Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2022-01-18
Topic: Agriculture
Neil Peter Hammerton Hudson (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) It is a pleasure and privilege to speak in the debate on a very important Bill that Opposition Members will be pleased to hear this Member of Parliament strongly supports. I declare a strong professional interest as a veterinary surgeon; the Bill will be so important in recognising animal sentience in UK legislation In the current political climate I am loth to get into intricate debates about the difference between the words "implicit" and "explicit", but, as the Secretary of State said, animal sentience has been implicit in UK law since the Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act 1822, and it remains implicitly acknowledged in current animal welfare legislation, including the Animal Welfare Act 2006. I feel that this House and the Government missed a trick in 2017 by not transferring into UK legislation the part of article 13 of the Lisbon treaty that recognised that animals are sentient beings, because that would have been easy to do. That said, by not doing it, we now have an amazing opportunity to put animal sentience at the heart of UK legislation, and that is very important. I also welcome it as the Government’s fulfilling of a manifesto promise, which I strongly support I very much welcome the fact that cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans are now included in the Bill. That sets a really good example. The Government have commissioned a piece of work from the London School of Economics and they have listened to it. I am very encouraged by that; I just wish they would do it a little more often Although I welcome the Bill, I very much recognise the contributions from Opposition Members who say that we need to be clearer on some of the details and specifics. I recognise that, by definition, this is a brief and general overarching Bill, which is probably quite sensible. That said, I would very much like it to define the term "sentience" in some way. In the 2017 Bill consultation, 79% of responses called for the inclusion of a definition in the Bill. A useful definition made by the Global Animal Law Project and endorsed by the British Veterinary Association states: "Sentience shall be understood to mean the capacity to have feelings, including pain and pleasure, and implies a level of conscious awareness." The Minister said in the other place, and also before us in the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that it might well be difficult to put the definition into primary legislation because the science is evolving and so potentially it could evolve. We could get round that by placing it in secondary legislation that would be easily updated, so I think that the Government can move forward on that I very much welcome the formation of the Animal Sentience Committee, but we need to be clear about its independence and to make sure that it has strong expertise and experience in animal welfare, animal health and veterinary matters. It needs to have some teeth and some power, including power to roam across Government. I am very glad that the committee will be based in DEFRA; although I want it to have a roaming feature, I am more comfortable with it being in the Department that is the custodian for animal health and welfare, which I think makes a lot of sense.