Laboratory Animals Protection Bill [H.L.] (Hansard, 22 October 1981)

The Earl of Halsbury

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. Perhaps I may be allowed to remind your Lordships that this is the final stage, the second time round, of the Bill that I was given leave to introduce some two and a half years ago. On the first time round it was committed to a Select Committee of your Lordships' House, which carried out a public investigation into the facts of animal experimentation and the current law on the subject, and the Bill was reported, as amended, to the House. It survived its remaining stages unamended, was passed and sent to the other place, albeit too late to be more than formally taken up. On this second time round it has survived, unamended, a Committee stage on the Floor of the House and it is now in its final stage. If your Lordships are content it will again be sent to the other place.

I have heard it said that a distinguishing feature of your Lordships' House is the competent discharge of self-appointed tasks. If that is so, I think that Bills in this style are a good illustration of it. It was the House that took upon itself, on its own initiative, to set up the Select Committee. As to the competent discharge of its task, I should like your Lordships to hear what Europe thinks of the Bill, as amended, here. The head of the secretariat in Strasbourg, which is considering a European convention on the same subject, is now in retirement; and in retirement he has 848 visited this country to give a series of talks on the subject. Of this Bill he has written as follows: Lord Halsbury's revised Bill in the United Kingdom would seem to represent a very good base for a new law. Resulting from an admirable co-ordination of the interests of Research and Animal Welfare, which is probably unique, it represents an excellent example of fruitful co-operation". It is always nice to be paid a compliment, but I must make it clear that I do not take this compliment by any means all to myself. There is the work of the House as a whole, and of its Select Committee in particular; there are the contributions of all the witnesses who appeared before us or who wrote to us; last, but by no means least, stand the personal relations between myself and my noble friend Lord Houghton of Sowerby. We do not always see our problems in identical terms, but for a long time past we have discussed whatever disagreements we have had in a temperate and civilised manner.

When we came to this subject the scientists on one side and the animal welfarists on the other were, for the most part, not on speaking terms, and had not been for the best part of the century. We leave it with a joint committee of his friends and my friends working together to advise the Government on the provisions of some future Government Bill. What more could you desire?—and that is a direct result of the work that this House has put in on that Bill.

For my part, I regard my speech this afternoon as my swan song on this subject. I have been involved in this for a quarter of a century, and I think it is time for me to be put out to grass with pleasant memories of all those with whom I have worked and who have supported me at one time or another. Therefore, I shall strike up the strings and go ahead with some questions to the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, who answers for the Government in this field.

First let me deal with the situation at Strasbourg on which we are all waiting. Two years ago there was a change of chairman. It can be argued that this produced a hiccup which set back progress for a whole year. The chair is due to change hands again in the new year. Must we anticipate another hiccup and another year's delay? I do hope not. The next meeting at Strasbourg is forecast for January, but will it actually take place then and what will be the state of preparedness at the date of that next meeting with respect, first of all, to the pain clause, which is such a difficult and vexatious body to draft and, secondly, to any other major clauses causing difficulty—for example, the inclusion of statutory provision for the inspection and licensing of breeding colonies?

Then there are the appendices. I understand that Appendix A has been finished, but some others still have to be approached. If the drafting work on these is incomplete in January, when is it likely that the next meeting will take place? Hitherto meetings have been at six-monthly intervals, which means that we shall not see anything really from Strasbourg in the lifetime of the next Session of Parliament if there is a delay. On completion of all drafts, what delay is expected in submitting the drafts to the Council of Ministers and implementing the undertaking given by the noble Lord here that, before the convention is ratified, facilities will be given for parliamentary debate in this country?

849 The second main topic on which I should like the noble Lord to answer some questions deals with the Home Office advisory committee which has been sitting to consider the need for new legislation and which reported during the vacation. I am sure that your Lordships would like to know that this committee considered the work of our Select Committee so comprehensive that no further inquiry was called for. I think that is a very welcome tribute to its qualities, but the following questions arise out of it. Have the Government as yet—and I say "as yet" because I realise that the Government must have time to study the work of their own committee—any view on the apparent preference of the advisory committee for the Bill as originally drafted by myself as opposed to the amended Bill with respect to the control of licence conditions and similar matters by ministerial regulations under legislation on the one hand, or direct legislation incorporating the text of the Bill on the other hand? The original Bill left more to the discretion of the Home Secretary as the keeper of the national conscience than the amended version did and the advisory committee inclined more to the original draft. Then again, have the Government yet developed a view on the alternative versions of the pain clause in the Bill, the advisory committee's report and the draft convention as far as it has got at Strasbourg?

Then we come to the licensing schemes, of which two new ones have been proposed in the report of the advisory committee, known as Scheme A and Scheme B. May I remark here that the devising of licensing schemes can become a hobby that can be indulged without any fear that it will ever come to an end? I believe that, given goodwill, many things not totally unreasonable can be made to work more or less, but that without goodwill nothing can be made to work however reasonable it looks on paper. There is accordingly a premium to be placed on simplicity and comprehensibility, and critics of what has been proposed feel that Scheme A in the advisory committee's report is unworkable and that Scheme B adds nothing to what we have already. What does the noble Lord think?

Thirdly, there is the question of Government legislation. What is the real status of the drafting activities reported in The Observer on 27th September? If we are to believe that report, a Government Bill to be introduced in the next Session of Parliament is on the stocks. Are these really anything more than routine exercises in draftsmanship, going on in parallel with public discussion either here or in Strasbourg? Or is there really a Government Bill on the stocks? I naturally do not seek to be so naive as to ask the noble Lord, Lord Belstead, what is going to be in the Queen's Speech, but only what is going on in his Ministry, if he is disposed to tell us. Then, are the Government aware of the views expressed by Mr. von Holstein in the paper from which I was quoting earlier, when he was stressing the need for the British Government to take action? What he says is this: In view of the traditions of animal protection law in the United Kingdom it really seems inconceivable that a Government Bill would contain provisions inferior to the lowest common denominator of European law". Why not then press on with a British Bill?

850 As the noble Lord knows, that is the view that I have taken all along. We ought to show leadership. We are the ones who have the experience. I have to confess—and I hope that the noble Lord will not think that I am being horrid—that I am a little tired of successive Governments of whatever complexion complaining of a lack of leadership in almost every field except that of Government. What does the noble Lord say to that? How would he answer Mr. von Holstein's suggestion that we should get on with it? While accepting that the noble Lord cannot anticipate what is going to be in the Queen's Speech made from the Throne, can he offer what I might call hope in good faith that there will be Government legislation before the time when the next general election is due? I do not say "before the next general election", because that is another matter altogether—but before the date when the next general election is due, which I suppose is in the spring of 1984.

Lastly, I come to the topic of vandalisation. Is the noble Lord sensitive to the point that so long as Government action lags behind rather than leads public demand for new law, vandalisation is unlikely to be severely punished in the courts? This is a very real issue. I took the chair at a public lecture two weeks ago; its subject was the work of the Medicines Commission. The lecturer was the very distinguished chairman of the Medicines Commission, Sir John Butterfield. The lecturer and the chair were both drowned in noise by vandals identified as including those who vandalised the last annual general meeting of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—the usual mindless, imbecile sloganising engaged in the suppression of free speech. I am told that these people are on public assistance and have nothing else to do except sit around and make a noise. Do your Lordships wonder therefore that I am impatient for legislation which will put such people in conflict not with a law a century old and possibly out of date, so that a protest can be held to be legitimate, but with the latest expression of law fresh from the Mother of Parliaments—the highest court in the land—and to be respected accordingly? We badly need a Government equivalent to this Bill. I beg to move.