Official Report 291KB pdf
Agenda item 5 is the Animal Welfare Bill, which is UK legislation. The minister has advised the committee that the Executive intends to seek the Parliament's consent to the UK Parliament legislating on certain devolved matters through the Animal Welfare Bill. That bill is currently before the Westminster Parliament and it makes provisions on animal welfare that are similar to those in part 2 of the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Bill. The Sewel convention requires the Parliament to consent to the UK Parliament legislating in this way and the committee has agreed to take evidence from the Deputy Minister for Environment and Rural Development before considering our report to the Parliament. Colleagues will note that a revised memorandum has been issued by the minister. It was circulated to members on Monday.
My officials are Claire Tosh, John Paterson, Heather Holmes and Ian Strachan, all from the Scottish Executive.
Is there anything that you wish to say as a short opening statement?
Yes, thank you.
No one will argue with the principle that disqualification orders should be recognised on both sides of the border. However, there are concerns about the Sewel motion in this context. Sewel motions are controversial at the best of times, but on this occasion we seem to have a situation where there are animal health and welfare bills going through the Parliaments north and south of the border, so ministers had the opportunity to amend the Scottish bill.
Absolutely not. We regard the Sewel motion as the best option, regardless of constitutional positions. The DEFRA Animal Welfare Bill has only been introduced to Parliament and it is not yet clear what will happen during its passage. The bill's provisions could change, which could mean that references to it in the Scottish bill might be rendered meaningless, inaccurate or redundant. Therefore, to counter the separate provision, an order would have to be made under the Scottish bill to amend references.
If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that amendments to the Scottish bill could be rendered meaningless by the UK bill. Why can the UK bill not take into account the Scottish bill and ensure that amendments are not rendered meaningless? Why must we follow Westminster's lead? Why can Westminster not ensure that its bill is compatible with the Scottish bill?
That is exactly what the Sewel motion will allow.
Exactly.
People should speak one at a time. Mr Paterson, please continue.
The Sewel motion will allow those provisions of the Westminster bill that will apply in Scotland to be followed through in order that the best fit is achieved with respect to the parts of the bill that relate to the creation of disqualification orders in England and Wales. If we want those provisions to be cleanly followed through, the best place for them is the Animal Welfare Bill. The draftsman can then follow his changes to one part of the bill in another part of the bill, as can the Parliament.
It does. I accept that there are two ways of legislating on such issues—Scotland can legislate or a Sewel motion can be used to allow Westminster to legislate—but my point is that, in the light of the coincidence of two bills on animal welfare, surely the preferred option is to allow Scotland to legislate. The minister's correspondence says that that would be perfectly legitimate, but that she has chosen to go down the alternative route of allowing Westminster to legislate. Should precedence not always be given to legislating in Scotland where that is possible?
The bottom line is that preference is given to the best way of making the legislation. We need to ensure that we enable the proposed legislation to proceed without referring to constitutional issues—that is the best way of ensuring that the legislation is enacted on both sides of the border. I assure Richard Lochhead that we considered the matter carefully.
We should be perfectly clear that the meaningless points that have been made in the past few minutes have absolutely nothing to do with animal welfare or competent legislation. Exactly why the mechanism in question is being applied and why the route in question has been proposed has been ably explained by the minister and reinforced by her official. All that we have heard from the Scottish National Party in the past 10 minutes is the same old typical, dreary nationalistic dirge that it plays whenever the words "UK", "Great Britain" and "Westminster" are mentioned. We should short-circuit this meaningless discussion on a constitutional matter because it is irrelevant to the committee.
In the previous evidence session we heard about banning animal sales on the internet in England and Wales. Some of the NGOs were concerned that if there is such a ban south of the border, people who sell animals on the internet may move to Scotland to do it. To avoid anomalies, have you considered mirroring that power in the Scottish bill or even considered it as part of a Sewel motion to allow that provision to apply north and south of the border?
I am being told that that will be in secondary legislation; it will not be on the face of the bill. Would you like to say something, Ian?
Certainly. The UK Animal Welfare Bill does not have anything about the sale of animals on its face, despite recent press reports. The sale of animals will be covered in secondary legislation at Westminster and in Scotland. That secondary legislation will be introduced only after full consultation and with the committee's approval.
Great, that has clarified things.
That is helpful. That point was raised earlier.
Where is a disqualification order made? Are other member states in the European Union notified about people who are subject to them? The free movement of labour potentially means that somebody who held animals here could go to another country in the European Union. What mechanism do you envisage in the Animal Welfare (Scotland) Bill to deal with that?
The courts will make a disqualification order that will be recorded in a database for the United Kingdom. We have to set up that database and I have given no thought to expanding it to the European Union. As you suggest, we must think about that. However, there will at least be a database for the UK, which we do not have at the moment.
Do you think that you should look at that seriously? I can think of people who have been disqualified and are perhaps in jail at the moment, but who could possibly go to another country and do the same thing.
That will be looked at, and I am happy to do so.
The only thing that I would say is that I would have thought that ensuring the applicability of disqualification orders and so forth outside of Great Britain would be a matter for the European Commission. The UK could feed into that process, but we obviously would not be in a position to direct other countries as to how they treat the orders.
We are happy to come back to the committee to deal specifically with this matter.
The point about people leaving Scotland or the UK with a disqualification order is interesting. If there is similar animal welfare legislation in other European Union countries, people who have a very bad track record, or who have been successfully prosecuted in another country, could potentially come into Scotland. It raises a whole agenda beyond what we were initially thinking about in this bill.
We will come back to you on that.
As no one has any further points, I thank the minister and her officials very much for answering our questions.
Meeting continued in private until 12:46.
Previous
Subordinate Legislation