Animal Welfare Bill

My Lords, I can give the commitments the noble Baroness asked for regarding the dates without reservation—if I am wrong, I will no doubt be told while I am on my feet. Our commitment is certainly by 2008, which is what she asked for. It has changed. There has been sustained parliamentary pressure on this issue. As I shall mention, there has been an intervention from the courts and we must take account of that. As has just been mentioned, on 10 October we made an announcement in the other place on our proposals on the regulation of pet fairs. As with all secondary legislation under the Bill, the proposals are still being formulated and must be fully consulted upon in due course. We now propose to prohibit the sale of animals to members of the public where this is part of a business at pet fairs. However, we also propose to make exceptions to this prohibition in the case of koi carp shows, racing pigeon sales and poultry sales. We propose that these types of events could be licensed by local authorities under regulations to be made under the Animal Welfare Bill. We propose to clarify in secondary legislation that those events where there is either no selling of pet animals to members of the public, or where there is selling of pet animals but not in the course of a business—such as hobbyists selling excess stock—can continue to take place without a requirement to be licensed. All events where there are animals present will be subject to the welfare offence whether or not they are specifically regulated by the local authority. The Government revised their original proposal to regulate the commercial selling of animals at pet fairs following a judgment made in the High Court on 14 June. The judgment was in relation to a judicial review in the case of Haynes v Stafford Borough Council about the issuing of a licence under the Pet Animals Act 1951 to the organisers of a pet fair. One of the findings of the judicial review was that local authorities could not issue licences under the 1951 Act to organisers of pet fairs where these events fell within the activity described in Section 2 of the 1951 Act and involved the sale of animals, as part of a business, to members of the public. The best place to deal with the regulations and prohibitions on the selling of pet animals is in secondary legislation. The alternative—placing such restrictions in the Bill—would be likely to lead to the sort of difficulties experienced under the Pet Animals Act 1951 that resulted, with its associated amendments, in the judicial review. This amendment contains a definition of a pet fair, and we would welcome the opportunity to look at this more closely when drafting the regulations. If the other question of whether there is a definition of commercialism needs to be looked at, the place to do so is in regulations. There will plenty of opportunity for this and, of course, full consultation on the relevant amendments. I hope that will satisfy the noble Baroness.