Animal Health Act 1981 (Amendment) Regulations 2005

rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 9 November be approved [9th Report from the Joint Committee and 17th Report from the Merits Committee]. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I trust that these regulations will not be contentious as their purpose is straightforward and serves only to confirm existing policy without altering that policy. The regulations allow England and Wales to comply with one particular part of the UK’s legal obligations in Council Directive 2003/85/EC on the control of foot and mouth disease (FMD). They make a minor amendment to the Animal Health Act 1981 to bring it into line with the requirements of the directive. Therefore they are made under Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. Under that Act, we have the option to make such regulations by negative or affirmative resolution procedure. We have chosen to make these regulations by affirmative resolution as we feel that it is important to give Parliament the opportunity to debate these proposals. After the 2001 outbreak, a new European directive was adopted, taking into account recent scientific and technical developments and the experience gained by the UK in eradicating FMD. It has the important benefit of ensuring a common approach to disease control across the European Union. Articles 10(1)(a) and 16(1)(a) of the directive require all member states to slaughter FMD-susceptible animals, including cattle, sheep, pigs and goats, kept on premises confirmed as infected with FMD. The Secretary of State’s existing powers to slaughter animals to prevent the spread of FMD are discretionary. They are contained in Section 31 of, and paragraph 3 of Schedule 3 to, the Animal Health Act 1981. Therefore, to comply with the directive, the regulations before your Lordships today amend Schedule 3 to the 1981 Act to insert a duty on the Secretary of State to slaughter any susceptible animal kept on premises where FMD is confirmed. I stress that this new duty to slaughter applies only to infected premises and does not extend to any other types of premises, such as dangerous contacts or suspect or contiguous premises. In these cases, the Secretary of State retains full discretion to slaughter, vaccinate or place under observation, as justified by the scientific position and veterinary risk of disease spread. Furthermore, these regulations do not change the Government’s FMD control policy, which has always been to slaughter susceptible animals on infected premises. This is due to the very high level of risk from such premises and the need to stamp out disease as rapidly as possible. Articles 15(2) and 18(1) of the directive also set out a number of limited exemptions to this duty of slaughter for different types of premises where the animals involved merit special treatment, and these exemptions are also transposed by the regulations. In these cases, the Secretary of State would retain the discretion to slaughter and, apart from separate production units, would still do so except in exceptional veterinary circumstances where animals were completely separated from any infected, or potentially infected, animals. Although relating specifically to one of the exemptions, new paragraph 2A(7) of the regulations provides an indication of the type of stringent biosecurity and separation that would have to exist to prevent slaughter. Infected premises where the discretion to slaughter remains include laboratories, zoos, wildlife parks and other similar places where animals are kept principally for the display and education of the public. It also includes premises where rare breed animals or animals for research purposes are kept, and separate production units. As I said, these regulations deal only with a very small part of our obligations under the directive. Two other statutory instruments have been prepared implementing the rest of the directive, including the detailed general controls during an outbreak and enabling vaccination to take place. Vaccination will be considered from the very start of an outbreak as an adjunct to the basic policy of slaughter on infected premises and dangerous contacts. These statutory instruments are unrelated to the regulations at hand, except that they contain the definition of ““infected premises”” for the purposes of when the duty to slaughter is triggered. Confirmation that premises are infected must be arrived at by a veterinary inquiry involving sampling unless the Chief Veterinary Officer believes that the premises are epidemiologically linked with other premises which have already been declared to be infected by sampling. Then disease can be confirmed on clinical grounds to ensure that action can be taken quickly to stop the spread of disease. Both these SIs were published in draft for a full 12-week consultation period in June and they are still in the final stages of legal checking. They will be laid before Parliament shortly by the negative resolution procedure. In conclusion, the new duty to slaughter contained in the regulations does not change the Government’s policy in relation to slaughter or the use of other disease control options and it will not make any practical difference to the number of animals that are killed. That will be based on scientific and veterinary advice on the circumstances at the time, with the objective of stopping the spread of disease as quickly as possible. None of us wishes to see a return of the awful scenes of 2001. Therefore, we now have in place a high degree of disease preparedness, including increased readiness to vaccinate. This is allied with tighter controls on illegal imports, the permanent movement standstill, where livestock cannot move again for six days—20 days in the case of pigs—after moving on to any premises, and the immediate nationwide movement ban at the start of an outbreak. The regulations before the House today are a tidying-up exercise to ensure that our domestic legislation is in line with the directive. I commend them to noble Lords. I beg to move. Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 9 November be approved [9th Report from the Joint Committee and 17th Report from the Merits Committee].—(Lord Bach.)