I am delighted that the strong cross-party support for the Bill is evident in the Chamber this evening. We all want to end live exports. After the disappointments of the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, it is heartening to see the rapid progress that this new Bill is making through the House. The earlier Bill was blighted by a range of Opposition amendments on other issues that were not relevant to the core problem of preventing animals from suffering in long-distance transportation. I welcome the fact that the amendments tabled for today are less controversial and more specific to the matter that the Bill seeks to address.
I would certainly like to see the ban on live exports apply to Northern Ireland, but I am also very much aware of the need to comply with international trade rules. Animals are routinely moved across the border into the south for slaughter. Those are essentially local movements, so they do not give rise to the same animal welfare concerns as long-distance transportation and exports. Preventing those north-to-south movements entirely would be problematic, but finding a way to legislate to allow those exports to the Republic of Ireland to continue while stopping all others from the UK is not straightforward, particularly as the most
favoured nation principle means that whatever trade benefits we give to one country outside of a formal trade agreement should generally be offered to all trading partners. I accept that there are exceptions to that, some of which include public concerns and ethical considerations, but it is a problem that is not easy to solve.
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It is not just the Windsor framework standing in the way of applying this new law to Northern Ireland, but the Committee should recognise that the ban on using Britain as a land bridge for such exports is likely to make them pretty difficult to continue in practice. I hope that the question of Northern Ireland is one to which we can return on a future date as part of wider reform to address the inadequacies of the Windsor framework, so that the Bill can genuinely apply across the board. I would certainly like to hear from Ministers whether we can take action to prevent any re-export of UK animals from the Republic of Ireland. For the moment, however, as much as I understand and sympathise with the points made by the DUP this evening, the priority must be to get the Bill in statute as the best means to prevent the resumption of transport of live animals to continental Europe for slaughter.
Mr Deputy Speaker, with a few honourable exceptions, the Labour party did everything it could to thwart Brexit and prevent the referendum result from being respected. Time and again, Labour MPs stood up and demanded a second referendum, or they wanted us locked forever in the regulatory orbit of the EU, applying its single market rules without any say over them. If Labour had succeeded, we would not be having this debate today. The trade in live exports would have continued as it had for decades, protected by the European Court of Justice and single market rules.
During the seemingly endless Brexit votes, there were many times when it felt as if Labour remainers would succeed in stopping Brexit. The current the Leader of the Opposition was among the most vocal on that. It felt as if the power of the remain-supporting establishment would be too strong, but people in this country held out. The 2019 election result sent a clear signal that they wanted us to get Brexit done. Thanks to that decisive result, and the exit treaty that it enabled the Government to negotiate, we can now finally make our own decisions over our own laws in this country, including on animal welfare and live exports. The right to be governed only by laws made by the people whom we elect to this Parliament, and whom we can hold to account, was hard won over centuries. Now that it has been restored to us, let us use it to improve protection for vulnerable sentient creatures who have no means to defend themselves from cruel treatment.
The fact that we rear millions of animals for food means that we have a special responsibility to ensure the welfare of farmed animals, which would not exist without our intervention. To let them be exported over excessively long distances—subject to the stresses, strains and suffering with which we are all so familiar—to jurisdictions with lower standards, and poorer compliance with such rules as do exist, means failing to live up to that moral responsibility to those farmed animals.
We in this country have some of the most extensive legal protections for animals of any country in the world, as well as a domestic farming sector that is committed to
the highest standards of animal welfare. That reflects this country’s long-standing recognition of the importance of animal welfare, which dates back to before the Victorian era. It was not just the anti-slavery campaign that motivated William Wilberforce; it was also the need to protect animals, as he was one of the founder members of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, when it was set up in 1824.
Mr Deputy Speaker, today allows us to use our new Brexit freedoms in a really positive way: to continue our country’s long-held mission to prevent cruelty to animals, implement a change for which our constituents have been calling for many years, and ensure that the animals we produce in this country retain the protection of the laws we make in this country. Along with others in this House, I have championed reform in this area for many years—as an MEP, a Secretary of State, and a Back Bencher. I strongly urge hon. Members to support the Bill in the Division Lobby this evening, so that we can end live exports once and for all.