Animal Welfare Bill

Although I did not have the privilege of serving on the Standing Committee considering the Bill, like the hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew), I was one of those who spent many happy and sometimes fraught hours a couple of years ago on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee considering the draft Bill and making proposals about the legislation. I am therefore pleased to be here today to consider the last stage of the Bill’s passage through the House. Like others, I welcome the Bill as landmark legislation of which the Government and all those involved in its framing can be proud. Although I welcome the Minister’s comments about the scrutiny of regulations and the written announcement on the Government’s attitude to pet fairs that he made on, I believe, 10 October following the Stafford pet fair judgment, I wish briefly to echo the comments of the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) and the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). I assure the Minister that there will be many Members of the House, and many organisations and individuals outside it, who will look carefully at the regulations in relation to pet fairs. I am one of those who wish that the Government had taken the opportunity to interpret what many of us felt was the existing law in the way in which some local authorities have been interpreting it for years: that is, to say that pet fairs are against the law and should not be licensed. Unfortunately, there was inconsistency. Now we have a kind of consistency in the Government’s proposals in that commercial pet fairs and markets are not to be licensed, but those organised by groups of hobbyists and specialist societies concerned with a particular breed or species of animal might well be able to find themselves with a licence. I am afraid that the sad history of pet fairs leads me to believe that there will be many people who will do their utmost to circumvent those regulations. Many people with informed views on the subject believe that, not only would that bring the law into disrepute, it may have sad consequences for animal welfare itself, because of the conditions that exist at many pet fairs that have taken place in the past. I welcome the fact that the Government have changed their position during the course of the consideration of the Bill.