Animal Welfare Bill

I half expected the Minister to have caught your eye by now, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as he might have things to say about new clause 10 that will help the House considerably. I shall speak mainly to new clause 10, and I share the reservations expressed by the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) about the use of wild animals in circuses, but emphatically not domestic animals. He struck the right balance and correctly identified the centre of gravity. I have taken an interest in circuses for some time, largely because I was at school with Billy Smart’s grandson. I remember the great days of the big animal circuses such as Bertram Mills at Olympia. During the interval, a cage was erected and the lions and tigers were brought in. That has all gone. There is only one circus left in the UK with a significant number of wild animals—the Great British Circus—and two more circuses have one or two animals, whose life expectancy is limited. The measure is therefore a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Circus people are not properly understood, which is a tragedy. We belong to the nation that invented the circus, which was created across the road, on the site of St. Thomas’ hospital, yet every other nation celebrates it much more than we do. It is a glorious unsubsidised art form that brings the performing arts to societies and communities that would not otherwise see them. It introduces hundreds of thousands of children every year to the glories of performance. The circus is already under threat from the Licensing Act 2003, but I have received helpful signals from the Government that they may look at ways of reducing the burdens of bureaucracy, cost and inflexibility that it has imposed. If new clause 10 were accepted, resulting in the loss of both domestic and wild animals from the performing routine of the circus, it would be a devastating blow to the appeal of circuses to the UK market.