Animal Welfare Bill

May I join hon. Members who have congratulated the Secretary of State and the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on introducing this long-overdue legislation? I, too, support the measures that it includes. There has been some discussion about what is not in the Bill, and matters that will be the subject of secondary legislation and the regulatory impact assessment. I would like to concentrate on annexe C of the regulatory impact assessment, which deals with pet fairs because the terms of the Bill do not pay sufficient attention to the recommendations on pet fairs in the report by the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the draft Bill. I do not, for instance, agree with the statement in the regulatory impact assessment that there"““is a lack of evidence to suggest that pet fairs by their very nature cannot maintain acceptable welfare standards.””" When considering the draft Bill, a major concern of many members of the Select Committee was the wealth of evidence of poor welfare standards at pet fairs. A number of local councils refuse to license pet fairs, and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health believes that they are illegal. The Government are right to seek to clarify their legality, but they are approaching it the wrong way. Worries about pet fairs have, of course, been exacerbated by recent concerns about avian flu, particularly evidence presented by the Animal Protection Agency, which is based in my constituency, about the probable link between a quarantine centre where a parrot died in October with signs of the H5N1 infection and the Stafford bird fair where some birds were previously housed. Concerns, however, predate the avian flu outbreak. As I have said, evidence presented by several organisations to the Select Committee revealed concerns about the health, particularly of birds, as well as of other animals at an event at which, with the best will in the world, five or any number of vets could not properly assess the health of the several thousand animals—as many as 13,000 animals at one pet fair—that are offered for sale. There are concerns, too, about the ease with which disease can be spread at those events, not only between the animals themselves, but from animals to human beings. In an article published in ““Veterinary News”” in November last year, Elaine Toland of the Animal Protection Agency, Clifford Warwick and Greg Glendell of Birds First explained how, over a period of time, they had visited pet fairs and purchased six birds, all of which were revealed, within a few days or weeks of purchase, to have a number of diseases from which they died. That is the source of the concern that has been expressed by Animal Aid, the Born Free Foundation and the International Fund for Animal Welfare about the spread of disease, which is a real possibility at such events. It is right that the Government make it clear in the regulatory impact assessment that although they wish to consider licensing pet fairs, they do not wish to bring within the scope of that licensing regime shows and exhibitions by genuine hobbyists, those concerned primarily with the welfare of the animals or birds that they keep who wish to exhibit those animals and exchange information about their care. But where the Government have gone wrong is in asking whether pet fairs should be regulated by a licensing regime, rather than clarifying the law on whether they are illegal. Should not the question have been whether they should be allowed to exist, rather than whether they should the licensed?