Animal Welfare Bill

I speak as a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, although I am not speaking on its behalf. My noble friend the Duke of Montrose alluded to our comments earlier this afternoon on Clauses 12 and 13, and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, defended the principle of Clause 12 yesterday, as reported at col. 175 of Hansard. I am in a slightly privileged position because I have a copy of the letter of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, as Minister in charge of the Bill, to our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord, Lord Dahrendorf, which we will of course be publishing. I have read the report of the House of Commons EFRA Committee (HC 52-1) on the draft Bill, but I gather from the Printed Paper Office that there is no printed government response to that report, so our committee had to rely solely on the department’s Explanatory Memorandum when we considered the Bill. As all are agreed, and as my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, have said, the power in Clauses 12 and 13 is wide. I shall not read out paragraphs 11, 12, 35 and 38 of our report in the interests of time, but we felt that those were the defence of the principles of Clause 12, although they did not, in our view, make out the case for the width of the power. Before coming on to the Minister’s letter, dated 15 May, when he was still expecting the Bill’s Committee stage to be taken on the Floor of the House, I want to quote a brief passage from paragraph 153 of the EFRA Committee report, which also found the Government’s position unconvincing. If I may, I shall quote half a dozen lines:"““The mainstay of current animal welfare legislation, the Protection of Animals Act 1911, has been in force for nearly a century; the present draft legislation may well be in force for a similar period of time. Who is to say how the appropriate national administrations may seek to exercise [this] . . . delegated power in another 50 or 100 years? Again, if Parliament delegates the power in question in a clear and appropriate way in the first place, there should be reduced scope for future abuse of the delegated power””." We had not received a government response at the time we wrote our own report, in paragraph 8 of which we said:"““In justification of the power in clause 12, the memorandum refers to the existing powers under section 3 of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1968 (memorandum paragraph 35). That section enables regulations to ‘make such provision with respect to the welfare of livestock for the time being situated on agricultural land as [Ministers] think fit’. We consider this an insufficient justification: the range of animals covered is much narrower and, since the power concerns agriculture, it is exercisable in an area where there are likely to be the constraints of European Community regulations””." I want to quote one sentence from the Minister’s letter to the chairman. It is in the ante-penultimate paragraph of the letter:"““It is clear that your Committee have concerns on extending existing powers from non-farm animals to other animals such as pets, but without such powers as requested, this widely supported Bills’ intentions will not be deliverable””." That letter was signed by the Minister. I appreciate that there may be a typographical error in the reference to non-farm animals, but, unless there is, I do not think that the sentence that I quoted is a fair comment on what we said. Finally, the Defra consultation committee report could be called in aid in principle to support my noble friend’s Amendments Nos. 60, 62, 63, 67 and, mutatis mutandis, the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Miller.