Alex Mayer

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) on securing this debate. I last spoke about eggs in a debate just before Easter, but eggs are not just for Easter; they are for all year round. As other hon. Members have already said, we are still in a situation where the space that many hens have to live in is the same size as a piece of A4 paper. That is just not good enough. Such cages are known as “enriched cages”. The marketing people really earned their stripes that day, because I think that if we started calling them “confinement cages” we would go a long way towards stamping out this horrible practice. I am very keen to hear from the Minister about the recent EU reset, because some of our European friends and neighbours already have better standards than us; indeed, some of them, for example Germany, are thinking of introducing even higher standards. Does that mean that there is now a real need for us to catch up? I would be keen to hear the Minister’s views. I am also concerned about the welfare of lobsters—the first time that lobsters have got a mention today. I did a bit of googling last night and found out that it is possible to buy fresh lobsters on the open market. The advertisement that I saw said: “Upon receipt of delivery, store your live lobsters in the fridge until ready to cook. Lobsters can be boiled, poached, grilled or barbecued.” Imagine that referred to any other kind of animal. Imagine saying, “A live chicken or lamb will arrive; put it in the garden and then, as an amateur, smash its skull in and boil it alive.” Is that the kind of situation that we want to see, in a country that talks about being a nation of animal lovers? I would be keen to hear from the Minister whether that is something that he wants to get his claws into.