In a stunning move that caught its proponents completely off-guard, Britain’s House of Lords has blocked a major power grab on the part of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labor government by rejecting a bill that would have granted unprecedented powers of entry and slaughter to ministry officials in the name of curbing animal diseases.
On a vote of 130 to 124, the peers March 26 derailed the Animal Health (Amendment) Bill, which was on the final leg of its journey through Parliament. The action gives the opposition some breathing space and a chance to regroup while awaiting its certain return. Introduced Oct. 30 (as a Halloween prank, said critics), the bill moved swiftly through the House of Commons, and on Jan. 14 passed the second of the three required readings in the House of Lords, which was expected to rubberstamp it in a matter of days. But at that point it stalled, and no formal action was taken on it until last week.
The bill – whose provisions would apply only to England and Wales, not Scotland or Northern Ireland – was drafted in response to complaints by ministry staff and officials that efforts to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease last year were stymied by farmers and other animal owners and their allies attempting to stop the government-ordered mass slaughter of 11 million animals, mostly sheep and cattle – roughly 15 percent of Britain’s livestock. Of these, the vast majority (over 9 million) were slaughtered as part of the highly controversial and probably illegal “contiguous cull” scheme, under which animals on farms and properties within a 3-kilometer [1.86 miles] radius of an “infected premise” were killed. Only 2 percent of these were actually infected with the disease, which in any case is neither fatal to adult animals nor a danger to humans.
Contiguous culling was not used to control foot-and-mouth in 1967, the most recent major epidemic of the disease in Britain. Then, as today, the government refused to use vaccination as a means of eradication or control, relying strictly on the slaughter of infected animals and herds.
From the outset, opponents slammed the proposed law – dubbed the “Animal Death Bill” – as an egregious threat to civil liberties and rights. Many believe it to be the most Draconian piece of legislation ever introduced in Britain. In essence, the bill would graft new and expansive powers onto the existing Animal Health Act of 1981, which permits the killing of animals only where there is evidence of infection or of direct exposure to infection.
Under the new amendments, the minister of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or DEFRA, could order the slaughter of any animal or animals – even if healthy – to curb the spread of disease. It gives inspectors the right to enter premises – with a warrant, but without having to give prior notice – to kill targeted animals.
Had it passed, farmers, pet owners and owners of animal refuges in England and Wales would be blocked from mounting challenges against actions by DEFRA inspectors, as many did successfully last year. Owners of animals would not be able to appeal until the slaughter had taken place, and then essentially only to haggle over the amount of compensation. Not only would it be a crime to resist, but simply refusing to help inspectors carry out orders would be a criminal offense carrying a six-month prison sentence. Organizing and participating in on-site protests and demonstrations would be criminalized as well.
Few outside the government heralded the legislation, which was roundly condemned by lawyers, columnists, farmers, owners of animal refuges and pet owners.
Barbara Jordan, a solicitor with the Bristol law firm of Jordan and Jordan, in Gloucestershire, had a number of clients who were sheep owners whose animals were spared slaughter thanks to her efforts. To her, the bill was simply an attempt to legitimize actions that weren’t lawful in the first place and, under the mantra of “emergency,” to acquire powers that deprive farmers of rights.
“It seemed to me that the government were trying to cull animals in circumstances where they were not really entitled to do so under the Animal Health Act,” Jordan told WorldNetDaily. “What they’re attempting to do now, without a public hearing, is to take to themselves enough power to go in and cull animals with or without [blood] testing and be able to do everything they were trying to do by sheer harassment – but legally.”
‘Licence for incompetence’
Magnus Linklater, columnist for The Scotsman, in a Nov. 4 piece, whacked the bill as “an outrage” and a “licence for incompetence.”
“It gives the government the right to slaughter any animal, including not only cows and sheep, but family pets, horses, ponies and even creatures housed in zoos, if, in its view, they ‘pose a risk of spreading disease,'” declared Linklater. “This means that if there is another foot-and-mouth scare, farmers or householders will be deprived of the legal right to challenge the killing of their animals. It is a savage and Draconian piece of legislation.”
The government’s defeat came at the end of a lively, two-and-a-half-hour debate when the peers approved a simple, one-sentence amendment, proposed by Lord Moran, that they decline to consider the bill until the implementation powers in it were further discussed and studied and several reports commissioned by the government are published later this year.
Moran told fellow peers: “I think practically everybody agrees that the bill as it stands now is not the legislation we want. I am sure that, in order to get the legislation right, it needs to be based in the inquiries which the government set up. I believe that it is very much in the government’s own interests to do that.”
He said Part I of the bill was “based entirely on legalizing and extending the mass slaughter of animals,” and he warned that farming families and the public would not likely stand for a similar culling policy in the future.
“Once again, vets would be asked to take action against their professional judgment. Surely, that is not a road down which we should go,” he said.
Labor peer and Food and Farming minister Lord Whitty, chief advocate for the bill in the Upper House, stridently protested Moran’s amendment. He said the government had inadequate police powers to combat disease and foresaw an eventual need for even greater powers than contained in the proposed bill, though he did not specify what these might be.
In his words, “It is clear to us – in particular in carrying out a contiguous cull, but also in potentially carrying out other strategies to contain diseases, whether vaccination, blood tests, serology or alternative approaches – that we do not have adequate powers of entry or rapid enough powers for enforcing entry in order to contain the disease.”
“We know what we need,” Whitty stated. “It is not the totality of what we need. We do not know everything that we need, but we know this.” In conclusion he said it would be “irresponsible of the House to prevent us from gaining those powers.”
Most of the peers, however, argued in favor of Moran’s proposal, pointing out that the government through its contiguous cull policy had completely bungled the handling of the epidemic, slaughtering millions more animals than was necessary to control the disease, and had all but destroyed the economy and landscape of rural England.
Lord Willoughby de Broke spoke harshly of the government’s demand for the Lords to sanction the “roundly condemned” culling policy by approving the bill.
“That is like a drunk driver saying, ‘I’ll drive much better if I have another bottle of Scotch,'” he quipped.
The BBC said the vote was “a major setback for the government’s rural policy,” and complained that it meant the bill is not likely to become law in the current session of Parliament, though the government might be able to find a procedural method of reintroducing the legislation.
Animal Health minister Elliott Morley, Labor MP for Scunthorpe, North Yorkshire, who, like Whitty, wholeheartedly supported the government’s handling of the foot-and-mouth epidemic, said the peers had behaved “thoughtlessly” and that it was “only fortunate that there were no current outbreaks of disease.”
He said he “very much regretted” the move because the bill needed “to be enacted as rapidly as possible.” He restated his long-standing opposition to call for a full public inquiry into the outbreak, saying such an inquiry could take years.
But Peter Ainsworth, shadow secretary for the environment and chief spokesman for the Conservative opposition to the Animal Heath Act amendments in the House of Commons, hailed the outcome.
“News that what had become known as ‘the Animal Death Bill’ has itself been culled will be greeted with enormous relief by people throughout the countryside,” said Ainsworth. “The bill implied that farmers were to blame for the [foot-and-mouth] tragedy; it offered inadequate rights of appeal; it was hastily prepared; it conferred Draconian new powers on ministers; and it did nothing to prevent the importation of illegal meat.”
It is widely held that foot-and-mouth was introduced into England through the importation – both legal and illegal – of infected meat from countries such as Brazil, where the disease is endemic.
According to the BBC, the decision to kill the bill with an all-but-unique parliamentary procedure was taken against the advice of Tory (Conservative) and Liberal Democrat “front benches” – a situation comparable to instances in the U.S. Congress when the Republican Party leadership pushes for conciliation and support of Democrat proposals to the consternation of GOP grass-roots groups and more conservative congressional members.
Moran, a “crossbencher,” is aligned with neither the Labor, Conservative nor Liberal Democrat parties. Drawing on skills no doubt developed during his 40-year career with Her Majesty’s Foreign Office, he assembled “a cross-party alliance of Tory, Liberal Democrat and other crossbench peers,” the BBC reported.
Following the vote, Whitty said he believed the outcome stemmed from resentment among the lords for the government’s decision to press forward with a ban on hunting, a view Ainsworth blasted as “manifest nonsense.”
“This has got nothing to do with hunting and nothing to do with hereditaries, but it’s got a lot to do with a nasty and bad bill,” Ainsworth declared.
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