Animal Welfare Bill

My Lords, I am of course aware of the words of the Companion on Peers who have, "““an interest that is direct, pecuniary and shared by few others””." As chairman of the British Greyhound Racing Board, I have such an interest. As I have slept, eaten and breathed greyhound welfare—what a sad fellow I am—since I first raised the subject in the House in 2001, before I held my present position, I will do what I did in Committee: I will give the House my best advice, although I shall not vote on any amendment. I have taken the view of the House authorities, who say that that is appropriate. This will not be a party political speech. Indeed, if I were to take a party political position I should fervently hope that this amendment would be carried, so that the 3.5 million people who go greyhound racing each year could be told not to vote for the Tories because they want to do something that will ruin their sport. But I feel quite the opposite, and I hope that they will not. I will not be party political, but I cannot help teasing the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, who I like and admire, on her decision to table the amendment. She did not mention that the briefing on this comes from the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) and that all noble Lords have seen it. LACS is the great campaigner for banning hunting with dogs, which noble Lords opposite—I totally agreed with them—were against. Now LACS is tally-ho against greyhound racing, so I am a little surprised that the noble Baroness has chosen to take up its cause, although I am delighted that we have the opportunity to debate it today. Although I have been teasing, I believe not only that this amendment would be bad for greyhound racing, but that it would also be totally ineffective and could spell death—I choose my words carefully—for thousands of greyhounds. We would not be debating this issue today if it had not been for Seaham and the Sunday Times. What happened there was disgusting—I and everyone in greyhound racing said so—but a few points should be put into proportion. The Sunday Times produced no evidence whatever for its allegation that 10,000 greyhounds had been destroyed over 15 years at Seaham. Even if there were such evidence, 15 years ago this was normally how a dog at the end of its life was destroyed. Even the RSPCA, we find out from local inquiries, is believed to use the Seaham facility to get rid of surplus dogs. Things have moved on, and it is great that they have, but we should not view the situation today with the benefit of hindsight. What was done was not illegal and, despite the best efforts of the press, no further Seaham has been found. This bears directly on the question before us. Those few people involved at Seaham who belonged to official greyhound racing have been fined four-figure sums and banned for life by the NGRC. Those who mock the NGRC as rather feeble might ponder those sentences. Indeed, if I may venture a guess, had a statutory national authority such as the amendment calls for imposed such sentences, they could well have been challenged in the courts as disproportionate—and perhaps successfully so. If your house is burgled, it would not be normal to call instantly for the abolition of the police, especially if the police later successfully identify the culprits and punish them severely, but that is what those who want self-regulation to be ended are effectively doing. The LACS brief to all Peers about progress refers to small improvements in welfare in recent years. Having been involved in the process, I cannot agree that they are small. Let me give three examples. The number of dogs re-homed by the Retired Greyhound Trust has doubled in five years. There was talk of a conflict between money and welfare but there is not one in practice because the trust’s budget has gone up six times over that period. The NGRC is now enforcing, as it never did before, Rule 18, tracking what happens to dogs on retirement and making sure that euthanasia, which is always carried out by a licensed vet, is a last resort. Track surface improvements that cut track injuries by 50 per cent have been trialled at Poole. I could go on for several hours. There have been great changes. In one sense, the Seaham case is an opportunity to accelerate those changes and to get on with it. My organisation, the BGRB, has produced a radical document called Options for Change, which tackles head-on the problem at the essence of this: how to balance better the number of dogs coming into racing with the number that can be re-homed? That is what it mostly comes down to. We have an overall committee, which I chair, with sub-committees—the NGRC, the BGRB and the track promoters—working on the proposals that most affect them. I cannot pre-judge the conclusions of these committees but I believe that we will come out with a programme that will impress—perhaps even amaze—our critics. I think that the mechanics of who regulates are less important than the substance of the regulations. I thought the noble Baroness was a little confused in the sense that I have no problem with saying that we should have regulations in place by 2008—we are discussing with Defra even now what they should be—but her amendment provides for a state regulator. If we must have the argument about state regulators, let me go through a few bullet points. It will run totally contrary, as Defra has told us, to the Government’s policy on better regulation generally. It will create a new state bureaucracy. It will drive greyhound racing back—I warn noble Lords of this from great knowledge—to its former secretive and defensive culture, from which I have been trying to get it to emerge. As greyhound racing will not ““own”” externally imposed welfare initiatives, it will resist them. In any case, the thought that some government inspectorate will get to the bottom of what is, in essence, a cottage industry beggars belief. Even if your Lordships were disposed to favour a new regulatory authority, would it be more sensible to put it on the face of the Bill or to use the powers in the Bill to establish it later? My view is that it would not be sensible to put it in the Bill. First, a great deal is going on which has a bearing on the shape of future regulation. There is Defra’s greyhound welfare working group, of which I am a member, which includes both greyhound racing and welfarist representatives. There is the extremely important inquiry by the Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, chaired by Eric Martlew MP, to whom I pay great tribute for his hard work. The inquiry is due to report early in 2007. There is the sport’s own Options for Change programme, to which I have already referred. It would surely be very odd to pre-judge that huge body of work driving things forward by determining, as the amendment would, a remedy now. Secondly, there is absolutely no agreement between the welfarists on what kind of regulatory authority they are proposing. The LACS amendment—good luck to it—wants a national regulatory authority. However, there is a separate submission from welfare members of the Greyhound Forum which advocates local authority regulation. That, too, is the position of the Pet Advisory Committee, to which the noble Baroness referred. To decide now, on Report in the House, which form of statutory regulation would be right is surely not sensible. It will require proper consideration. The Government have the powers to impose that regulation, should they choose to do so. Thirdly—and I speak personally here—let us think of the practical impact of the amendment. I have described the process which the greyhound racing industry has put in hand to tackle the problems. But suppose the House decides today to set up a new national authority. How am I to advise greyhound racing to proceed? To go ahead with our own programme of reform, which will entail considerable difficulty and expense, only for a new regulatory authority to pop up in a couple of years, no doubt to make its mark under a chairman who wants to show that he can sort out what I could not, and with its own programme of change? That could also entail considerable trouble and expense, incurred by people who did not know what they were doing. The amendment would not accelerate progress, which is what all of us want; it would stall progress for two years while the great bureaucracy was set up. If this amendment is accepted, impetus for change, which is sweeping through greyhound racing—it is about time, too—will be lost. A more sensible course, in outline, is surely this: the Bill gives Ministers the power to move to impose regulation. In those circumstances, let us allow the inquiries to go ahead and the changes that I am trying to get through proceed. Then, and only then, in a couple of years’ time, we can take stock and decide whether the case for a national authority stands. Of course, it is open to Ministers to say at any time, not just 2008, ““Sorry, greyhound racing industry, you’re messing this up, we are not satisfied, and we are going to put in a regulator””. That hangs over us and will no doubt help to concentrate some minds. But to go ahead now and set up a new bureaucracy to do the job that we are trying very hard to do ourselves, without giving self-regulation and the impetus behind it a chance, would do a grave disservice to the welfare lobby and those the noble Baroness wishes to help—the greyhounds. I beg the House not to accept the amendment.