My Lords, it is with some regret that I note that my noble friend at the Dispatch Box did not thank me for my previous amendment on this subject. I accepted as far back as Committee that it was likely that cephalopods and decapod crustaceans would be added to the list of sentient beings covered by the Bill, although I did not expect it to be done in the Bill but through the secondary legislation which it contemplates.
I introduced an amendment in Committee that said, beyond vertebrates, the Government can only add, to the list of sentient beings, cephalopods and decapod crustaceans and no more. This was countered, so to speak, by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, who put down an amendment that actually added those two classes of creature to the face of the Bill. Neither amendment, of course, proceeded at Committee stage. I find it rather sad and curious that, of those two amendments, my noble friend at the
Dispatch Box selected that promoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and has rather ignored mine.
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However, I still believe that it is appropriate that the Bill should be amended to place some constraints on the ability of the Secretary of State to add to the list without returning to this House for primary legislation. I am not entirely alone in that regard, because I am supported by the noble Lord, Lord Trees, the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, in that particular amendment. Of course, I have to achieve it now through a different set of drafting —a different mechanism. The mechanism is no longer to limit the expansion to those two classes, because they have effectively been added already, but to take out from page 2, line 33, those subsections that give the Secretary of State the power to proceed in extending the list. That is the purpose of Amendment 42.
There is nothing more to be said, because my noble friend is not being very kind this evening to that particular species of animal that exists on his Back Benches and is practising a certain form of cruelty in tandem with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and indeed the others whom he mentioned, the other noble Baronesses, who are not entirely in their place at the moment: the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb and Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. Together, the Minister and noble Baronesses are going to say no to this modest suggestion. So, I will leave it there without argument, simply pellucid in its compelling character, and allow my noble friend to reject it when he rises to speak.