My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 28 standing in my name. This is a similar amendment to the one I moved in Committee and it asks that any recommendation from the animal sentience committee is not detrimental to nature conservation, biosecurity, crop protection and human health.
As my noble friend on the Front Bench will know very well, our major concern is the unintended consequences of his project and what these could lead to. My concern is that there is huge potential for causing damage to nature conservation. We have just completed discussions on the Environment Bill, and much of what that seeks to achieve could be undermined
by some of the decisions of the committee that are then translated into action by Ministers. It is the same for biosecurity, crop protection and human health. I refer to pests, in particular.
The reason that the committee could put undue influence on the Government is that Defra’s largest postbag in the last 15 to 20 years has been on animal welfare, and the Government regularly receive petitions on animal health and welfare issues. We even heard today that Her Majesty has received a petition signed by school children. It is also well known that public consultations consistently receive high response rates—for example, those on bovine TB and badger culling. It is for that reason—this intense emotional pressure—that I asked my noble friend the question about the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee in New Zealand, and whether he would follow its recommendation. He has not yet replied to me. I think he will shortly—at least, I hope he will—in which case he will set a precedent. I have been waiting three weeks for the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, to reply to some of my questions, and I have been waiting 10 days for the Secretary of State to reply to my questions. So Defra is not very high in my good books for replying to questions.
It is important that the committee should understand the difference between societal ethical values and public opinion; the two are very different. Backing public opinion could lead one to unscientific and wrong recommendations. My noble friend the Minister mentioned scientific evidence. As he rightly says, there will be contradictory scientific evidence; I hope that when the committee gets scientific evidence, all the contradictory scientific evidence will be clearly reported and not ignored.
I turn to the issue of biodiversity. It is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in his place because there are important ways in which those who care for the countryside and look after it have to manage pest control. I want to ask my noble friend the Minister about this. He said in Committee on 20 July:
“To be specific on whether the Bill will interfere with pest control, the answer is no. Pest control is highly regulated. Rules ensure that the trapping and killing of vermin is humane, using permitted methods.”—[Official Report, 20/7/21; col. GC 30.]
My noble friend is right to a point: pest control is regulated—but it is not checked. If he wanted to buy some serious rat poison he would have to produce a licence, as he knows. However, you can buy the same rat poison online without any identification or licence; so, there is legislation, but it is not controlled.
With the committee able to act with the remit that it will have, there is potential for more of this to happen. I ask my noble friend to consider fox snares, which are a widely misunderstood device; a fox snare is to tether the animal, not to strangulate it. The fox snares now being used are of the highest international standard, but the animal sentience committee may choose to engage only with stakeholders and the public rather than consult those who actually know about these things. Will fox snares be an issue that the animal sentience committee can look at? What about Larsen traps? They are permitted under Section 8(1) of the Wildlife and Countryside Act; they do not meet the
criteria, but they are allowed under general licence. That is a perfect example of where the animal sentience committee could cause all sorts of problems. It is hugely important that Larsen traps are effective during the breeding season to keep corvid numbers under control.
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I turn briefly to rats, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Hamilton earlier this afternoon. I just mentioned about being able to buy rat poison with a licence or online without a licence, but is it not highly hypocritical of us to treat rats, which will be classed as a sentient being, in a very different way to all other animals? Most people do not like rats; they turn a blind eye and do not understand that when you give a rat rat poison, it does not die on the spot but goes away and dies a slow, lingering death. We would not do this to any other animal. Will this be something that the animal sentience committee will be able to look at? If we are not able to poison rats, we will pose a huge difficulty with human health, as we have had in the past.
Another pest is the brown hare. It is a pest on arable land in the spring, but at other times of the year it is not a pest. But the hare is also a game species and it is also on the biodiversity action plan. My noble friend said that the animal sentience committee will be rigorous with its scientific analysis. However, Defra has not been rigorous in its scientific analysis, because it has included the hare in the action plan for a closed season, but there is no scientific evidence to justify that. If Defra does not use good science, as it is not using good science on issues of heather burning, then what confidence can we have that the animal sentience committee is going to use good science? Robust science is critical, and where there is not robust science, the animal sentience committee should be absolutely clear in stating this for us. I was not reassured by what my noble friend said in Committee, and I hope he will be able to reassure me later this evening.
I turn to Amendments 29 and 31, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. The noble Lord is, unfortunately, stuck in Scotland and unable to get down tonight, and he has asked me to say a few words. Amendment 29 again shows the noble Lord’s concern for animal welfare. It is hugely important, when one is culling deer, that it is done as cleanly and effectively as possible. There has been a movement, which I have taken part in, to ban shooting game with lead shot, but I do not think there is yet scientific evidence that deer should not continue to be shot with a lead bullet—in fact, quite the reverse. Any non-lead bullet has been proven to be not as effective at killing deer and therefore potentially causes the animal more suffering.
Amendment 31 is about dog training collars. Again, this is an area that Defra wants to legislate on, but the scientific evidence does not stand up to scrutiny to support its position. A training collar is a very useful device for those who live in the country and for some who live in the town, where dogs are liable to run out into the road and not only do damage to themselves but potentially cause an accident. The amount of energy and shock that a dog might get—once it has
gone through the beep and the vibration to come to the shock—is a very small shock that probably happens once in its lifetime, after which it knows full well that, when the beep happens, it has to change whatever it is doing and behave more rationally.
When we talk about electric shocks, we need to talk about electric fences, which are hugely important for protecting nesting birds from badger and fox predation. If any farmer or landowner had gone to the lengths that the RSPB has done in publishing a manual about electric fences, that farmer would have had his name splashed over every tabloid and been hounded out of his job. However, the RSPB produces a manual that says you should have electric fences. Not only must you have them, but for badgers you must cover the electric fence in cotton wool, soaked in honey to attract them. For foxes, you want to get the best fat you can from your roast beef and smear it on the electric fence at fox head height, which is a wonderful way to give the fox a very nasty shock.
Those electric fences are 2,000 times more powerful than any shock that a dog might have got from an electric collar. Has my noble friend been in contact with the RSPB? I understand that it has now withdrawn its manual, but I find it quite amusing that none of the tabloids has said anything about it recommending the use of electric fences and their potential hurt and damage to animals. With hedgehogs, it goes so far as to say the shock will kill them because they tend to roll up rather than run away, so they continue to get electrocuted. With the amount of power it recommends you put through an electric fence, you will do a huge amount of damage to wildlife. This is a charity really abusing its position.
There is a hugely serious point to having electric fences. The only way the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust farm in Scotland has been able to get any hatch of lapwing this year was by putting electric fences around the nests to keep the batch predation as small as possible. Even so, a great number of young chicks were lost to predators.
I hope my noble friend will do a lot more this evening to reassure me that pests and pest control will not be affected by this Bill. I beg to move.