My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson of Abinger and Lady Fookes, for this amendment, which is a means to embed the needs and welfare of animals in agricultural policy and to partly fill the vacuum of this Government not transposing across EU animal sentience legislation or introducing their own legislation, which they had promised to do in their manifesto. The Liberal Democrats accept that animals are sentient beings with intrinsic worth. We have consistently argued this throughout the stages of this Bill, in my remarks at Second Reading when welcoming the fact that Clause 1 allows payments to be made for animal welfare, and in opposition to easing the regulatory framework on gene editing.
Animal sentience is the only issue not being brought across when we leave the EU at the end of the year. It marks the end of a proud era when the UK led the rest of Europe to better animal welfare standards. Indeed, it was the UK Government who first suggested and then got animal sentience accepted into the treaty article in 1997.
We support the intention of this amendment. If the Minister is not intending to accept it, can I press her to say when legislation on animal sentience will be delivered, and whether she guarantees that it will have comparable or stronger powers than the existing EU legislation? I ask her to be very clear on the latter point, as there are rumblings of a pushback in the Government on the way that Ministers report how they take into account sentience when making decisions. Only an open and transparent process will give people confidence about how the needs of animals are considered in policy decisions. Without a guarantee to at least match the existing powers, the sad reality is that our animals will have less protection than has been the case as members of the EU.