con)
My Lords, I said at Second Reading that this Bill is our
opportunity to build on the UK’s record as a world leader in
animal welfare. Animal sentience is a matter of scientific fact
and it is only right that it is recognised in UK law and properly
considered in policy decision-making. I am therefore pleased to
see the Bill progress towards becoming law, an outcome for which
there is clear and unambiguous public demand.
It has been an honour to lead the Bill through this House. As
your Lordships know, it is the first Bill that I have had the
privilege of guiding through this House, and the experience has
been an educational one. The House is known to offer particularly
robust and careful scrutiny of proposed legislation, and I can
certainly confirm that it has lived up to its reputation. While
the hours of debate may have been long, they were also
constructive and informative.
I thank noble Lords on all Benches for working constructively and
coming forward with positive suggestions. I am particularly
grateful to my noble friends , , who I am pleased to see has
risen like Lazarus from his sickbed to be with us today, , , , , Lord Ridley, whose imminent
departure from this House is a matter of great regret, Lady
McIntosh and Lady Meyer. I am also grateful to the noble Lord,
, whose understanding of these
matters is second to none, the noble and learned Lord, , the noble Earl, Lord,
Kinnoull, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady
Mallalieu. Finally, I thank all noble Lords who discussed the
Bill with me, inside and outside the Chamber. The Bill, and the
animal sentience committee’s draft terms of reference, are in
better shape than they would otherwise have been as a result of
your Lordships’ engagement.
In addition, I thank officials in my department for their many
hours of work on the Bill, including the Bill manager, Katherine
Yeşilirmak, and her colleagues Hannah Edwins, Jack Darrant,
Phoebe Harris and Cathrine Hughes. I am also grateful to my
private secretary, Lucy Skelton, and to in the Whips’ Office.
I was delighted to see noble Lords across the House support the
amendment to include decapods and cephalopods in the Bill. There
has been much interest in this issue, and our decision was fully
informed by a robust research report.
I must also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and
Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, on the Front Benches
opposite, for their time and constructive engagement with the
Bill. It is a better Bill for their involvement. I am also
particularly grateful to my noble friends Lady Bloomfield of
Hinton Waldrist and , whose support and
guidance has been indispensable over the past few months.
I am glad that my noble friend and I are
united in, to use the words in his Motion, supporting measures to
improve animal welfare. I have known and worked with him on these
matters for a great many years, and I understand his commitment
to animal welfare. I do not propose to revisit all the arguments
made at earlier stages of the Bill, but I would like to take a
moment to reassure my noble friend that the accountability
furnished by the animal sentience committee will be
proportionate, timely and targeted.
My noble friend has expressed concern that the committee would
glue up government with its analysis and proposals. I
respectfully disagree: if anything, I believe it will oil the
wheels of the policy-making process. We have indicated that the
committee should look to produce six to eight reports a year. It
will have to select policy decisions very carefully, and the
administrative burden that is created will be light. Furthermore,
the committee is not empowered to make recommendations on the
substance of policy decisions; its recommendations will be
strictly limited to consideration of the animal welfare impacts
of the policy decision. It is therefore difficult to see how the
committee would hinder the business of government in the way that
my noble friend describes.
I understand why my noble friend has asked about the need for two
committees. To be clear, the animal sentience committee is the
only new committee to be established. It needs to be referred to
in statute to provide for the effective parliamentary
accountability that we envisage. By comparison, the existing
Animal Welfare Committee advises, rather than scrutinises, Defra
and the devolved Governments of Wales and Scotland about
particular animal welfare issues that have been remitted to it.
Ministers are not required by law to respond to the points made
in the reports published by the Animal Welfare Committee, which
is not established in legislation. I hope this reassures my noble
friend, and that he will be willing not to move his amendment. I
beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
Moved by
At the end insert “but that this House, while strongly supporting
measures to improve animal welfare, regrets the way in which the
proposed Animal Sentience Committee is to be established”.
(Con)
My Lords, I draw attention to my positions in the Countryside
Alliance, including chairman, which I have declared in the
register of Members’ interests. I regret detaining the House. I
appreciate that there is important business next on the Police,
Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. However, as the Animal Welfare
(Sentience) Bill leaves the House, I feel that there are
important issues that need to be addressed. I would like to make
two points at the outset.
First, none of what I am going to say is an attack on my noble
friend the Minister. He is a good friend and a good man who has
been given the impossible job of defending a Bill about which
many of us have considerable reservations, and has done so with
unfailing grace and humour. I am genuinely sorry to differ from
him on this measure. Secondly, every one of us in this House
wants to promote animal welfare. I certainly do. I feel strongly
that animals must be treated properly but, whatever the good
intentions of those promoting the Bill, I fear that it is not a
wise measure as drafted. In fact, if we take a step back, it is
actually an incredible measure. It seriously proposes that the
effect of any government policy on the welfare of animals may be
considered by an unfettered statutory committee and that
Ministers must respond to that committee’s reports.
When the Bill started, that measure applied only to vertebrates;
now it applies to cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans.
That was one of the few amendments made to the Bill, and that was
by the Government. At the height of a pandemic which has killed
thousands of people and cost our economy billions, we have
decided to devote time to passing a law to ensure that no
government policy can hurt the feelings of a prawn.
The Government rejected every other amendment put to them. We
pointed out that sentience is not actually defined in the
legislation; apparently that does not matter. What matters is
that Ministers must have regard to sentience, even if we do not
know what it actually is. We asked for safeguards to ensure the
expertise of the committee’s members. We were told that such
protections were not necessary. We asked for constraints to the
committee’s scope. We were told that limits to the committee’s
unfettered remit were not necessary either. Crucially, we asked
why the balancing provisions in the Lisbon treaty, which
specifically exempt religious rites, cultural traditions and
regional heritage, were not included and why the Bill goes so
much further than the EU measure it claims to replace. We were
told that this balancing provision was not necessary either. In
fact, apparently no change was necessary.
The Government have been able to ignore every concern expressed,
largely on this side, by relying on the kindness of
strangers—uncritical support for the measures that would have
guaranteed the defeat of any amendment. I wonder whether the
Government will come to regret that.
I am sure that Ministers do not intend that this new committee
will get out of hand. I am sure they intend to appoint sensible
people to it. I am sure they believe their own rhetoric when they
say that Ministers decide so they will resist the committee’s
recommendations if necessary. This is of little reassurance when
the Government have already capitulated in the face of a social
media campaign to introduce the committee in the first place. It
is like saying, “Don’t worry, we are going to make sure the
burglar won’t take anything from your house, but we are going to
let him in to make helpful suggestions about your security”. This
committee will set its own priorities. It will decide its own
agenda. It will rove across government at will and demand answers
to its recommendations. The Government may believe that they are
answering public concern by setting up the committee in this way,
but I fear they are making a massive rod for their own back.
This measure departs from the usual practice of taking careful
and specific steps to ensure animal welfare by injecting a broad
and ill-defined principle into our public administration. The
danger is that, in doing so, it will effectively if unwittingly
hand an institutional footing to the animal rights agenda. We are
giving leverage and power to that single-issue ideology, which
can be uncompromising and extreme, without thinking through the
consequences.
We are trying to beat a mutating virus. We are trying to level
up, to build back better. We need Government to take better
decisions, and more quickly. We need to get things done faster,
yet we are putting in place a barely constrained mechanism which
is simply bound to glue up government. I am afraid that I differ
from my noble friend on that. At best, even with sensible people
in place, the committee will put spanners in the works because
frankly that will be its job. It will make it harder for
Ministers to deliver, to take difficult balancing decisions,
which they sometimes must, or to ignore populist sentiment. At
worst, without the necessary safeguards in place, the committee
risks becoming a Trojan horse, used especially to attack wildlife
management farming or the well-being and way of life of our rural
communities. We know that this is a real risk because the animal
rights agenda is in plain sight, and because its proponents are
already incessantly abusing judicial review to force government
to do its will.
It is usually this House which provides a robust check on
measures propelled by populist wins, yet we have passed the Bill
with no amendment, except to extend its scope to beasts such as
cuttlefish. Some noble Lords may remember that, 30 years ago, it
was only the sober intervention of this House which prevented the
then Dangerous Dogs Bill from inadvertently making it a strict
liability imprisonable offence for a dog to cause injury by
accidentally knocking someone off their bicycle. That Bill had
foolishly been driven through all its Commons stages in a single
day, but today we are showing ourselves to be more inclined to
bend without sufficient thought to populism, and now it will fall
to Members of the House of Commons to address the deficiencies in
this proposal.
We all want to advance animal welfare, but the sentience
provisions in the Lisbon treaty had little or nothing to do with
the succession of admirable legislation which for over a century
has been passed by this Parliament. In fact, with Brexit, we have
the freedom to pass laws to protect animals which would not have
been possible before—to address puppy smuggling, for instance.
Even before this sentience Bill has been passed, other government
Bills to protect animals have been introduced or announced, which
only goes to prove that this Bill, creating this committee in
this way, is not necessarily to protect animals.
I have offered these remarks in the hope that even as the Bill
leaves this House, there is still a chance that its serious
deficiencies will be addressed and that we will return to
focusing on specific workable measures to improve the welfare of
animals in ways which we all want and can all support. I beg to
move.
(Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister who, with
good humour throughout, has defended what is frankly almost
indefensible. He has done extremely well, and I hope that he is
congratulated by the higher ranks of the Government. I associate
myself entirely with the excellent points made by my noble friend
Lord Herbert. I will not repeat them, but I will repeat that this
is a shockingly bad piece of legislation which should be an
embarrassment to the Government.
(Lab)
My Lords, I remind the House of my interests as a member of the
RSPCA and president of the Countryside Alliance and the Horse
Trust. I too thank the Minister for his patience and courtesy
during the passage of this Bill. Given the opposition from parts
of the House, this cannot have been an unalloyed pleasure for
him.
It gives me no pleasure to support the amendment tabled by the
noble Lord, Lord Herbert, but I must. I cannot understand how a
Government who were elected in no small part promising to reduce
bureaucracy, especially that which came from Europe, can have
taken the wholly uncontroversial subject of putting animal
sentience on the statute book, something which nobody would
disagree with, and now seem bent on turning it into a textbook
bureaucratic nightmare.
When the former Master of the Rolls, the noble and learned Lord,
, told us during the passage
of the Bill that it creates a magnet for judicial review; when
the foremost vet in this House, the noble Lord, , who supports the Bill, tells us
that its scope needs definition and its focus sharpened on to
future policy decisions; when the former Leader of the House, the
noble Lord, , the former leader of the
party opposite, the noble Lord, Lord Howard, and many others,
tell the Government that they need to think again, yet they
resist and reject all amendments, save for a small number of
government ones, it makes me wonder whether this House has actual
value as a scrutinising House when they have the comfort of a
large majority in another place and know that they are able to
push defective Bills through almost unamended there.
15:30:00
The Bill stirs up trouble for the future, not just for this
Government but for future Governments. I hope that those who come
to consider it in another place will have more flexibility to
knock it into shape, because it surely needs it.
(Con)
I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Herbert for taking the
trouble to move his amendment today and giving us an opportunity
to say a few words in the dying moments of the Bill. I also
apologise to your Lordships for my failure to move my amendments
last week on Report. As my noble friend on the Front Bench said,
I was knocked over by Covid, but whether I jumped up like Lazarus
I am not entirely sure. I think the reason that I am back so
rapidly is that my wife was sick of having me about the house,
but I am awfully glad to be back in your Lordships’ House
anyway.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, just said, this Bill
introduces the concept of sentience into English law for the
first time, despite the fact that it has been the basis for 150
years of very sound animal welfare legislation, so you might
wonder why we need to put it on the statute book today. I suggest
we probably do not. It also sets up a new animal welfare
committee—the animal sentience committee—despite the fact that we
have three very good committees looking at animal welfare at the
moment, each of which could have fulfilled the tasks set for this
committee, so you might wonder why we want this.
As the noble Baroness also said, this is a revising Chamber,
except that the Government have chosen to ignore all the
suggestions made by Members of this House on all sides, as she
said: the noble Lord, , whose knowledge of veterinary
science can hardly be equalled; the noble Baroness, Lady Deech,
who I do not think is in her place today, but who put forward
some very important points; and the noble Baroness, Lady
Mallalieu, herself, on the other side of the House, who made very
reasoned amendments and suggestions to this House—as everybody
did—none of which were politically based at all.
I have done as much research as I can, and I believe that this is
the first statutory committee set up by statute which has no
statutory terms of reference. The Government recognised this when
it was raised in Committee, and so between Committee and Report
they introduced 27 pages of terms of reference for the committee
that they propose to set up. But they are not statutory; they can
be altered by any official or Minister at the stroke of a pen.
They have absolutely no basis in law; they are effectively
legislatively worthless.
The Government have argued throughout that this is a minor
measure of very little significance—in which case, why have your
Lordships been bothered with it for four long, paralysingly
boring days? I do not think it is a measure of little
significance. Like my noble friend Lord Herbert, I think it is a
potentially very dangerous measure that will come back to bite
this Government—or, more particularly, future Governments—as the
years go by. This House will regret the fact that we have passed
it without any amendment and have allowed ourselves to be rolled
over.
There is little support for this measure on the Government
Benches. I have looked very carefully, but I have seen very
little support for it on the Opposition Benches. In fact, I have
seen very little support for it anywhere except on the Front
Benches, where a rather unsavoury deal has been stitched up to
allow this to go to the other place without a single amendment,
despite the care and attention which your Lordships have given
the Bill. It is the tradition in this House that we send Bills to
the other place with good will; we wish them a fair wind. I do
not wish this Bill a fair wind. I hope the other place does the
duty that we should have done and changes it very considerably
or, better still, destroys it completely. Failing that, I hope
that a sensible Secretary of State in future fails to enact
it.
(Con)
My Lords, I, too, support what my noble friend Lord Herbert said.
I underline a point made by my noble friend . This sets a parliamentary
precedent in the appointment of statutory committees which could
have huge ramifications for future Bills. The Government will be
able to say that we do not need to set out the statutory terms of
reference for the committee because we already have the precedent
of this Bill.
I am sorry that my noble friend has had to take this Bill
through the House. It should have been another Minister. My noble
friend was absolutely right when he said that he has had to drive
it through the House. He has not looked right; he has not looked
straight ahead. He has looked left. He rightly paid tribute to
his co-driver, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock.
Finally, I am disappointed that I have not yet received a reply
from my noble friend to the questions I posed on Report. I hope
that he will expedite those.
(CB)
My Lords, I, also, support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord
Herbert. Even at this late stage, it is worth emphasising that
the absence of any restriction on the purview of the sentience
committee will mean that no recreational activity, cultural
tradition, regional heritage or religious rite—in its practice or
observance—is safe from scrutiny by the committee.
In Committee, the Minister was good enough to give some
reassurances about the long-standing practices of religious
slaughter in this country going back hundreds of years. The
trouble is that the only policy that has been disclosed means
that it will be open to any future Secretary of State, Minister
or future Government to take a different view. Unlike under the
Lisbon treaty, there is absolutely nothing to restrain them from
doing so.
As I said on Report, if the Government decided not to follow a
recommendation from the sentience committee on contentious issues
relating to animal welfare, it would inevitably give rise to the
potential for judicial review and challenge. You cannot stop
people bringing a judicial review. The Government may be
confident that they would win, but these will not be
straightforward matters. One will have to consider whether the
sentience committee has acted within its statutory rights,
whether or not the evidence sufficiently supports what the
committee recommends and whether the Government have sufficient
other factors which outweigh the recommendation of the committee.
I agree that this Bill is going to come back to bite badly.
(Con)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly. I associate myself totally
with the brilliantly moved amendment from my noble friend . He
encapsulated the folly of this legislation, from which I have
kept myself apart because I was, frankly, so appalled to think
that a Conservative Government could introduce such a piece of
legislation.
My noble friend Lord Herbert was exactly right in all he said, as
was my noble friend . It is a joy to see him back.
I hope that he has made a full recovery. These are people who
know about the countryside. Nobody could have put it better than
my noble friend Lord Herbert when he asked why Parliament was
consuming itself with consideration for the welfare of the prawn
when, all around, people are in danger from a deadly virus. It
shows a completely warped sense of perspective and priority of
which I feel deeply ashamed. If my noble friend presses his
amendment to the vote—which I hope he will—he will have my
unreserved support.
(Non-Afl)
My Lords, I also associate myself with and will support the
regret amendment. I have not been able to be at the discussions
on the Bill, but I followed them very closely in Hansard because
it is an issue I am interested in. There is one point to note:
the noble Lord, , made a brief
reference to populism. I want to speak on behalf of the public,
who might well support animal welfare, but I can tell you that if
you talk to anybody outside this House and tell them what the
Bill contains, they are equally appalled. The irony is that it is
not fair for anyone to try to say that, as a consequence, the
public might somehow get the blame for this badly formed, badly
written, badly drafted, philosophically ridiculous and anti-human
Bill. I do not think that is fair. Although I am sure all of us
are concerned with animal welfare, the Bill is not about
preserving the welfare of animals. It actually takes us into very
dark, deep territory, and a bureaucratic nightmare. It is
completely anti-democratic and the public would be appalled if
they read the debates in Hansard in great detail.
(Con)
My Lords, I support my noble friend and my noble
and indestructible friend . I asked at Second Reading:
to what problem is this legislation a solution? I listened
carefully through Committee and Report and I did not get an
answer. I am afraid that I am reluctantly thrown back to the
conclusion that this was a Bill brought forward in response to a
fake press release—that, at the Dispatch Box in another place,
the Minister was panicked into promising legislation in response
to a false story to the effect that Conservatives had voted to
say that animals were not sentient. Declamatory law of this kind
invites unintended consequences. It is almost a textbook
definition of how not to legislate. It does not reflect well on
our lawmaking process that this House has been prevented from
exerting its ameliorating and scrutinising function. I hope that
that function will be taken up in another place.
of Hardington Mandeville
(LD)
My Lords, I listened carefully to the noble Lord, . I fear I do
not agree that this Bill was a waste of parliamentary time. A
large number of Bills are coming forward during the pandemic that
are not health related, but it is important that legislation
moves forward and does not get bogged down in Covid. Similarly, I
listened to the comments of the noble Lord, , who,
unfortunately, was not able to be here at the beginning of the
debate. I live in a rural community and support the rural way of
life, and I do not feel the Bill threatens either the ethos or
the practical way of life in rural communities. This is
overstated.
I congratulate the Minister on his remarks and on eventually
getting this very short but important Bill to the point of being
able to pass it on to the other place. I did not envisage at the
start of the process that it would be so controversial in some
quarters of the Government Benches, who, in their own words, have
attempted to paralyse the House with boredom.
I thank the Minister for his time and that of his officials in
providing briefings along the way, and for his patience in
dealing with the many amendments and queries that came forward. I
also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, for her
time and assistance in helping to steer the Bill forward. It is
always better when Front Benches are united in moving a Bill
forward.
The amendments that have been accepted have improved the Bill. It
will be interesting to see how the Bill is received in the other
place and whether it will make any further amendments. No doubt
it will be heavily lobbied by the spokespeople this afternoon. I
support the thrust of the Bill and look forward to working with
the Minister on future legislation.
of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, on these Benches we have listened to the speeches from
the noble Lord, , and other
noble Lords, but we cannot support the amendment. I am sure noble
Lords are not surprised to hear that. I will not go into any
details. At Second Reading, in Committee and on Report, we
discussed in depth and at length exactly the same issues as we
have today, and I am fairly confident that any noble Lord present
at any of those debates understands fully my feelings on these
issues.
15:45:00
The vast majority of Labour Back-Benchers support the Bill. There
is no Front-Bench stitch-up, but it is good when Front Benches
can work together to get what I consider to be good legislation
through the House. Members may disagree with me, but that is my
opinion.
On that note, I thank the Minister for his support in
understanding the Bill, listening to opposition concerns at the
early stages and bringing forward the terms of reference, for
example, and other amendments that have made the Bill much
better—including the amendment on decapods and cephalopods that I
first put forward in Committee. I also thank the noble Baroness,
Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. As I said, and as she
said, it is important that we can all work together across the
House to make a Bill better.
I will not say anything further; it is going to be a very busy
day today. I thank the officials for all their time. We support
the Bill and believe it is better than when it first arrived in
this House. I wish it much luck in the other place.
(Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Herbert for his
contributions to today’s proceedings and earlier debates on the
Bill. I have previously addressed at length a number of the
points he raised, so I do not intend to detain the House long. He
made an incredibly good speech, and some of his points struck
home—I felt a bit like that painting of St Sebastian.
The weakest argument he put, echoed by my noble friend , seemed to suggest that this
House cannot hold two thoughts in its head at the same time. Of
course, the priority of this House, the Government and all of us
is to deal with the pandemic, but the idea that you cannot
produce legislation on any other subject, which is the logical
conclusion of his argument, is one that I am afraid I do not
agree with. But he made other very good points.
I suggest to the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, that this
concept of animal sentience was on the statute book; we had it
under Article 13 of the Lisbon treaty. The debate, which will
continue in another place, is about the degree to which we
transpose that. I understand the points she made.
I make an absolute assurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech,
who is not here. The noble and learned Lord, , made a very good point, and
I respect him and his knowledge. On the point about judicial
review, we have done all we can to limit the duties that a
Minister has to abide by. That is where judicial review really
hurts Ministers—if they fail to follow a duty in the Bill—but I
absolutely concede that organisations will continuously try to
judicially review the Government, on this legislation and
elsewhere. The question is: will it be successful? Will it be
permitted to be taken forward? Just the week before last, an
organisation wanted to take the Government to judicial review and
was refused by the courts.
Finally, on religious rites, I made a promise on Report and
continue to make that point. The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the
noble Lord, , and others made genuine points
about concerns in the communities they come from or sought to
represent in their words on this Bill. I and the Government take
these concerns really seriously and want to give them every
assurance that the Government’s policy remains to support them on
these matters of religious importance and on how they wish to
have animals slaughtered. We will make officials and Ministers
available to give those added reassurances.
I again thank all those involved to date in the Bill’s passage
and hope my noble friend will be persuaded not to push his
amendment.
(Con)
My Lords, this has been a good airing of the issues; we have all
said our piece. I have no wish to try the patience of the House,
which wishes to get on to other matters, any longer. I hope that
Members of Parliament will heed what has been said, and that in
due course we will have an opportunity to consider amendments
that they make, so that this House performs the job of being a
revising Chamber—because the Bill has not so far been revised at
all. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.
Bill passed and sent to the Commons.
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