Animal Welfare Bill
10:30 am
Bill Wiggin (Shadow Minister (Agriculture & Fisheries), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Leominster, Conservative)
First, I join the Minister in saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Gale. I agree with what he said about wanting the Bill to be enacted. It is a very opportune moment for us to discuss it, as it has many good points that the Conservatives want to be enacted, but we will do our very best in Committee to improve it if we can.
I also welcome the Minister to steering his first Bill through Committee. Historically, Ministers have tended not to budge an inch at this stage of a Bill's progress, but his comments about pre-legislative scrutiny reminded me that I served on that Select Committee and there was a concern because we were scrutinising not a Bill, but a draft Bill. That made a difference because the Government's intentions were not as clear as they would have been in a proper Bill. There were constraints on what the Committee could do, particularly in the very short time it had. However, the Government listened and improved the Bill and we will continue to improve it.
I do not have a very long or glamorous list of interests to declare, but I am a countryside member of the National Farmers Union and the Countryside Alliance. I also have a number of chickens. That causes me a great deal of concern with regard to this Bill because a duty of care might be used against me. I worry about that all the time, as any animal lover should. I worry because what we want from the Bill is proper care for creatures. We do not want endless malicious or unpleasant prosecutions. I fear that that may happen unless we get the Bill right.
I also have three cows, two of which are pregnant, so I am braced to seeing my herd increase. Clearly my farming is very minimal. I have seven acres but they are now fully declared. I look forward to dealing with the Bill as the amendments we have tabled are considered. Their aim is either to probe in a constructive way and to tease out the details of what the Minister really feels or, in some cases, to try to improve the Bill for our constituents and all animal lovers across the United Kingdom.
There is one more point about which I do not want to antagonise the Minister, but I was given his letter as I walked in here today. As I understood the Government's position, they favoured the status quo on tail docking. That means that the onus has been on people who do not like tail docking to bring forward their evidence and arguments against the practice, and that has been done very effectively by all the non-governmental organisations. This letter suggests that the Government are much more ambivalent about the outcome than before. Therefore I am slightly critical of that shift in Government policy at this stage, but we can work with that as we get through the Committee stage.