Mr.
Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con): I am
somewhat disappointed that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire
interpreted the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater as
any sort of discrimination or prejudice against Scotland. I celebrate
the richness and diversity of our heritage, both cultural and culinary.
Last week, I enjoyed the pleasures of an Arbroath smokie for my
breakfast, and I know that many people from north of the border enjoy
their holidays in my constituency. We aim to cater for their tastes, as
well as providing our native cuisine.
Can I ask the Minister about
the register of disqualification? It is eminently sensible and logical
to have a person who is disqualified from running a riding
establishment or a transport business, or from keeping a pet north of
the border, disqualified in England and Wales too, and vice versa, but
how will that be handled in practice? Will there be two separate
databases with common access or will there be a common database? And
who will have access to the database? Will animal welfare
organisations, as well as statutory authorities such as local
authorities, be allowed to see who is on the register? Can we have some
clarification on how things will work in practice, and whether the data
will be accessible to every member of the community as well as to
organisations?
2.55
pm
David
Cairns: I am grateful that the Committee recognises that
there is nothing outstandingly controversial about the proposals, which
are common-sense, modest measures. However, I shall try and answer the
questions that have been
raised. The hon.
Member for Bridgwater raised quite properly issues of cross-border
co-operation on animal welfare and outbreaks of certain diseases. I
assure him that there is a great deal of co-operation between the
Scottish Executive and the UK Government on animal health and welfare
issues relating to such outbreaks. I was not a Minister at the time of
the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, but I know that in the
contingency planning for the potential avian flu, there was an enormous
amount of very close co-operation between the Minister in the Scottish
Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department and his equivalents
here, and also between the Scottish Executive Health Minister and their
equivalents in the Department of Health. Everyone understands that we
have a border, which, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, animals do
not respect in that sense, so it is imperative that we work together
closely. I assure him that those issues are taken very seriously and
are the subject of close
co-operation. The hon.
Gentleman asked some quite proper questions about evolving policy in
Scotland on tail docking and mentioned that the consultation will
finish early in the new year. He has his views on tail docking, and
this House has expressed its view as far as it affects England and
Wales, but not, I think, Northern Ireland. Obviously, this House has
settled its position, but the Scottish Parliament’s powers in
that matter are entirely devolved, and it has yet to establish its
definitive position. I cannot answer the hon. Gentleman’s
questions about whether there is a difference between the
jurisdictions, because the Scottish Executive is yet to settle its
policy. However, I am more than happy to continue this discussion as
its position becomes clearer in the new
year. The order is
quite narrow and recognises that when somebody has been disqualified in
Scotland, they cannot just come to England and carry on as if nothing
had happened. The legislation passed in this place has been
acknowledged already in the Scottish Parliament to ensure that that
cannot happen. The
hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby neatly sidestepped the many
Yorkshire delicacies that we could have mentioned, but we shall pass on
from that. He asked who will have access to the register. I do not know
the answer, but I shall write to him and copy in the Committee when I
do. Mr.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab): It is difficult to
sustain the unbearable excitement of this Committee without making a
comment. I understand the Conservative Opposition being interested in
the animal part of the order—it is relevant to them and their
situation in that it concerns dumb animals.
I do not think that the
question about tail docking, which was contentious in this Parliament,
has been answered. For dogs, a lot depends on this question: depending
on what the Scottish Parliament decides, might tail docking become
easier in Scotland than in
England, resulting in the cross-border trafficking of dogs to Scotland
to have the docking operation done there for cosmetic, working or
breeding purposes? What would be the legal position of dogs docked in
that way when they take up residence again in this
country? David
Cairns: My hon. Friend is inviting me to speculate on a
question to which I simply do not know the answer, because I do not
know what the Scottish Executive’s eventual position will be.
Constitutionally, issues relating to animal welfare and cruelty are
entirely devolved, and so there is no reason why the regimes north and
south of the border have to be the same—they could be
different. As I
understand the debate, the Scottish Parliament is not necessarily
looking for a regime that is more liberal than ours, and it might come
out with a stricter one. It would be unwise for me to speculate
further, because we do not know what the policy will be north of the
border after the
consultation.
Mr.
Goodwill: Is the Minister aware that Stuart Shearlaw,
Central Scotland police’s senior animal health and welfare
officer, is on the record as saying that the proposed rules
would be difficult to enforce, were they different in the two
countries? And is the Minister aware that the enforcement authorities
realise that differences in the law, north and south of the border,
would make it almost impossible to enforce the
legislation?
David
Cairns: I was not aware of those comments. The ability to
operate different regimes north and south of the border is routinely
taken into consideration when such matters are decided. Ultimately,
however, I return to what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Great
Grimsby: the situation is clear; these issues have been devolved to the
Scottish Parliament, and it is up to that Parliament to advance
whatever regime it sees
fit. Pete
Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP): I am sure that
the Minister shares my view that hon. Members should not be looking to
influence a decision by Scottish Members of the Scottish
Parliament.
David
Cairns: I would not go that far. We must accept that there
are other views. Will the hon. Gentleman refrain from making any
comment whatsoever when the Scottish Parliament is debating Trident?
Will he give a firm commitment that he will make no public statement
whatsoever that would influence Members of the Scottish Parliament one
way or the other, when they are deciding about Trident? No; he will
not. I think that the unbearable excitement is getting too much for the
hon. Gentleman, so I shall move
on. It is a matter of
some considerable regret to find out that the hon. Member for
Bridgwater has broken the healthy start website—my hon. Friend
the Member for Dumfries and Galloway says that it was working perfectly
well when he accessed it this morning. I shall
hotfoot it from this Committee to the nearest computer and, if it is not
working, I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will get the relevant
person at the Department of Health to put the plug back in
again. The hon.
Gentleman asked another important question about the qualifying
provisions. The measures emanate from social security
legislation—as I have said, they have an impact on health, which
is a devolved matter—so the qualifying provisions and
definitions of low income are the same north and south of the
border. The hon.
Gentleman also mentioned some cross-border matters, as did the hon.
Member for East Dunbartonshire. Although it is true—we are in
the realm of theoretical possibility—that, because we have
devolved this power to Scottish Executive Ministers, they rightly have
ownership of the policy, in practical terms they will ally themselves
with what the Department of Health is doing because of economies of
scale in purchasing and so on. However, if at some later stage they
decide that, for whatever reason, the health needs of Scottish babies
and children require them to prescribe different foodstuffs, they have
the power to do so. In practice, Scottish Ministers and the Department
will function as one on this issue, which is the locus of the section
93 order, which is subject to the negative resolution procedure. In a
slightly unusual move, we are giving the policy ownership to Scottish
Executive Ministers, who are essentially giving back the practical
implications. Bearing in mind the distinction between policy ownership
and how such matters are worked out in practice will help us to make
some sense of the
issue. I should like
to mention why, as the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire has said,
there was a gap in the animal welfare legislation. We can move forward
with the section 104 orders only when the relevant Bill inthe
Scottish Parliament has received Royal Assent. I understand that that
happened on 11 July, therefore there was insufficient time to lay the
order before the summer recess. We returned from summer recess a wee
while ago but, parliamentary time being what it is, this is our first
opportunity to deal with the matter. I am advised that, as far as we
are aware, nobody has fallen between the gaps in introducing and
streamlining this legislation. If I am wrong about that, I shall let
the hon. Lady know. A
lot of questions were asked about the renewable obligations
certificates. Essentially, to deal with process issues, we changed the
definition of what functions could be exercised by the Secretary of
State under the 2006 Act introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for
Edinburgh, North and Leith. I have been asked why we did not just move
forward on that at the same time. Section 104 orders are used
executively to devolve any new function under the devolutionary
settlement. We are considering only one such order on this occasion,
but at times we deal with a number of them.
I take the hon. Lady’s
point that we might simply have included a clause in the Bill that said
that the function should be executively devolved to Scottish Executive
Ministers, and I am not enough of a constitutional expert to know why
that route was not preferred in that instance. However, it is important
to make a distinction between this order, which is devolving a
function, and one that devolves an area of
policy. We are not devolving policy. Scottish Executive Ministers do not
have the legislative competence to change the policy in that
regard—they merely have the legislative ability to carry out the
functions. It might be that somewhere amidst that distinction is the
reason for our taking the section 104 order route rather than the route
suggested by the hon. Lady even though, prima facie, it seems to be a
matter of six and two threes. The hon. Member for Bridgwater
asked aboutthe status of bio-plants. Traditionally, renewable
obligations certificates—certainly as they have operated from
the UK Government—have been platform neutral, and it has not
mattered whether they relate to biofuels, wind or wave. The Deputy
First Minister in the Scottish Executive has been exploring ways of
differentiating within ROCs with regard to encouraging wave generation,
and that consultation is ongoing. He may seek to differentiate further
down to biofuels, but, again, that is an issue for the Scottish
Executive, and one that is just beginning to be worked through. The
hon. Gentleman also asked when the report into wind and wave will come
out. I do not know, but I will ensure that he is sent a copy as soon as
it does. Wave and
tidal energy has enormous potential around the Scottish coast. I went
to Inverness recently and saw the great work that is being done at
Wavegen in order to harness it. There are enormous technical
difficulties involved in getting it right, and a lot of environmental
questions about which bits of shoreline
are used. Those questions can, however, be overcome, and we should
encourage wave and tidal energy electricity production. The hon. Gentleman is right
that we are talking about allowing people to make up their own minds on
microgeneration and distributed generation. We are talking not about
centralisation but about the opposite—making the process of
microgeneration simpler and more streamlined, without people having to
go through the hoops that existed before my hon. Friend the Member for
Edinburgh, North and Leith introduced his private Member’s
Bill. I hope that I
have clarified the issues, and I shall write to hon. Members where I
have said that I willdo so.
Question put and agreed
to. Resolved,
That the Committee has
considered the draft Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006
(Consequential Provisions) (England and Wales) Order
2006. Resolved,
That the Committee has
considered the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Transfer of Functions to the
Scottish Ministers etc.)(No. 3) Order 2006.—[David
Cairns.] Committee
rose at eight minutes past Three
o’clock.
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