Animal Welfare Bill

My Lords, this issue has been debated at every stage of the Bill. It is good to report, although I accept that it never goes far enough, that our timetable for producing regulations on wild animals in circuses is now 2008—it used to be 2010—as a result of pressure from the Committee of your Lordships’ House. As we just heard in the past two minutes, many people feel very strongly about this issue. Since the issue was last discussed in Grand Committee—I believe in July—the Defra working group, chaired by Mike Radford, the academic lawyer with extensive knowledge of welfare issues, has started work. The group is gathering and reviewing relevant available scientific evidence on the welfare needs of non-domesticated animals in environments comparable with a circus. It plans to report its findings early next year, and our aim is that draft regulations should go to consultation towards the middle of next year, with the aim of being brought into force in April 2008. That is two years earlier than originally planned. We cannot produce all the regulations at once. That is simply impossible. The resources are not there, and there must be prioritisation. Indeed, the priorities have changed as a result of pressure from Parliament. The noble Baroness, Lady Miller, proposes a total ban with exemptions, but we believe that Clause 12 is sufficiently wide to enable us to achieve through secondary legislation the result that she seeks. There is no reason why a Clause 12 regulation could not achieve the same result as a ban with exemptions. I therefore do not rule out a total ban. I would not do so. Nor do the Government; Ben Bradshaw, the Minister concerned, made that absolutely clear. However, having asked a group of professional people to look at this, it would not make sense to pre-empt their findings or those of the subsequent public consultation on the issue. By definition, there will be a public consultation because of the regulations. I have been on the receiving end of many representations—indeed, I have made them myself—and we have given a commitment to ban the use of certain non-domesticated species in travelling circuses and to ensure that the standards that are applied to zoo premises are applied to permanent circus premises, provided that that is appropriate. We have begun, as I say, examining the available evidence with affected and interested parties. The Bill is enabling and a lot of the work will done by secondary legislation which becomes highly targeted and more detailed than can be put in a Bill. We have progressed from the point that we reached in Grand Committee, and I therefore hope that the provision will be acceptable to the House. We have moved the timing priority considerably. There is no question but that the objective sought in this amendment can be achieved under the Bill.