On the agenda: Animal rights and wrongs

We must not let the government's animal welfare legislation become a vehicle for the animal rights lobby, writes Countryside Alliance Chief Executive, Tim Bonner, for the Summer 2021 issue of 'My Countryside' magazine.

In the Queen's Speech in May the government announced the largest programme of animal welfare legislation in recent political history. The government's Action Plan for Animal Welfare includes three headline bills, an Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, a Kept Animals Bill, and an Animals Abroad Bill, as well as further individual bills dealing with wild animals.

The first piece of legislation to enter parliament was the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, which was introduced in the House of Lords in June. The Second Reading debate set the likely tone for many of the concerns that peers and MPs are likely to raise in relation to many of the animal welfare proposals that the government intends to bring forward. Ministers faced questions about whether the legislation was necessary, whether it would actually achieve anything for animal welfare, and whether it would create a vehicle which would be used by the animal rights lobby (see page 23 for more on this).

Our Chairman, Lord Herbert, in his speech told peers that: "We need to consider a number of questions as we examine the bill. The first is to distinguish clearly between animal rights and animal welfare".
And Baroness Mallalieu, our president, summed up the concerns of many peers when she said: "Gesture politics, which I fear is some little part of the motivation of this bill… is sadly not just a waste of parliamentary time when real animal welfare proposals just cannot get time but, as history has shown, often does little or nothing for the animals directly affected."

Our primary concern is that this raft of legislation will present an opportunity for the animal rights lobby to pursue their agendas by presenting amendments to bills to attack trail hunting, shooting and wildlife management. That is not to say, however, that the government's own proposals could not have a significant impact on our way of life and we will be closely scrutinising possible legislation on animal sentience, game farming, trophy hunting and a close season for brown hares to ensure that it is evidenced and justified.

The effectiveness of the Alliance's parliamentary operation was highlighted again last month when the Petitions Committee brought forward a debate on banning grouse shooting in Westminster Hall. The debate was triggered by 100,000 electronic 'signatures', but in real life barely any MPs were willing to support it. Meanwhile, dozens of MPs lined up to defend grouse shooting and associated moorland management. We can only hope that the government and MPs take note of the contrast between the fiction of online campaigning and the reality of real people, living real lives.