Animal Welfare Bill

Perhaps I may come back before the Minister rises to speak. I well appreciate that my description of wild animals is wide and not sharply defined; for which I can only apologise to noble Lords. With this amendment we are trying to force a debate around the whole issue and to differentiate between domesticated and what I would class as non-domesticated animals. However, that is not a proper answer noble Lords. I need to put my thinking cap on between now and the next stage. For example, I believe that there is only one circus elephant left in this country. You could argue that an elephant is a wild animal, but you could also argue that in some countries an elephant is considered to be a domesticated animal. The problems get more and more difficult. But we are in Committee and we wanted to have a proper debate around the whole issue. So I apologise to noble Lords that I did not define the term; I think I felt inadequate to define it better. One could ask, ““What about reptiles?”” and lots of other different sorts of animals. The amendment seeks to tease out whether noble Lords had any thoughts or guidance that we could give to the Government, because obviously the Bill is at an early stage in this Chamber. That is why we made the distinction with ““wild””. I realise that it is not a good answer, but at this stage it is all that is on offer. We are really saying that we have one amendment which is clearer. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, quite rightly said that if one reads her amendment carefully, one sees that it gives the national authority an opportunity to include or exclude animals which our amendment specifically would not. I am grateful to noble Lords who have commented on the amendment; I am even more grateful to the noble Minister who will reply to both of them.