3. Statement by the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs: The Wild Animals and Circuses (Wales) Bill

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:23 pm on 9 July 2019.

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Photo of Joyce Watson Joyce Watson Labour 3:23, 9 July 2019

I welcome the Bill, and you're absolutely right, we can't be the only nation to allow wild animals in circuses to just be exhibited for people's pleasure without thinking that it's fundamentally wrong. So, I look forward to the Bill coming forward. I'm not going to ask all the questions that have been asked, but I am particularly interested in what is wild and what isn't wild, and how that's going to be determined, because I think most people are thinking about wild animals being exotically wild, and yet we've got native animals that are clearly wild, and so I'm interested in how that's going to move forward.

In terms of the licensing scheme, I'm also interested to see how that is going to go forward. You're going out, you said, to further consultation. It's about what should be included within that licensing scheme. I'll just put an idea forward: there is breeding for export of wild animals that currently takes place, and one of those is birds of prey, and they're being exported to the far east. Well, quite clearly, they don't live in the far east for very good reasons: there isn't any food source for them, it isn't the right climate for them. So, should we be licensing the breeding of animals to be exported, in the first case, under huge duress in that journey, and, secondly, in conditions that are clearly not conducive to their well-being? So, I would like to add that into your licensing scheme.

I would be interested to know how long those licences would last once people have had them issued, and how easy it is to revoke a licence, should you find that people have already committed acts of cruelty. I raise that because we have some dog breeding establishments currently, and they have been found to be guilty of cruelty, and yet the licence just passes to another family member if it's revoked at all. And if we are talking about licences and people being of the right character, we should also be looking at the legislation that follows that, and the sanctions that follow. At the moment, you can be as cruel as you like, it seems, to an animal, and you are not going to get more that six months under Welsh legislation, yet you could get five years if we did something about it. So, I think that, when we are looking at licences, we also need to look at the sanctions that follow. So, those are the things that I would like to add, following all the questions that have already been asked.