Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs (EFRA) Committee has said that the Government’s new
animal welfare committee must have the
powers it needs to do
its job. The EFRA Committee
has written to the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs, Rt Hon George Eustace
MP, seeking assurances
that the Government’s new Animal Sentience
Committee (ASC) will be able to ensure
that all government policies consider their impact
on sentient animals.
The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill is to have its Second
Reading in the House of Commons on 18 January – which
is MPs’ first opportunity to debate the main
principles of a Bill. The
Committee has written to Mr Eustace
to set out its views on the Bill ahead of
that debate.
The Bill will create an Animal Sentience
Committee (ASC) which will publish
reports about whether animal
sentience (feelings or
consciousness) is properly considered
when government policy is
developed, to which Ministers will have to
respond.
The new draft of the Bill has been broadly
welcomed by the EFRA Committee, after it
heavily criticised a vague initial version
of it in 2017, which the committee said would have left
almost any government policy or announcement open to
judicial review.
Despite improvements to the draft Bill, MPs on the EFRA
select committee made several further
comments. They said in their letter that it
is important to have people on the
ASC with sufficient expertise in animal welfare
and scientific knowledge. They said it
was not clear the amount of time allocated for the
Committee’s work (15-20 days a year) was enough to attract
high-calibre candidates to the role. The MPs asked the
Secretary of State to review the time commitment of ASC members
after its first year of operations - and increase it if
necessary.
The EFRA Committee said it was also important that the ASC
had sufficient independence from government. It therefore
asked Ministers to confirm that the ASC would be able
to publish its reviews without requiring the approval of his
department or any other part of government.
The MPs on the committee also stressed that the
ASC must have sufficient powers to gather the
information it needs from government departments to do its
work. Otherwise, the MPs said, there was a danger that the
ASC might become “another toothless Whitehall committee
whose reports gather dust while critical issues of animal
welfare within policy making go largely
unaddressed”.
