It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for his comprehensive introduction.
In advance of the debate, I was contacted by a number of constituents who expressed their disappointment that there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech about the sort of animal welfare reforms that will be the main part of our discussion today. They told me that, as we have heard, DEFRA’s action plan for animal welfare, published over a year ago, said that the Government are committed to issuing a consultation. We have heard that that will be on its way shortly, but the action plan also stated that
“we will introduce other reforms to improve farm welfare, including examining the use of cages for laying hens and farrowing crates for pigs.”
A year on, we are still waiting for that action.
Every year that passes without action means that millions more animals are kept in unnatural and often distressing conditions that we ought to be shamed into doing something about. I hope we will hear today about substantial progress, because some of the conditions are awful. I have heard about cages that are so small that pregnant mothers are unable to turn around and move for four or five weeks once a litter is born. Even DEFRA recognises that these conditions can restrict a sow’s normal behaviour, including nesting behaviour.
We know that the European Commission plans to ban cages for all farmed animals, hopefully by 2027. Significantly for us, it will also look to prohibit the import of food from caged systems. We no longer have to automatically follow what the EU is doing, but we ought to be using our new-found freedoms to go further and faster than the EU so that we can genuinely say that we are the world leader in animal welfare. Let us do that rather than go the other way.