For many years the prize for the worst piece of legislation to be passed by Defra has been held by the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009, but there are signs that the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 may become a serious challenger.

The Coastal Access Act created the legal framework for a path around the English coast. However, it did so in such an impractical way that it was always going to be a nightmare to implement. This is not hindsight. We told the Labour government at the time that it was creating a bureaucratic mire but, of course, Ministers knew best.

Work started in 2010 with the promise that it would take a few years and cost £50 million. The subsequent Conservative government set a target of 2020, but when Labour came back to power it was still not finished. By 2026 Ministers decided that the best thing would be to rename it the King Charles III England Coast Path and get the King to declare it open, which he did in March this year.

There is one slight problem, however, which is that the path is far from complete, with at least 20% of it still unfinished.

You might think that it might be tough to top an incomplete path that has thus far taken 16 years to build and is so far over budget that everyone has stopped counting, but the Animal Sentience Act is showing signs that it might just do that. Again, we told Ministers (Conservative this time) that creating a committee with a statutory duty to assess whether ministers have considered the welfare of sentient animals in their decisions would only lead to madness and the early signs are that we were right.

The ‘Animal Sentience Committee’ has recently considered the grey squirrel and deer impacts policy statements issued by Defra at the beginning of the year. It graciously concluded that the government gave “sufficient due regard” to the welfare of deer and squirrels, but it raised concerns that no data on pain, distress or time to death was recorded during culling operations and that there are no statutory minimum qualifications for daytime deer or squirrel control. It made recommendations in relation to these concerns and said that the government should continue to develop non-lethal approaches, including fertility control.

It does not take a genius to see the direction of travel here, just as it did not take a genius to predict that an ‘Animal Sentience Committee’ was never going to wait for evidence that there is actually a welfare issue before starting down a route which will progressively make wildlife management more difficult and more onerous.

Deer and squirrel management are critical for habitats and threatened wildlife. All serious conservationists know that we need to be making culling of these species easier, not harder, but that is exactly what the Animal Sentience Act will do.