The government has shelved a flagship animal welfare bill in Parliament—blaming “scope creep”—but has been accused of betrayal by campaigners.
On Thursday, environment minister Mark Spencer told the House Commons the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill would not go forward but he insisted many of the issues it was designed to combat would be tackled, including a permanent ban on the export of live animals.
Spencer said the bill—which has suffered a series of delays since it was first tabled in June 2021—could not go ahead because the inclusion of a number of amendments meant it went far beyond commitments made in the Conservative Party’s 2019 election manifesto.
Spencer said: “There has been considerable scope creep. The bill risked being extended far beyond the original commitments in the manifesto and the action plan, and in particular, Labour is clearly determined to play political games by widening the scope of this bill.”
But the Humane Society’s senior director of campaigns and public affairs, Claire Bass, said, “The government’s decision to abandon the Kept Animals Bill is an astonishing betrayal of both animals and public trust.”
She said: “It needed only a few more hours in the Commons to succeed, so parliamentary time is clearly not the real issue here. The real reason, Whitehall sources tell us, that the bill has been dropped is because of concerns that it could act as a vehicle for uncomfortable debates that the government does not want held on polarising issues such as hunting with dogs.”
It is understood Labour MPs had been trying to add measures to the bill to outlaw hunting foxes with dogs.
Fox hunting was banned in England and Wales under the Hunting Act, which came into force in 2005, but critics say there is a loophole that allows hounds to follow a scented cloth instead, called trail hunting.
The League Against Cruel Sports has been accused of being used as a “smokescreen” for the illegal hunting of foxes.
‘While Politicians Dither, Animals Suffer’
The RSPCA’s director of policy, Emma Slawinski, said: “While politicians dither, animals suffer. We are frustrated and disappointed that, despite overwhelming public support, the UK government has delayed and delayed and has now broken up the bill, leading to yet more uncertainty and lost time.”Chris and Lorraine Platt, co-founders of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation said: “We believe this represents a missed opportunity to further enhance the welfare and protection of animals across the United Kingdom.”
Labour’s shadow environment minister Alex Sobel told the Commons: “It represents a profound setback for animal welfare in the UK. It confirms once again that the government is too weak to deliver their own legislation. This time it’s innocent animals who will suffer the consequences.”
‘Political Game-Playing’
He said: “We will be taking forward measures in the Kept Animals Bill individually during the remainder of this Parliament. We remain fully committed to delivering our manifesto commitments. And this approach is now the surest and quickest way of doing so, rather than letting it be mired in political game-playing.”Spencer added: “Having left the EU, we are able to and will ban live exports for fattening and slaughter, and there has been no live exports from Great Britain since 2020. But our legislation will ensure this becomes permanent, and we remain committed to delivering it.”
In the 1980s and 1990s Britain exported around two million sheep and half a million heads of cattle a year to farms and slaughterhouses in Europe and there were regular complaints about the condition of animals being taken by ferry from as far away as Wales and Scotland.
Spencer said: “We’re committed to cracking down on puppy smuggling, we will ban the imports of young, heavily pregnant or mutilated dogs, and we will be able to do this more quickly with a single-issue bill than the secondary legislation required under the Kept Animals Bill.”
