Barry
Gardiner: I ask the hon. Gentleman the same question that
I asked of the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire. He knows that
until recently, Poland had the highest number of working horses in
Europe. However, I would challenge him to provide any evidence of an
increase in Poland, or any other such countries, in accidents involving
people as a result of badly-shod
horses.
Mr.
Williams: I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that
point again. I am sure that there is excellent farrier practice in
parts of Europe. If I were a Minister, I would write to him on that
matter.
Mr.
Gray: The point raised by the hon. Member for Brent, North
was a daft one. We are talking about working horses in Poland, the vast
majority of which
are unshod. They do not wear shoes—in Poland they are largely
fully cast. The 1.5 million horses in the UK, both working and ridden,
is a larger figure than that of the other EU member states put
together. We have far more horses here than in the rest of the European
Union, excluding the working horses in Poland. The hon. Gentleman
shakes his head from a sedentary position, but I do know a bit about
Polish horses.
Mr.
Williams: Perhaps the hon. Members will write to each
other and bring further illumination on the issue.
The hon.
Member for South-East Cambridgeshire raises the important point that it
is the farriers who work in this country at the moment who will have to
pay for the temporary registration process that will become part of the
way in which farriers can come and work in this country.
I did not
declare an interest at the beginning of my short contribution,
Mr. Illsley, on the basis that it is a long time since I
have jumped on a horse—something for which I imagine that many
horses are very grateful. I certainly used to ride a lot when I was
younger, and we had the services of really good blacksmiths, as we used
to call them—the term farrier did not exist in my part of the
world at that time. Blacksmiths were trained through experience and
practice, but we have moved on from that and people who use the
services of farriers in this country should have the right to expect
the highest degree of professionalism. By bringing farriers in from
Europe without the same degree of qualifications, the regulations do
not go any way to ensuring that that high level of expertise will be
retained.
9.23
am
Mr.
Gray: Thank you Mr. Illsley, it is a pleasure
to serve under you on this Committee. I do not intend to delay the
Committee unduly, not least because some of us will be looking forward
to DEFRA questions and the opportunity to cross-examine the Minister on
a variety of issues. I will try to keep my remarks brief.
This
statutory instrument is more important than many that might be heard
and discussed in the room. There are roughly 1.5 million horses in the
UK, nearly all of them shod. More importantly, there are something like
4.5 million people who ride horses, many of which are hired from riding
schools. If those horses are not shod properly, there will be huge
problems. I speak as the president of the Association of British Riding
Schools, which has a particular interest in this matter.
As a
declaration of interest, we keep six horses at home. If anything, it is
a negative pecuniary interest, because the fees that we pay to farriers
are astronomic, but we are delighted to be paying them because we know
that they are paid to people who are fully qualified and who will look
after our horses in the way that we want. One or two of those
horses—not my own—are very valuable animals and it is
important to ensure that the guy who comes round to shoe them knows
precisely what he is doing, not only with regard to banging the bit of
metal on their feet, but the whole way in which the horse’s leg
and foot operates. That is what the farrier does for us. If the horse
goes lame one gets the farrier, not the vet. The farrier immediately
looks at the hock and the way the shoe is put on and prescribes a
remedial
shoe. It is a very complicated and highly difficult operation. Those of
us who have horses do not mind paying someone we know to be hugely well
qualified to do that. Before I go
on to the meat of this topic which my hon. Friend the Member for
South-East Cambridgeshire covered so well, I have concerns about the
way in which we have arrived here. First, these regulations have been
in force and used since last October or November. It is very peculiar
that regulations occur and things happen in the United Kingdom long
before they are considered in this place. Surely this is important
enough for it to be considered here first and then to be implemented,
not the other way round. That seems a legislative oddity to which the
Minister might like to respond.
I am also
concerned about the way in which consultation was done on this
statutory instrument. As the explanatory notes remind
us: “As
the UK government is required to implement the Directive, the
consultation on these Regulations did not consult on the principles
underlying the Directive or those provisions whose transposition into
domestic law leaves no room for discretion at Member State
level.” It
is odd that we are in a Committee room in the mother of Parliaments
discussing a matter when we have been told by the Government that the
transposition of these provisions into domestic law leaves no room for
discretion at member state level. Whatever degree of Eurosceptic we
might be, it seems peculiar that we have been told by the European
Union that there is no room for discretion at member state level,
particularly as I am not certain that that is right.
As my hon.
Friend pointed out, we understand that the decision was made by DEFRA
officials — [Interruption.] The Minister
shakes his head. He will have an opportunity to reply to that later. We
will be delighted if he is able to say that this happened despite his
best efforts. Our understanding is that it was a decision of DEFRA
officials that the health and safety and animal welfare aspects of
these provisions should be ignored and that farriers should be treated
the same way as metal workers, as I understand they have been
classified. In that context, I want to make two or three points with
regard to the process by which this statutory instrument arrives here
today.
Paragraph 8
of the explanatory notes
states: “An
Impact Assessment has not been prepared for this instrument as no
significant impact on public, private or voluntary sectors is
foreseen.” As
many as 4.5 million riders and 2,500 farriers in the United Kingdom
today will disagree fundamentally with that conclusion. I believe that
there will be significant impact on public, private and voluntary
sectors as a result of this SI. That comes down to several things, but
health and safety and animal welfare are central.
In the
context of animal welfare, I was concerned by a written answer that my
noble friend Baroness Byford extracted from the Government on the
subject of these regulations. She asked what consideration had been
given to animal welfare in the implementation of these regulations. The
answer
stated: “No
formal assessment of the impact of these regulations on animal welfare
has been carried out.”—[Official Report, House of
Lords, 6 May 2008; Vol. 701,
c.WA51.] So
the Government are bringing this in without even considering whether it
has an implication for animal welfare, yet I believe that it has a very
significant
implication.
With that as
background, I shall touch on some of the substantive matters that my
hon. Friend has already touched on. The first is that in this country
we can be justifiably proud of the extraordinarily high standards of
farriery that we enjoy, which probably goes back centuries. We have
such expertise and skill because our attitude to the horse is different
from the European one. They eat them, for example, and we do not. They
move them live overseas. We, thankfully, managed to prevent that
happening in a debate two or three years ago, against this
Government’s best intentions. They were going to allow the live
export of horses to the continent for eating, but we got that
stopped.
We have 1.5
million horses, all of them are shod, all of them are being ridden in
the country. We have the highest standards of competition horses. Many
of the European countries do too, but much less widely. The hon. Member
for Brent, North raised the point about there being a lot of horses in
Poland. As I pointed out earlier, of course there are many horses in
Poland; most of them owned by small farmers, most of them unshod and
most of them for pulling carts. They are not actually competition,
riding, hunting or hacking horses of the kind that we have and there
are a very small number of them. Our 1.5 million horses come to more
than all of the other main European countries put
together.
Barry
Gardiner: Would the hon. Gentleman not accept that in many
of those countries, such as Poland, where the horse was a working
animal and where indeed they were shod, the services of a farrier were
required? The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire has just pointed
out that farriers do not deal with shoeing horses alone, but actually
with the whole health of the horse’s hoof and leg. Would he not
accept also that in those countries, because of the poverty that many
of those countries came from, a working horse was a very important
piece of machinery and it was imperative that it was kept in impeccable
working order, and that therefore the necessary standard of
farriery was accordingly
high?
Mr.
Gray: The hon. Gentleman makes an odd point. Of course
horses are important, particularly in peasant societies around the
world today, but farriers do not go near them. Farmers trim their own
horses’ feet—they do not wear shoes; the feet are
trimmed. Often in those societies, particularly in Asia Minor, horses
are expendable animals that last for a short time and when they go lame
they are shot. The notion that somehow they have the same high
standards of animal welfare as we enjoy in this country is simply
nonsensical. We shall be going to an event sponsored by the
International League for the Protection of Horses later this morning,
and its members will tell the hon. Gentleman if he asks them that the
standards of animal welfare across much of the continent of Europe,
within the European Union, is significantly lower than they are here.
We are saying that the standards of farriery in the UK are historically
extraordinarily high and it is terribly important that we should
continue that tradition. The net effect of this statutory instrument
may be, but will not necessarily be, that those standards are
reduced.
In his
response, the Minister may well do the same as his noble Friend Lord
Rooker and say two things. Lord Rooker’s main defence in the
other place was first, that there are the 400 grandfather rights
people, to which my hon. Friend referred, although he was unable to
answer the question that was put to him by Lord Addington. That
question was how old are these people and how old are the grandfather
rights that are on them? The answer that I have seen in an internal
DEFRA document on this subject is that their average age is 60 to 61.
Those are all people who were farriers before the Farriers
(Registration) Act 1975 came in and they were allowed to continue as
farriers thereafter, and quite right too. However, they have been
farriers for some 30 or 40 years and quite frankly, some of these old
boys, who may well not be qualified but who were farriers before 1975,
strike me as being just the people whom I would like to come and look
after my horses, so we are not talking about them—let us forget
them.
The Minister
may well also say that we have had one or two people only coming in
under the regulations so far, and they have been in operation since
last October. I think that one is temporary and one permanent; he will
no doubt correct me if I am wrong. He may say that that number is
insignificant; that it does not matter terribly and that we have 2,500
properly qualified British farriers, with only two coming in from
Europe, who will probably go away again. He can no doubt demonstrate
that they are working in the best racing yards, that they are terribly
well qualified and all that. That is not the point. The point here is
the principle that under the regulations it is at least possible,
although it may not happen, for people who are totally unqualified, who
have been operating in parts of the European Union—bear it in
mind that Romania, the Czech Republic and all sorts of places will be
brought into the European Union—to come here and operate as a
temporary farrier for a year, although they may have been in business
for only two years. It seems extraordinary that some entirely
unqualified person can come here with a piece of paper, such as his tax
returns, to show that he has been in business for two years and the
Government will say, “Okay, fine, off you go. We’ve 1.5
million horses here, you can go and do what you like with them.”
The public will not know whether they are properly qualified, but will
see that they have been given the opportunity by the Government to
practise as farriers and they will rely on
that.
Mr.
Williams: A number of farriers have spoken to me about the
cost of the insurance needed for them to carry on in their profession.
Does the hon. Gentleman think there is any requirement for somebody
coming from Europe to have insurance to carry on their professional
training? That is important to the
public.
Mr.
Gray: The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important
point. Of course, it is important. There is a degree of caveat emptor
in relation to this. If some fellow comes down my drive and says,
“I want to do your horses shoes,” of course, I will say,
“Let’s see who you are.” Presumably, the insurance
premiums of all farriers will go up. If a number of these people come
in and standards go down, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that
insurance premiums for all horses would have to go up to compensate for
the reduction in standards.
It seems that
the risk of the SI is that the extremely high calibre of farrier that
we have enjoyed in this country for many years might be diluted. I am
not saying that it will be—there is nothing definite about
it—but it might be the case. Surely, if this place has any
purpose, it is to consider measures that are
introduced—regulations and Acts—spot the problems with
them and consider whether they might make people’s way of life
worse in the United Kingdom. The points about the health and safety of
the rider and animal welfare, which are both matters that have not so
far been considered by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs in relation to these SIs, indicate that the standards might get
worse, as a result of which the quality of riding, horses and farriers
in this country might be reduced. The Government should go back to the
European Commission, say that they believe that there is a health and
safety and animal welfare problem, and seek a derogation from the
regulations.
9.37
am Glenda
Jackson (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab): It is a pleasure
to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Illsley. I rise to my
feet as someone who has no knowledge whatsoever about horses and little
about farriering, but as someone who wishes to counteract what strikes
me as being the somewhat xenophobic argument emanating from those on
the Opposition Benches—most markedly towards Poland.
[ Hon. Members: “ No.”] I did not
interrupt Opposition Members when they made their arguments so I would
be grateful if they did not attempt to interrupt
me. Poland
has been mentioned on more than one occasion and underlying the
arguments emanating from those on the Opposition Benches is the view
that farriering in this country—a central part of the horse
industry, however one wishes to define it—has been going on for
centuries and therefore we are primary experts in the field. I make no
argument against that, but simply wish to point out to those on the
Opposition Benches that farriering as a profession and as something
that became increasingly expert was based, as so many professions are,
on war. Farriering came into its primacy because centuries ago, wars
were mainly conducted by cavalry. I am sure that no one in the
Committee would discount the historic records that show that Poland and
Hungary had expert cavalry forces. I therefore find it impossible to
believe that farriering as a profession was not given the same high
regard in those countries as in this country—although admittedly
at that time, war allowed for a rather limited expression of farriering
abilities.
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