My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson of Abinger and Lady Fookes, for this amendment, which is a means to embed the needs and welfare of animals in agricultural policy and to partly fill the vacuum of this Government not transposing across EU animal sentience legislation or introducing their own legislation, which they had promised to do in their manifesto. The Liberal Democrats accept that animals are sentient beings with intrinsic worth. We have consistently argued this throughout the stages of this Bill, in my remarks at Second Reading when welcoming the fact that Clause 1 allows payments to be made for animal welfare, and in opposition to easing the regulatory framework on gene editing.
Animal sentience is the only issue not being brought across when we leave the EU at the end of the year. It marks the end of a proud era when the UK led the rest of Europe to better animal welfare standards. Indeed, it was the UK Government who first suggested and then got animal sentience accepted into the treaty article in 1997.
We support the intention of this amendment. If the Minister is not intending to accept it, can I press her to say when legislation on animal sentience will be delivered, and whether she guarantees that it will have comparable or stronger powers than the existing EU legislation? I ask her to be very clear on the latter point, as there are rumblings of a pushback in the Government on the way that Ministers report how they take into account sentience when making decisions. Only an open and transparent process will give people confidence about how the needs of animals are considered in policy decisions. Without a guarantee to at least match the existing powers, the sad reality is that our animals will have less protection than has been the case while we have been a member of the EU.
My Lords, during the passage of the EU withdrawal Bill in 2017, there were several amendments in the Commons on animal sentience. There were also debates on the issue when the Bill was in the Lords and attempts to table similar amendments to other pieces of legislation. Theresa May’s Government committed to clarifying the legal position on animal sentience as part of their Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill. This Government reintroduced the Bill in 2019, but it fell when Parliament was dissolved for the general election. A commitment to strengthen animal welfare rules was included in the December 2019 Queen’s Speech, and, as I understand it, there is a Private Member’s Bill which will have its Second Reading in the Commons in October. We hope that it will be similar to the previous Government’s legislation and that, if this is a substitute for a government Bill, Ministers and Whips will give it the time it needs to reach us in the Lords.
In the meantime, I express regret that the noble Baroness, Lady Hodgson, felt that she needed to table the amendment in the first place, given that Her Majesty’s Government have not managed to deliver a Bill in three years on this important issue. We agree that there should be a strong protection for animals and a recognition of their ability to experience feelings and pain, with all the implications that has for our treatment of them. However, we are not convinced that this is the appropriate vehicle for it. As such, I hope that the Minister can clarify the point about the Commons Private Member’s Bill and, if that response is satisfactory, the amendment will not be pushed to test the opinion of the House.
My Lords, we can be rightly proud that the UK already has world-class animal welfare standards, but this Government are committed to strengthening these further.
We have introduced a ban on the commercial third-party sale of puppies and kittens, known as Lucy’s Law, to clamp down on puppy farming. Through the Wild Animals in Circuses Act 2019, we have legislated to ensure that wild animals can no longer perform in travelling circuses. We supported the Animal Welfare (Service Animals) Act 2019, commonly known as Finn’s Law, to increase protections for police animals, and CCTV is now mandatory in all slaughterhouses in England; this will help maintain and improve welfare standards. We are committed to banning the keeping of primates as pets. We published a call for evidence in October 2019 that ended in January this year. This exercise has informed proposals on which we will shortly be consulting. On Thursday, we reiterated our manifesto commitment to end excessively long journeys for slaughter and fattening.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, that legal obligations towards animals should be enforced. That is why the Government are also supporting the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill, which will increase the maximum custodial penalty for animal cruelty offences from six months’ imprisonment to five years. The new maximum sentence will send a clear signal to any potential offenders that animal cruelty will not be tolerated in this country and provide one of the toughest sanctions in Europe.
I place it on record that it has never been in dispute that animals are sentient beings, capable of experiencing pain or suffering, and this fact is central to our commitment to strengthening animal welfare standards. As the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, should know, this Government have a manifesto commitment to introduce new laws on animal sentience, which we will do as soon as parliamentary time allows. However, this Bill is not the appropriate vehicle to legislate for animal sentience. As the noble Baroness recognises, the Agriculture Bill limits the scope of this amendment to agricultural, horticultural and forestry policy.
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have supported the amendment and spoken in its favour, and I thank the Minister for her considered reply.
Sentience is particularly important in the context of farm animals because of the trade in farm animals. They need to be seen as living, sentient beings, not as inanimate goods in the context of being traded. I agree that a limitation of the amendment is that sentience covers only farm animals, and clearly we want to see sentience brought in as a consideration for all animals.
I am concerned by the Minister’s statement that there will be new laws on animal sentience when there is time, as I feel that this is somewhat kicking it into the long grass, but I am glad to hear that priority will be given. At some point I would like to hear further when this will be, because it is so important that all animals, and farm animals in particular, are considered as sentient beings that feel pain and suffering.
For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but I would like to hear more from my noble friend and may consider bringing it back at the final stage.
We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 75. I remind noble Lords that Members other than the mover and the Minister may speak only once and that short questions of elucidation are discouraged. Anyone wishing to press this or any other amendment in this group to a Division should make that clear in the debate.
75: After Clause 34, insert the following new Clause—
“Application of pesticides: limitations on use in certain wind conditions
(1) The Secretary of State must by regulations make provision for prohibiting the application of any pesticide for the purposes of agriculture at high wind speeds.(2) In particular, the regulations must make provision prohibiting the use of pesticides when wind speeds are high, near—(a) any dwelling;(b) any water source;(c) any public or private building or space where members of the public may be present.(3) Regulations under this section must specify a minimum distance between any of the locations listed under subsection (2)(a) to (c).”
My Lords, in leading this group, I make it clear that the wording of my amendments is inferior to that of Amendment 78, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. I will not waste time on mine discussing wind speeds and contamination, et cetera, because I hope that he will move his amendment and that it will be supported across the House in a Division. If not, I will call a Division on his amendment.
I am grateful to the Minister for arranging a most informative meeting with officials. They confirmed that, although some parts of EU regulations will be carried over into our legislation after next January, the unused powers on which nothing has yet been done will lapse.
There are three main pieces of relevant EU legislation. Regulation 1107/2009 permits individual pesticides and Regulation 396/2005 sets maximum residue levels for pesticides in food. But Directive 2009/128/EC, which sets a framework for action to ensure that pesticides are used responsibly and that alternatives are developed, is the most important here. It contains a mixture of things that member states “must” do and “may” do. The “musts” have been implemented in Great Britain through the Plant Protection Products (Sustainable Use) Regulations 2012. However, at the end of the transition period the powers in this directive that allow, but do not require, particular actions can no longer be used, because the European Communities Act 1972 will no longer be in force. So we will have a lacuna, unless the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is accepted.
Over the years, Defra has been aware of the problems. In 2017, Defra’s former chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir Ian Boyd, published a paper in the journal Science entitled “Toward Pesticidovigilance”. This paper is a damning assessment of the regulatory approach worldwide to pesticides sprayed on crops, including that the impacts of “dosing whole landscapes” have been ignored, and that the assumption by regulators that it is “safe” to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes “is false” and must change.
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The other effect of many pesticides is to disrupt mitochondrial function. The mitochondria are like the engine in every cell in the body. Mitochondrial dysfunction can lead to disability and chronic illness, and it interferes with the body’s efforts to heal. Recent studies show that chemical mixtures appear to have a cumulative deleterious effect, even when no single chemical in the mix is at levels defined as toxic, meaning that the “no observed adverse effect” level and the “lowest observed adverse effect” level need to be revisited. Worse still, pesticides are handed on to the next generation in the womb. Studies of umbilical cord blood have repeatedly shown hundreds of different chemical pollutants.
Monsanto, the producer of glyphosate and now owned by Bayer, admitted carcinogenic effects for large numbers, with out-of-court settlements for malignancies, including lymphoma. It has been suggested that such settlements avoid having to disclose secret internal documents in court, which of course is what happened to the tobacco industry. To quote a former civil servant in an email on this amendment:
“I only wish now … that I had been at the time braver and more able to speak out against the mulishly aggressive intellectual dishonesty and subservience to the pesticide companies that was behind so much of what I was asked to do.”
The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will speak to his amendment and I urge all to support it at the vote. It will plug a gap after next January. Without it, the UK will be left with a hole in its legislative framework which will be extensively exploited by the pesticide industry, to the detriment of human health and the long-term improvement of a biodiverse ecology, which is what the Bill aims to achieve. I beg to move.
My Lords, I am speaking to Amendment 78 and I need to make it absolutely clear that I intend to seek the opinion of the House on it when we reach it. I am very much indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for her support and her indication that she will back my amendment. She has made a significant part of my case by identifying the medical impact of exposure to pesticides and the doubts about the authorisation process.
I also thank my co-signatories, the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall—demonstrating the cross-party support for this vital but very simple and specific amendment.
I should also thank the Minister for the meeting to which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred. It was useful but we did not agree. As the noble Baroness said, it appears that the department’s line is that there is no need for the amendment because, under EU law now transposed and retained in UK law, the Government already have the discretion to come forward with such regulations. Leaving aside the fact that they have not done so over the 11 years since that law was put in place, on closer examination that assertion appears to be only partly true, and from January, as the noble Baroness, explained, it will not be true at all. We therefore need to put such a provision in this legislation.
In this amendment we are addressing the effect of pesticides on human beings—on those who are exposed to doses of chemicals not designed for humans and in many cases, particularly among residents, on those subject to multiple exposures to multiple chemicals. We want to see a regulatory framework imposing minimum distances between the buildings in which people live and which the public frequent, and the spraying operations of pesticides.
Regrettably, we are not talking about unusual events. Most of the harm comes from everyday tractor-based pesticide spraying at certain times of the year. Local residents, schoolchildren, members of the public visiting public buildings, medical facilities and educational buildings, and other bystanders are all vulnerable.
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The noble Baroness’s amendment also extends the definition of “animal” to include decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs, alongside non-human vertebrates. This is an important step that we should not take lightly. The current science is clear that vertebrate animals can experience pain and suffering. It is on that basis that the definition of “animal” in the Animal Welfare Act 2006 is limited only to vertebrate animals. However, this Act also contains an important power to extend the definition to cover invertebrates where we are satisfied on the basis of scientific evidence that these too are capable of experiencing pain or suffering. Defra recently commissioned an independent external review of the available scientific evidence on sentience in decapods and cephalopods. The outcome of this review will be vital in determining whether our new sentience provisions and other laws should be extended to decapods and cephalopods. This review is expected to report early next year.
In line with our manifesto commitment, this Government will introduce effective, credible and proportionate proposals in due course. I recognise the strength of feeling across the House on this issue, and say to my noble friends Lady Fookes and Lady Hodgson, and to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that it is imperative that we allow appropriate time for debate to ensure that we get these important measures right. That is why I cannot accept this amendment as an interim solution, as was suggested in last Thursday’s debate.
As noble Lords will all be aware, parliamentary time has been at a premium in recent Sessions, and I am afraid that, with other pressures, it has not yet been possible to find appropriate time to introduce these measures. However, I reassure your Lordships that this issue is a priority for this Government, and I hope that that gives the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, some comfort. When our measures are introduced, I very much look forward to discussing these issues in detail again.
I hope that I have given enough reassurance and that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Many of these chemicals are hormone disruptors. Some of them mimic oestrogens, and it has been suggested that this could account for decreased sperm motility and sperm counts and male infertility, as well as for breast, bladder, thyroid and other hormone-dependent cancers, childhood cancers and even brain malignancies.
We have rightly spent some time on this Bill talking about protecting wildlife, biodiversity, farm animals, watercourses and soil from harmful effects of agricultural practice. This amendment is a vital but limited step in the right direction to protect human beings—primarily, residents in rural areas—by requiring spraying to be well away from homes, public buildings and places where the public are congregated. In particular, it moves towards protecting those who live, full-time, adjacent to crops that are subject to blanket applications and those who attend public spaces adjacent to such fields. As I have said, this is a very simple amendment. It requires Ministers to come forward with regulations establishing a minimum distance between such applications and the buildings.
The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has spelled out the terrible damage that can be done to humans by ingesting chemical pesticides directly into the lungs and bloodstream. Regrettably, pesticides—including some still used on UK farms and elsewhere—on their own or in combination, can cause the breakdown of the immune system and can poison the nervous system, and can cause cancer, mutations and birth defects. The noble Baroness has convincingly spelled that out.
Noble Lords will have received materials from campaigners on this issue, including from the redoubtable Georgina Downs, who has dossiers on rural families who have suffered. In Committee, I cited just a couple of those testimonies; I will now share a couple more. Chris from Sawtry said:
“We have farmers spraying near our home and school. The fumes cause headaches, dizziness and burn the throat.”
Victoria from Curry Rivel said:
“I have witnessed crops being sprayed just metres from my Daughter’s rural school and have had signs of chemical scorching on our fruit trees in our garden … Just meters from my Daughter’s sand pit!”
As I said in Committee, manufacturers rightly and responsibly label their pesticides, insecticides and herbicides with warnings, such as “Very toxic by inhalation”, “Do not breathe spray” and “Risk of serious damage to the eyes”. Farmers and farmworkers are advised under health and safety laws, and by manufacturers, to wear protective clothing, and most do so—but residents are not so protected. Guidance to users that they should inform residents, and that the chemical used should be clearly identified, is very frequently ignored and pretty well never enforced. Ministers and others have lauded the UK pesticides regime as one of the best in the world, but it is wrong to say that it, or the EU system, is safe. In particular, they are not protecting those who live close by.
This amendment would have the effect of protecting members of the public from hazardous health impacts near buildings. It is a simple, straightforward amendment requiring the Government to come up with minimum distances from the application of such pesticides. It is best to leave the precise distance for consultation and scientific measurement, but let us today establish the principle. My amendment is a very small but vital part of the journey to protect our rural populations.