I could possibly have tested your patience by making an overlong intervention on the Minister, Madam Deputy Speaker, but rather than do that I thought I would make a brief observation now.
I think I am right to say that on Report the Minister said that the Bill had been six and a half years in preparation. In fact, it was in 1997 that, as the then chairman of the all-party animal welfare group, I presented to the incoming Minister of State at the Home Office in Mr Blair’s Government—who, I think I am right in saying, was the now right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth)—the group’s report on performing animals in circuses. It is comforting to know that matters in this place move so swiftly and that it has taken only 22 years for these measures to reach the statute book.
The fact is that the persistence of colleagues on both sides of the House of Commons has driven us to where we are today, in the hope and expectation that the Bill will get a fair wind in the House of Lords and become law and that performing animals in circuses will be consigned to the dustbin of history along with very many other animal abuses that we have managed to deal with.
In the spirit of total co-operation and in gratitude to the hon. Member for Ipswich (Sandy Martin) and my hon. Friend the Minister, I say that other things that are not contentious can, and should, be going through the House much more quickly. I am proud that this Government and this Minister are in the process of putting the Bill on to the statute book, and I hope that we shall now see a succession of other animal welfare measures following it.
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