My Lords, this little Bill will probably reach the statute book, but it does not deserve to do so. It does not pretend to be an animal welfare Bill; the Government accept that. It is not being used to remedy any existing animal welfare problems; that is accepted by the Government. The Government say it is an ethical Bill and in a moment I shall come to the reasons why it is the opposite. It is a Bill without any evidential basis to justify its introduction: in fact, it is pure gesture politics. The Bill has serious implications for the future, which I will come on to a moment.
The circus of my childhood contained lions, tigers and elephants. For myself, I totally accept that they have no place in travelling circuses, but they have long gone in this country because the public did not want to see what they regard as wild animals in such circuses and because of the introduction of a robust licensing system. I think that that was some seven years ago—I will be corrected if I am wrong—and it effectively ruled them out for the future. They are no longer there, nor could they come back, because, under the present legislation, no licence would be granted for them.
The Bill is about just 19 animals in two travelling circuses, most of which members of the public, I suspect, would not even classify as wild. I am thinking of the majority; the four camels and the reindeer, which have been domesticated for generations in other countries but not in this one, so they fall foul of the definition. I believe that the zebu, which I am told is some form of African cattle, is also domesticated in its own areas. We have to accept that the raccoons, the fox, the macaw and the zebras, of which there are but a handful, are wild.
However, this Bill uses the word “wild” in its title rather differently from its usual, generally understood meaning as any animal of a kind which is not commonly domesticated in Great Britain. The camels, reindeer and zebra with which we are concerned this afternoon have been bred by these circus communities and have lived all their lives among them. They could not be returned to the wild; they are effectively domesticated. There are animals of these kinds in zoos and private ownership up and down the country. Those animals and their conditions are not affected by this Bill.
The single fox was handed to the circus to look after as an orphaned cub. Macaws can be bought by any member of the public in a pet shop. These 19 animals are currently inspected three times a year and, by common consent, are looked after immaculately. The herbivores are treated like horses, with extensive grazing at every site to which they go, which is prepared for their arrival. Their stays are usually two to three days in each. Their average journey each week is 50 miles, and the horseboxes used to transport them would not be out of place in the smartest racing yard.
It is also worth saying that these animals are much loved by their owners. Many of them have been bred by them, some over generations. The owners live with them, work among them and regard them as part of their circus family. These two circus communities are part of a long tradition of travelling showmen, which is dying out, who live their lives in very close proximity to animals and work with them. This Bill tells these people, who look after their animals well, that they must get rid of them by 20 January next year—a disruption to their lives and to those of the animals who are in a settled routine and well cared for. I am assured by members of this community, with whom I have had contact, that if this Bill goes through they will do all they can to ensure that their companions are properly cared for. It will of course be expensive and a difficult transition for them all, both people and animals.
The Government say that this is an ethical Bill; that it is not right to have wild, albeit really domesticated, animals in travelling circuses. This raises the question of whether the taste of some people, even a majority, should be imposed on others without evidence of harm. It is surely an ethical tradition in our country, which we still at least claim is a liberal democracy, to limit the rights of Governments and majorities to prohibit or criminalise the activities of others without evidence of significant harm, whether to people or animals. There is no such evidence here, as has been conceded.
Some find animal acts in circuses distasteful. Some do not. It is worth noting that the number of those responding to the call for evidence on this Bill is dwarfed by the numbers attending and enjoying the two remaining circuses each year. On the face of it, this Bill affects only a very small number of people, but I am afraid that its implications go much further. A number of other travelling circuses are operating with domestic animals, and they are well supported. I enjoy visits every year, when I can, to Giffords Circus in Oxfordshire, which has horses and even chickens. Zippos Circus has no wild animals but has some horses and ponies, and among other places it regularly visits is Hove in Sussex, where it is greeted by a small handful of protestors. Posters are torn down; violence is threatened; those who attend, both parents and children, face abuse and even spitting at the entrance. The next step in the campaign is to stop all animals in circuses; that campaign is under way.
Many of us have seen similar demonstrations elsewhere where animals are involved. Last year, my local Dunster Country Fair had a thankfully peaceful one at its entrance. In yesterday’s Daily Telegraph was an article about the famous chef Raymond Blanc producing vegan dishes for diners at Royal Ascot this year. One would have thought that the Vegan Society would have been pleased, but the reaction of Ms Piasecka, its spokesperson, was that,
“no vegan would attend horse racing”,
and that it,
“is a romanticised industry that on the surface may seem a harmless sport, but it’s cruel and exploitative”.
I add that 300,000 people are expected to attend Ascot this week.
We have all read in the papers about recent protests against the dairy industry with expensive national advertising. I have seen demonstrations outside abattoirs —most recently, perfectly peaceful, on the outskirts of Taunton. There have also been protests about many other things that perhaps one would not expect: sheep and pig racing, sheepdog trials, falconry displays and even, heaven help us, pony painting.
The animal rights movement protests are against any use of animals for entertainment or human pleasure and are increasingly common. No matter how vehemently the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, protests that the Bill will not lead to further such prohibitive legislation, this very well-funded rights campaign will continue. A Bill such as this, with no evidence to support it, adds fuel to those causes.
There is a much larger problem that we need to confront before we go down this path. As a nation, we are increasingly distant from the countryside, the natural world and animals. Few people today live at close
quarters with animals—apart, perhaps, from a pet dog or cat, which all of us are often guilty of treating as quasi-human. What is right for us to do with animals for our own purposes is an important debate, but any laws that we change as a result must surely be based on evidence that what we allow presently is harmful before we stop it. The views of the animal rights movement deserve a hearing. Some of their arguments may be good and valid on some issues, but we should not change the law to ban things unless there is good evidence that they do harm.
Despite what we keep telling ourselves, I do not believe that we are a nation of animal lovers. We are animal sentimentalists, too often attributing human emotions and characteristics to attractive-looking animals while looking the other way at some of the real abuses and areas where real improvement could be made if we had the will. We need as a nation to make a proper reassessment of our whole approach to animals and their welfare based on evidence. Other countries are way ahead of us and have acted on, for example, non-stun slaughter, which affects millions of farm animals here each year. Last week in London, the Animal Welfare Foundation met to identify the top animal welfare priorities for managing animals in the UK, and the highest priorities for every species were identified. Some of them were obvious to all of us: for cats, neglect and hoarding; for dogs, behavioural problems, often insufficient exercise and isolation; rabbits kept in small cages; for pigs, painful management procedures; for sheep and cattle, untreated pain and ill-health. As president of the Horse Trust, I know that every horse charity in the country is currently full to capacity with rescued, neglected, abandoned or mistreated horses.
On exotic animals, which is the proper description of the animals we are concerned with under the Bill, the Animal Welfare Foundation made no finding because, it said, too little is known to draw a conclusion. They did not even make the list of priorities.
If the Government have time for a gesture measure such as this Bill, which I was told this morning was rejected by a previous Secretary of State as being not right to touch, there could surely have been time for a short, well targeted Bill to increase the penalties under the Animal Welfare Act for the deliberate infliction of unnecessary suffering to an animal, which is currently a derisory six months’ imprisonment. Real neglect and cruelty go on, much of it unrecognised and, when it is, scarcely punished, while in the Bill, we are imposing a measure to hit a small group of people who care greatly for their animals and their welfare. What a waste of time.
4.34 pm