Instruments of interest
Draft Code of Practice for the Welfare of Meat Chickens and Meat Breeding Chickens
29.The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has laid this draft Code with an Explanatory Memorandum (EM). It provides updated and improved guidance to owners and keepers of meat chickens and meat breeding chickens on how to comply with farm animal welfare legislation and how to practise good standards of stockmanship. It is intended to replace the “Code of Recommendations for the Welfare of Livestock: Meat Chickens and Breeding Chickens”, issued in 2002 (“the 2002 Code”).
30.In February 2016, Defra laid a draft Order to revoke the 2002 Code, with the intention that it should be replaced by non-statutory, industry-led guidance, prepared by the British Poultry Council. In our 29th Report of Session 2015–16,15 we brought that draft Order to the special attention of the House, on the ground that it might imperfectly achieve its policy objectives, and we wrote to the Secretary of State to underline concerns about the implications for animal welfare that had been voiced by respondents to a consultation about the move to non-statutory Codes. In our 31st Report of Session 2015–16,16 we published a reply from the Secretary of State, in which she told us that she had concluded that it was possible to achieve the Department’s objectives while retaining the statutory codes, and that she had decided to withdraw the draft Order.17
31.We welcome the fact that Defra has taken forward updating the statutory Code on the basis of consultation with interested parties; and that the EM provides a good overview of the need for, and purpose of, the updated Code.
Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun Freezing Order 2018 (SI 2018/60)
32.HM Treasury (HMT) has laid this Order with an Explanatory Memorandum (EM). On 21 January 2016 the report into the death of Alexander Litvinenko by the Litvinenko Inquiry, chaired by Sir Robert Owen, was published; it found that Mr Litvinenko was deliberately poisoned by Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun in November 2006. On 22 January 2016, HMT laid the Andrey Lugovoy and Dmitri Kovtun Freezing Order 2016 (SI 2016/67) which prohibited persons in the United Kingdom from making funds available to or for the benefit of the individuals named in the Order.18 The 2016 Order was considered in Grand Committee on 10 February 2016,19 when Lord Ashton of Hyde, for the Government, confirmed that it would lapse two years after it was made (as set out in section 8 of the Antiterrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001). However, Lord Ashton added that the Government would continue to monitor the evidence, “and if the order is still in force after two years, we will consider at that point whether it is necessary and proportionate to make a new order.” The laying of the latest Order is the outcome of that consideration.
15 29th Report, Session 2015–16 (HL Paper 114).
16 31st Report, Session 2015–16 (HL Paper 126).
17 It was withdrawn in April 2016.
18 We published information about the 2016 Order in our 23rd Report, Session 2015–16 (HL Paper 89).