As the former Secretary of State who introduced this Bill on Second Reading, I rise to express a little sympathy for amendment 4—not so much sympathy that I would vote for it if it went to a Division tonight. Nevertheless, I believe that it highlights some important issues that are worthy of further consideration.
First, amendment 1 proposes removing animals altogether from the scope of the Bill. Undoubtedly, using gene editing on animals raises complex ethical issues, along with the animal welfare dimension, and it was during such discussion when the Bill was being drafted that I considered excluding animals from the Bill. However, I want to explain to the House why, after reflection, I decided that we should include them.
First, from my experience in government and, indeed, in this place, there is always a tendency to put off things that are difficult or complex and to kick the can down the road, but the right thing to do is to grapple with these complex matters and chart a course through them. Secondly, when considering some of the issues that we might be able to address through precision breeding, it became clear to me that, if this technology was used properly, we could actually enhance animal welfare in certain areas. When I first became a Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Beak Trimming Action Group set up by the last Labour Government was concluding its work. Beak trimming, using infrared beak tipping on day-old chicks, is required particularly for free-range systems, because otherwise there may be injurious pecking of laying hens. Through that work, we concluded that, while there were things we could do such as paying special regard to the feeding regime, it was against the welfare of those birds not to carry on the beak trimming.
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However, something else emerged from that work. The white-feathered birds, which lay white eggs, are much less prone to injurious pecking. In fact, if white-feathered birds had the docility and behavioural traits we see in the brown-feathered birds that lay the brown eggs that dominate the UK market, the door would be open to regulatory changes that could ban beak trimming. It is the long-standing position of both main parties in this House that mutilations in the livestock industry should be phased out.
There is a second area, which I saw first-hand, relating to the fate of male chicks in hatcheries producing laying hens. Every Easter, we will see pictures of yellow chicks on Easter eggs to celebrate spring and the birth of new life, but the fate of yellow chicks is not a particularly happy one. In the inter-war years, commercial laying flocks were bred specifically so that male chicks would be yellow, with the express purpose that somebody working on the production line could helpfully put the yellow chicks on to the right conveyor belt so that their life could be ended, since they had no use as laying hens.
Leipzig University has explored the possibility of changing the eggshell colour so that a male egg can be identified much earlier and sentient beings are not hatched and then killed. I think precision breeding techniques could phase out that very bleak practice of killing day-old male chicks, which is a clear part of the laying hen system.