I have listened with great interest to the contributions to the debate, in particular the contribution from the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice). I am here to speak not to the technicalities or detail of the issue, but about how it is seen by communities.
I represent Hackney, a traditional centre of the Jewish community, with the oldest synagogue in the country in Brenthouse road. We also have, from a little more recently, a large Muslim community. Both those communities are quite anxious about this debate. Both are very civic minded. On Cazenove road in Stoke Newington we have a mosque, the Simon Marks school, which is a maintained Jewish school, and other Jewish schools. Whenever there have been pressures and tensions, my Jewish community and my Muslim community have come together—they are an example of how that can happen.
Both communities are concerned about the debate. They are concerned that it has come forward so quickly after we debated the issue in November. They are also concerned about what the debate really means. They are worried that the issue is not really one of animal welfare. People of all faiths and none are concerned about animal welfare. There is an issue about whether slaughterhouses are well run, and there is agreement that we must get them run properly, through using CCTV and stamping out abuses where they occur. Everyone is concerned about animal welfare, but my communities are concerned that, although we hear little about other forms of animal use and abuse that could be dubbed cruel, some people keep wanting to go back to the issue of halal meat.
I was asked to speak in the debate to make it clear to people that communities want to work within the law and to have the highest standards of animal welfare, but that they worry that some people—not all, because I imagine most people who signed the petition did so in good faith—who are pursing the issue of halal meat are
in some sense antagonistic to some of our communities of faith. When we are debating this issue, I urge hon. Members to avoid a narrative that makes it sound as if one is trying to say that communities of faith are backward or mediaeval, or unnecessarily cruel to animals. Let us try to restrict the debate to practical measures to achieve the safest and most humane methods of animal slaughter.
There is real concern in communities. They will not read the details of some of the speeches made today, but they hear people going back once more to the issue of halal meat and wonder what it is a vehicle for. I do not believe that there is necessarily a contradiction between religious observance and treating animals in a humane way, and would not want anyone to feel that their methods of religious observance are under threat. I was glad to hear from the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) that the Prime Minister himself has given an undertaking that halal slaughter and shechita slaughter are safe in principle. That will be reassuring to the people I represent and to Jewish and Muslim faith communities up and down the country.