Lord Trees (CB)

My Lords, I thank everybody who has contributed to this fairly short but extremely entertaining and good debate about this Bill. There have been some excellent contributions. The passion and enthusiasm for improving animal welfare is a wonderful thing and a great credit to the House. In my introduction, I acknowledged the contribution of Danny Chambers, which has been amplified, quite rightly, by the noble Baroness, Lady Grender. I also thank another Member in the other place: Dr Neil Hudson, a veterinary surgeon as well as MP for Epping Forest. He has his hands rather full at the minute, but he has been a constant and great supporter of this Bill and animal welfare in general. I also thank the Bill team, led by Hayley Atkin, who is sitting in the Box, and my own veterinary researcher Fiona Shuttleworth, for all their hard work in preparing the work to help the passage of the Bill through this House. I of course also acknowledge the terrific support of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I emphasise three take-home messages, although there were a lot more, which will no doubt come up in subsequent discussions. We must try to get this Bill through. We do not want to delay it; if it has to go back to the Commons, it will surely die. There will be ample opportunity to discuss many of the issues in the development and tabling of secondary legislation. That is the second big message: please, can we get to the secondary legislation as soon as possible? Thirdly, when—I hope—the Bill is passed, enforcement will be critical. In fact, the Minister has emphasised that, and I know that she is very well aware of the urgency of moving to secondary legislation as soon as we can to get that in place. This not the end but I hope that, as someone once said, it is the beginning of the end of this particular Bill. If anybody wants to discuss issues informally in the future, I hope they will please contact me. My door is always open; I am very happy to discuss the issues as we move towards secondary legislation. I beg to move.