My Lords, I declare an interest as the owner of a few Red Poll cattle, which are the local cows of my part of Suffolk. I also was one of the longest-serving Ministers of Agriculture, and this is a matter of very great importance to me. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will realise that he is asking of us, if he does not accept these amendments or agree to do something about this issue, three things, and none of them seems to me acceptable.
The Minister is asking us to accept that, when the Government promised that the withdrawal Bill would take into English law all that is at the moment in European law, and that we would start again from there, that is not the case with sentient animals. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, explained that very clearly. There are two ways in which it does not. First, it is not complete—and the Government accept that, because they had very urgently to rush forward the advice that they were going to be produce a sentient animal Bill to overcome the gap in this Bill. Will my noble friend explain why it is not in the Bill? It is a real issue. If the whole purpose is to use this Bill to ensure that the law after we leave, if we were to leave the European Union, will be the same as before, why is there this exception? It is very important for my noble friend to answer that question because he has in the past, when I have asked him other questions, told me that it is not about the withdrawal Bill, that it is a different issue and comes up elsewhere. This is clearly about the withdrawal Bill—the issue is clearly missing and it ought to be here. My questions are, “Why isn’t it here?”, and whether he will undertake to include it.
We are also supposed to accept that there will be a Bill that will cover this issue. That is a difficult thing for this House because we know very well that, with the best of intentions, the Government do not have a great deal of time to bring in these Bills, and certainly not before the self-imposed end date that they insist upon. Therefore, are we supposed to rely not only on the Government’s good faith, which I am sure I can, but on their ability to deliver on time—otherwise there will be a gap when this protection is not afforded.
No doubt my noble friend will say that we will work all that out in the negotiations, but these negotiations are likely to take place after the due date on which we would leave, if we leave the European Union. What is more, clearly, it is not going to be left to the negotiations, because he has already told us that we are going to have a sentient animal Bill—so it is not just a matter of the negotiations. Not only are we supposed to accept that this is outside the Bill, even though that is the Government’s fundamental proposition about the Bill; we are also supposed to accept that they will be able to bring forward legislation that will cover this matter in time for there not to be a gap, which is unconnected with the negotiations because otherwise we would not need to have that until after the negotiations, in which case we could merely take it into our law.
I am afraid that this is very complex and, worse than that, we have before Parliament a Trade Bill. It is clearly the Government’s intention not to restrict their future trading arrangements to ensure the high standards of animal welfare that I spent quite a lot of my life arguing about in the European Union and working for in this country. Those standards are not enshrined in the Trade Bill. There are no arrangements in that Bill for this House to discuss, or to have, in any sense, an influence on, trade negotiations and agreements. We are, therefore, fixed into a position in which we have to accept that this omission from the arrangements of the withdrawal Bill is accidental—it is of no importance and will be covered by another Bill. We also have to accept that there will be another Bill and that it will be
in time. What is more, we are to accept that what is in the other Bill will cover this issue. As we know, it has, in the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones—I would not like to use the phrase myself but I can repeat it—“been rubbished” by the Select Committee which looked at it. It does not actually do the job.
The Trade Bill will not give any protection for animal welfare, so that our farmers, who meet high standards, will have to accept imports from elsewhere which do not meet them. The argument about chlorinated chicken—I know that phrase has been ridiculed but it is useful—becomes very strong. I hope your Lordships are aware of why the words “chlorinated chicken” are so important. The United States has to chlorinate its chickens because it does not have high welfare standards and unless you chlorinate them you have even more food-borne disease than America has now. It has at least four times the food-borne diseases that we have in Europe. This is no passing comment; it is a fundamental issue of the health of the British people, leave alone the issues of sentient animals.
I am sorry that there is more to say—but this is a very serious area. The Government seem to have misunderstood the way in which you take EU laws into British law. EU laws have always to be read in their context, inside the protocols which make those laws operate. The trouble with this particular bit of the withdrawal Bill—as indeed with much of it—is that when you take the bare bones and put them into English law, you lose that context. You really do have to find a way of getting the context in, otherwise the bare bones do not have the same effect as they do at the moment in the application of EU law.
There is another thing that I find difficult with the Government’s willingness to discuss this issue in such a peculiar manner. I can understand my noble friend, and other Ministers at various times, recognising that some of us do not think that withdrawal is a very good idea. That is perfectly understandable, but we are not debating this on that basis. What we are doing is trying to make sure that the withdrawal Bill does what is supposed to do—and we are trying to do that as a House that has that specific duty and job. I know that the Daily Mail finds that hard to understand, but what we are here for is to ensure that the legislation that is passed is, in detail, what was intended. The House of Commons—the other place—is now less able to do that because of the way in which it restricts the time spent on these matters. I know that my noble friends would much prefer this House to spend less time on the Bill. But if we do not spend the time, no one else will go through it in the way that we will have to if this is not to be a disaster not just for animals but for human beings, because we will have none of the necessary restrictions.
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The trouble is that it will be no good our coming back afterwards and saying, “You ought to have done this”. The Government will merely say, “You ought to have understood that at the time”. Well, I think that we do understand it; the people who do not seem to understand it are the Government. They do not seem to understand what you have to do if you want to leave the European Union but keep the laws in place. That is a serious matter. There are many other examples in the
Bill, but I have chosen this one because it is more glaring than the others and because the public would be appalled to discover that the Government had failed to protect sentient animals and the health of the nation and to have taken a holistic view on this.
I will end on that point. Leaving the European Union—were we to do it—is a holistic activity. We will remove ourselves from the relationships we have had for more than 40 years and set up something entirely new. That is a holistic movement. Therefore, we have to think about what we do holistically. We cannot do a little bit and then a little bit more; we have to think about it in the round. My noble friend the Minister may say that I have missed the point and that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is right that we cannot tackle it in this way but he will come back with a proposal to do it differently. If he does that, I am prepared to apologise. However, if he does not do that, he will be asking us to accept that the withdrawal Bill has a large gap here, contrary to what the Government promised. That gap is not small or unimportant but very large—and it will affect the health of not only animals but human beings. This will be particular true on the border between the north and south of Ireland. I am ending on this point because I remember when we did not have the arrangements that we have now and when the United Kingdom Government had to try to stop the constant smuggling of animals across that border. We had a Minister who was known as the “Minister for Pig Smuggling”.
That is another thing that people forget. They forget the enormous advances we have made in bringing together the north of Ireland and the Irish Republic. I have rarely been as angry as I was when I saw extreme Brexiteers trying to ridicule the Good Friday agreement as if it did not matter. I say that as somebody who was caught up in the Brighton bombing and whose wife was caught up in it, and who had to help pick up things afterwards. I do not accept that these things should be treated with the sheer vulgar partisanship that we have seen from some Members of the House of Commons and people elsewhere. I am merely saying that the Government do not seem to have come to terms with that when it comes to the movement of live animals, the movement across that border and the whole question of what it means to withdraw from the European Union.
My noble friend must accept that this is no passing matter; it is not just a case of supporting animal welfare because it is so popular. I do not think that anyone has ever told me that I am sentimental about this. I take a very clear and hard line on it—but I also happen to be reasonably rational. What the Government are asking us to do is not something that the revising Chamber should dream of doing. We should insist on this being changed.