My Lords, I will speak to these amendments because I have an amendment in my name, which I will come to in a minute. First, I agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, when she said that she hoped the committee would look at policy in the round. That is what we all hope. However, we all fear that it will not. We need reassurance from my noble friend the Minister to convince us. We are not conspiracy theorists; we are practitioners who wish to see this operating sensibly in the United Kingdom.
The reason for my Amendment 38 is perhaps best illustrated when we look at Amendment 46, which is also in this group and is in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Hayman of Ullock. I look forward to hearing what they have to say on their amendment. I cannot detract from subsection (1) of their proposed new clause. It is quite right that, if a piece of legislation sets up a committee, that committee ought to report to Parliament to be properly scrutinised. But then we come to subsection (2), which is where I get a little concerned. First, in subsection (2)(b), the noble Baronesses propose
“an overview of the implementation of animal sentience requirements across government”.
As I read and understand this, if my noble friend the Minister is right that the animal sentience committee is all about—and I quote his words—“informing policy”, it should not be looking at the implementation of policy. That is for the Government and Ministers, having looked at whatever report comes out of the committee.
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There is a second reason for being slightly dubious about Amendment 46, and that is that there are two animal welfare committees. There is the animal sentience committee, which the Bill is setting up, and there is the Animal Welfare Committee, which already exists in Defra and is highly respected but was not set up by legislation and, as far as I know, does not have to report to Parliament annually. So there will be a lovely turf war in Defra and Sir Humphrey is going to really enjoy it because there will be two committees doing almost the same thing, covering the same area, one of which reports to Parliament and the other, which is more long-standing and is highly respected, does not. I can see the civil servants for the animal sentience committee saying, “We are the most important committee. We were set up by legislation. We have to produce an
annual report to Parliament.” I also think that, because of the way the Government have drafted the Bill, they will allow the animal sentience committee to become more powerful than the Animal Welfare Committee.
Therefore, my simple amendment, Amendment 38, requires the animal sentience committee to publish a note in the report that it makes of the Animal Welfare Committee’s opinion and advice on the recommendations. This meets two of my noble friend’s objectives: it keeps the animal sentience committee looking at the broad perspective and it makes the report of the animal sentience committee much more valuable and perhaps stronger if it is honest enough to put in what the Animal Welfare Committee has said, which might in some cases be totally contradictory.
I hope that my noble friend will be able to accept this amendment. I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Trenchard and Lord Hamilton of Epsom for supporting me on this.