Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [HL]

Second Reading

Moved by

That the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, it is a privilege to open this debate. Today, in this House, we are opening a new chapter in this country’s proud story of protecting and promoting animal welfare. I am proud, as I hope your Lordships are, of the UK’s reputation as a nation of animal lovers. The UK introduced the world’s first animal protection law: the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822.

We have made a lot of progress in the two centuries that have followed. We improved conditions in slaughterhouses in 1875, and passed the Protection of Animals Act in 1911. We established a world-leading system for regulating scientific experiments on animals in 1986, and in 2006 the Animal Welfare Act introduced powers to protect all kept animals in England and Wales.

There has never been any question that this Government believe animals are sentient beings. We are now recognising this formally in domestic law and introducing a proportionate accountability mechanism to help reassure people that central government policy decisions take this into account. The Government’s manifesto promised that we would bring in new laws on animal sentience. Parties represented on the Benches opposite made similar pledges. This Bill is our opportunity to honour that commitment.

The Bill proposes three things. First, it provides a recognition in law that any animal with a spine—any vertebrate—is sentient. Sentience is about animals having feelings, both positive and negative, such as pain or joy. The scientific community is continually improving our knowledge of the sentience of different species. There is clear evidence that animals with a backbone—vertebrates—are sentient. The Bill gives the Secretary of State a power to extend this recognition to any invertebrate species in future; for example, if evidence of their sentience becomes clear.

Secondly, the Bill establishes a committee—the animal sentience committee—tasked with reporting on whether individual central government policy decisions have paid all due regard to their effect on the welfare of animals as sentient beings. The animal sentience committee will have the right to roam across all central government departmental policy decisions. This includes decisions relating to policy formulation and policy implementation. The committee’s findings will be made public and its reports will make recommendations.

Thirdly and finally, the Bill obliges the relevant Minister to respond to each report from the committee through a Written Statement to Parliament. That Statement should set out the Minister’s response to the committee’s recommendations.

Taken together, the Bill’s provisions create a targeted and proportionate mechanism for holding the Government to account on animal welfare. The animal sentience committee’s reports and the ministerial responses to them will support Parliament’s scrutiny of how central government policy decisions pay all due regard to the welfare of animals as sentient beings.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a chair of the Royal Veterinary College and as a person owned by two sentient horses. I know that they have feelings; I would define them in the following way. They experience comfort and joy when I wait on them hand and foot and bring them haylage, and frustration when I get things wrong in a dressage competition. I welcome the legislation that has now arrived, and there is much to welcome in it. It covers all government policy areas, as the Minister said, and means that all government departments will have to consider animal welfare and sentience issues when forming policy. The Bill also applies to wildlife. The animal sentience committee created by the Bill has potential but needs to be toughened if it is to fulfil the potential for increased recognition and application of animal sentience principles across government as a whole.

What strengthening should we be looking for? Strangely, the Bill does not lay a direct duty on Ministers but on the committee, so the committee needs not a discretionary power to review government policy but a mandated duty to review all policies that fall within defined criteria of having the potential for a significant adverse effect on the welfare of animals. The Bill should also require all government departments to inform the committee when such policies are being drawn up, and positively and proactively to seek the views of the committee. What guidance will be given to other government departments to encourage them to take this responsibility seriously? Will all the guidance associated with the Bill be published during its passage in your Lordships’ House?

The committee also needs more clarity about its powers. It needs independent powers and adequate resources to fund a secretariat and to have the ability to call witnesses, commission research and have access to documents. Can the Minister tell us his plan for resources, both funding and staff? Can I also ask the Minister for clarity on the rumours that the committee might be tucked in as a sub-committee of the Animal Welfare Committee? The ASC needs a separate status. The AWC provides reactive scientific advice to Defra alone, and the new committee will proactively review government policy decisions across all departments—a very different role. The ASC must work transparently, publishing all its advice to government and having a direct role with the strong public interest in this issue. It should also demonstrate accountability by having a statutory duty to report direct to Parliament annually and the right to a formal response from the Government in Parliament. On the overall working of the committee, such strengthening would mean that the arrangements could be seen as being in the first division globally, but it would be useful to know what ideas the Minister has drawn from the best global examples of such mechanisms. I include in the best global examples the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission and the arrangements in the Netherlands and those in New Zealand.

My Lords, I declare my interests with the RSPCA as set out in the register. Given that, naturally, I warmly welcome the Bill, which is in the vanguard of a whole suite of animal welfare measures to come. Many of us have sought in vain to expedite them over many years, so I am delighted by this first taster.

That said, I have some reservation about the Bill and agree with many of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. Why is animal sentience not defined in the Bill? Maybe there is a good reason for this, but it is not clear to me, and if you are going to have something that is legal, it must be clearly defined. May I ask about that?

Secondly, I naturally welcome the setting up of the committee. But again, I think the terms of reference could usefully be widened. I note that it is there to look at “adverse” circumstances that might impact on animals. Why could it not be extended to beneficial ones, which would give it a more constructive remit?

I am also concerned that the Secretary of State has the power to appoint, and appoint the terms of reference for, the people on the committee. I am sure that the present Government are most anxious that these should be people of excellent experience and integrity. I remind my noble friend that not only do Ministers come and go, but so do Governments. I would like to know that this is more tightly constrained so that we still have a very effective committee in future. In the meantime, could the Government give us some indication of the kind of people they wish to see: their breadth of interests, and their ability to act independently without fear or favour and to tell the Government the truth they may not always want to hear? The capacity of that committee in terms of membership is absolutely vital, because if it does not exercise the powers it is given it is absolutely useless.

I come to the question also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, of the definition of “animal”. I believe very strongly that there is already sufficient evidence to indicate that non-vertebrates should be included in the Bill. It is not good enough that it should be there in reserve, as it were, for a Minister to take up later. I am indebted to Crustacean Compassion for a great deal of detailed evidence on the research that has already been taken out. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, noted, a report was commissioned by Defra and I wonder what has happened to it. I hope it will be published very soon and I will be extraordinarily surprised if it does not back up the research we already have. I hope then that the Bill could be amended during its passage through Parliament to allow this to happen.

My Lords, I declare my interests in conservation and wildlife organisations, as set out in the register.

It is a great privilege and pleasure to follow not only my noble friend Lady Fookes but the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, two indomitable proponents of animal welfare. Let me also welcome my noble friend Lord Benyon to the Front Bench, leading his first Bill in this House. He is by no means a debutant, having been a very eminent Defra Minister in the other place. I feel very confident that the Bill is in safe hands and look forward to working with him constructively on it. His excellent opening remarks mean that I do not have to delay this Chamber for long and there is no need to repeat what he so eloquently outlined earlier.

The Bill has been a little delayed in appearing before Parliament, but it is here now, and I believe the Government have the balance about right. As we have just heard from my noble friend Lady Fookes, this is another welcome measure that Her Majesty’s Government are introducing to the animal welfare sphere. I understand from the action plan that there is a lot more to come, which is really great news.

The notion of animal sentience is not new, and the Bill is not a radical measure. However, the creation of a committee is a sensible option to ensure that the right balance can be achieved. Of course, as we have already heard and I have some sympathy with, there will be questions around the membership of the committee, its independence and the resources given, but I do not think that needs to be a major issue.

There is also a legitimate point about whether the definition of “animal” in the Bill is wide enough. I believe there is divided opinion on whether invertebrates can be classed as sentient. Most research has focused on mammals and birds. I was relieved to hear that homo sapiens is not included because it could have caused me problems retrospectively if, in my previous career as a Whip, I had caused pain in any way to people with or without backbones. But that is best left where it is.

I am very grateful to the Minister for his introduction and description in broad terms of how the Bill is going to work. I would like to ask for confirmation, if the Minister can give that, on two aspects: one general in relation to the working of the Bill, and the second in relation to a specific practice.

These questions arise from the importance of policy issues which have to be considered in the round with welfare of animals, on which the Minister touched. The remit of the committee is fixed by statute. It is a clearly limited remit dealing with adverse effects on the welfare of animals and recommendations in particular circumstances. The committee therefore has no power to take into account wider policy considerations, such as would have complemented or do complement Article 13 of the Lisbon treaty, which the United Kingdom played a major role in. Those exceptions include, but are not limited to, religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage.

My question to the Minister on the wider operation of the Bill is: is it envisaged that, in the course of a report’s preparation by the committee, the Government will take into account those matters in formulating their response and placing it with Parliament? That is the general issue: how, when and in what manner will the Government take into account what one might describe as the wider picture, in addition to animal welfare, in the operation of the Act?

My second point is very specific. Bearing in mind that, as has been pointed out, Ministers and Secretaries of State come and go and that the Secretary of State has sole control over the appointment of people on the committee—we do not yet know who they will be or what their views may be—I ask the Minister for a specific confirmation, in line with many assurances that have been given in recent years. Can he confirm—this will deflate a degree of anxiety—that it remains government policy, to which the Government foresee no change, that there will be no prohibition of or restriction on Jewish religious slaughter—shechita? I am not in any sense suggesting that there is anything contrary to the welfare of animals—there is a great deal of evidence about how humane that method of killing is, but that is not the point—I am simply asking for confirmation today that the present policy will continue and that the Government see no reason why it would change in the future.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for introducing this much-awaited Bill, the first in this Session in a package around animal welfare—an important collection of legislation. There is much to welcome, and I am sure that your Lordships will agree that it is vital that we get it right. Mahatma Gandhi acutely observed:

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

This is also a topic that the general public take much interest in.

I declare my interests: I am the director of a company that owns some farmland, and I served on the Rural Economy Committee recently and on the Farm Animal Welfare Council some time ago. On a personal level, I have and have had a number of family pets and would describe myself as a passionate animal lover.

Much has already been said about what sentience is or is not, both today and in past debates in this House. For me, the definition of animals’ sentience should include both the emotional and physical and enable them to be treated humanely. This has long been encapsulated by the five freedoms originally developed by the Farm Animal Welfare Council: freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury or disease; freedom to express normal behaviour; and freedom from fear and distress.

In government and trade terms, the important thing is that the Bill separates sentient beings from inanimate objects and ensures that adequate provisions are made to respect and treat sentient beings appropriately. Our knowledge of the sentience of different animals, birds and living creatures continues to grow, so it is important that the Bill allows future extensions of the definition to be incorporated without having to pass more primary legislation. I await with interest the Government’s review into the sentience of decapod crustaceans and cephalopods, and I welcome the ability of the secondary legislation powers in the Bill to look at this in detail.

My Lords, we have waited some time for this Bill. I have here my speech on the EU withdrawal Bill, in which the Government tried to dump animal sentience. Many of us tried to bring it back into the Bill. I suggested then that the reason that they were dumping this and other aspects of EU law, which they had promised to bring over in its entirety, was that they wanted to use Brexit as an excuse to dump a whole set of existing EU rules that promoted social justice and environmental protections—how prescient of me.

We all know that the EU’s animal sentience protocol changed the way that animals were treated across the continent. Some 20 years ago, Britain used its presidency of the EU to ensure that animals were treated as sentient beings and not just as agricultural goods. Future legislation had to take account of animal well-being: Ministers had to pay full regard. The Government scraped a 13-vote majority on the amendment tabled in the other place by Caroline Lucas MP because the Minister at the time, Michael Gove, told the House that the animal sentience protocol was already UK law. There was a huge backlash on social media from people correcting that statement. Of course, the Government then promised to put something in another Bill—they have tried various times and it has always been totally inadequate.

The Minister said that this was a robust Bill. It is not. He also said things like, “it is targeted and proportionate”. It is not proportionate. He also said that the Bill honours the Government’s commitments. No, it absolutely does not. It worries me that the Government make so many promises and then fail to deliver. That is very poor government.

This Bill is the Government pretending to do something about animal sentience, because they know that the general public really care. It is a PR exercise, and it will not prove adequate for the situation we face. Essentially, the Government are hiving off their responsibility on animals to a committee. Sometimes, having a committee of experts is not a bad thing, because, of course, Ministers cannot be up on every single issue, but that committee has to be listened to. On the climate change statutory instrument that some of us debated yesterday, a Minister explained all the reasons why the Government were simply ignoring the Committee on Climate Change. It had made a recommendation and the Government went against it, because they said they had their own judgment. Instead of stopping using carbon credits to make up for domestic failures to reduce CO₂, which the Committee on Climate Change had suggested was the only way forward, the Government wimped out of serious action on the climate emergency and signed up to spew an extra 500 million tonnes of carbon into our damaged and delicate atmosphere. In a way, this Bill is doing the same thing. That incident proves the inherent, intentional weakness of such advisory committees. No matter how well-meaning, how well resourced or how hard-working the committee is, the Government can simply ignore it and do their own thing. Just as they did with climate change and carbon credits, they can do with animal welfare and animal sentience.

My Lords, I declare my interest as set out in the register and my position in the Countryside Alliance.

In 1789, the great philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, said of animals that

“the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being?”

In truth, Parliament has answered that question for two centuries by passing a canon of animal welfare laws. We have always accepted that animals can suffer, that they are sentient—indeed, I would argue that the question of sentience is a simple matter of fact: vertebrates clearly are sentient, and that is recognised in the body of laws we have already passed.

However, there is a question about whether simply adding “sentience” to the law as an expression, as this Bill does, will advance animal welfare legislation or treating animals in the way that is intended. We need to consider a number of questions as we examine the Bill.

The first is to distinguish clearly between animal rights and animal welfare. I submit that every one of us is subscribed to the principles of animal welfare: that we should treat animals humanely, compassionately and properly. The idea that animals have rights which are in some way akin to human rights is much more problematic, and obviously so. Most of us—not all—who agree and feel strongly that animals must be treated properly and humanely, also eat animals and probably support their use in scientific research. The distinction between animal rights and animal welfare is important when it comes to considering the difference between wild and domestic animals. It is obvious, for instance, that a domestic animal under our control deserves to be watered and fed properly, and if we do not do that we break the law and rightly can be held responsible for such cruel treatment, but with a wild animal, even if it is on land that a farmer owns, that farmer can have no responsibility for feeding and watering it—it is not under his control. It is only when wild animals are brought under domestic control or the control of individuals that they deserve the protection of the law. Instantly, we see that the doctrine of animal rights is unhelpful in guiding us as to how we should treat animals.