David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

Debate on the Animal Welfare Bill

House of Commons 10th January 2006

David Lepper (Brighton, Pavilion Lab/Co-op): May I join hon. Members who have congratulated the Secretary of State and the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on introducing this long-overdue legislation? I, too, support the measures that it includes.

There has been some discussion about what is not in the Bill, and matters that will be the subject of secondary legislation and the regulatory impact assessment. I would like to concentrate on annexe C of the regulatory impact assessment, which deals with pet fairs because the terms of the Bill do not pay sufficient attention to the recommendations on pet fairs in the report by the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the draft Bill. I do not, for instance, agree with the statement in the regulatory impact assessment that there

"is a lack of evidence to suggest that pet fairs by their very nature cannot maintain acceptable welfare standards."

When considering the draft Bill, a major concern of many members of the Select Committee was the wealth of evidence of poor welfare standards at pet fairs. A number of local councils refuse to license pet fairs, and the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health believes that they are illegal. The Government are right to seek to clarify their legality, but they are approaching it the wrong way.

Worries about pet fairs have, of course, been exacerbated by recent concerns about avian flu, particularly evidence presented by the Animal Protection Agency, which is based in my constituency, about the probable link between a quarantine centre where a parrot died in October with signs of the H5N1 infection and the Stafford bird fair where some birds were previously housed. Concerns, however, predate the avian flu outbreak. As I have said, evidence presented by several organisations to the Select Committee revealed concerns about the health, particularly of birds, as well as of other animals at an event at which, with the best will in the world, five or any number of vets could not properly assess the health of the several thousand animals—as many as 13,000 animals at one pet fair—that are offered for sale.

There are concerns, too, about the ease with which disease can be spread at those events, not only between the animals themselves, but from animals to human beings. In an article published in "Veterinary News" in November last year, Elaine Toland of the Animal Protection Agency, Clifford Warwick and Greg Glendell of Birds First explained how, over a period of time, they had visited pet fairs and purchased six birds, all of which were revealed, within a few days or weeks of purchase, to have a number of diseases from which they died. That is the source of the concern that has been expressed by Animal Aid, the Born Free Foundation and the International Fund for Animal Welfare about the spread of disease, which is a real possibility at such events.

It is right that the Government make it clear in the regulatory impact assessment that although they wish to consider licensing pet fairs, they do not wish to bring within the scope of that licensing regime shows and exhibitions by genuine hobbyists, those concerned primarily with the welfare of the animals or birds that they keep who wish to exhibit those animals and exchange information about their care. But where the Government have gone wrong is in asking whether pet fairs should be regulated by a licensing regime, rather than clarifying the law on whether they are illegal. Should not the question have been whether they should be allowed to exist, rather than whether they should the licensed?

Patrick Hall : I congratulate my hon. Friend on being called in this debate on such an important matter. Does he share my satisfaction that the Government confirmed to the Select Committee that the proposed consultation on the secondary legislation that is to come later this year or next year will be full and include the question whether pet fairs should be licensed, not just how they should be licensed?

David Lepper: I welcome the assurance given to the Select Committee in November 2005 on that issue. The Minister went a little further—I hope that it will be confirmed today—when he said that it would be necessary to consider new means of consultation within Parliament and that he hoped that the Select Committee would want to consider that and other issues covered by the regulatory impact assessment again. That is an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Patrick Hall) has raised already this afternoon.

I also welcome the fact that the Minister and the head of DEFRA's animal welfare division, Mr. Bourne, in his evidence before the Select Committee, made it clear that the Government would be willing, as part of their consultation, to consider the question of an out and out ban. But that is not what the regulatory impact assessment attached to the Bill at the moment says, so I would welcome confirmation on those points from the Minister, perhaps later today.
 
I am pleased that, unlike the draft Bill, the Bill does not, as far as I can tell, seek to repeal section 2 of the Pet Animals Act 1951, which states:
"If any person carries on a business of selling animals as pets in any part of a street or public place, except at a stall or barrow in a market, he shall be guilty of an offence."

There is some confusion here. If that section is to remain on the statute book, how does it gel with the proposal for a system of licensing of pet fairs? By their very nature they should be illegal, and there is no intention to repeal that section, which makes them illegal.
There is a further confusion. I welcome the fact that the Government have taken precautionary measures in relation to avian flu and gone along with the European Commission's directive on banning pet fairs, but there seems to have been a partial lifting of that ban, because as I understand it organisers need merely to have registered their intention to hold such an event two weeks beforehand with a local representative of the state veterinary service. If that is so, it is at odds with my understanding of the current situation, where the local council, as the licensing authority, decides whether to license such events. The Government's approach has a degree of confusion at its heart.

Later this evening, I shall present to the House a petition on the issue containing some 15,000 signatures. The petition asks the Government to think again and hold to their promise to consider an outright ban as part of the consultation on any secondary legislation. It also asks them to go further and deal with the issue now in the Bill, so that the proposed legislation does not overturn the current understanding—this is the view of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and a number of councils throughout the country—that pet fairs are illegal. “
Later in the debate I challenged the Minister Ben Bradshaw over comments which he made.

Ben Bradshaw: On pet fairs, I am not sure that all hon. Members appreciate that the term can cover a wide range of gatherings. Some of them involve the sale of animals or birds, whereas others merely involve the exchange of expertise by enthusiasts who come together to share good practice. Therefore, there are some arguments—although they were not offered in the Chamber today—for the retention of pet fairs in some form. That is one reason why the Government are considering licensing rather than banning them. We have not seen any convincing evidence that it is impossible to meet the welfare needs of animals at pet fairs.

David Lepper: I believe that the Minister is wrong in that, and in my contribution I made it clear that I wanted to make a distinction between pet fairs and markets where birds and other animals are sold, and gatherings of enthusiasts who want to exhibit, and exchange information about, the birds or other creatures that they rear. I think that he will find that most of the animal welfare organisations that believe that there is evidence to justify banning pet fairs distinguish between them and gatherings of enthusiasts for the purposes of exhibition and the exchange of information.

Mr. Bradshaw: Some may, but others would like a ban on all such gatherings. The Government are not convinced that that is justified, but we think that strict licensing requirements are the best way forward.

This is an issue I am now following up with the Minister.