MP calls on government to redirect £12m per year from prize-money towards aftercare for retired racehorses

The issue of funding for aftercare of racehorses is to be raised by a minister with the BHA following a debate in Parliament on Wednesday. George Eustice MP, a former secretary of state for the environment, secured the debate and called for £12 million per year to be provided for the aftercare sector from Levy Board funds.

Referencing protests at the Grand National, Eustice told MPs: "Activities that depend on the maintenance of a social licence cannot take these matters for granted or dismiss animal rights activists. They have to constantly work to improve their approach to animal welfare."

Eustice said he had been prompted to speak by a visit to the Racehorse Relief rehoming centre in his Cornwall constituency. "As we've seen rising costs for things like forage, hay and so on, funding has become a challenge for this particular charity and many others like it," he said.

When he tried to work out which body in racing was responsible for funding such centres, Eustice said he found himself on "a wild goose chase" as he began with the Levy Board and was passed on to Retraining of Racehorses (RoR), the Racing Foundation and the Horse Welfare Board (HWB), which, he said, told him it had "no money".

Eustice decried this experience as "circular signposting, where every organisation points you to a different organisation until eventually you end up where you started, where there are lots of organisations that could do something and perhaps should do something but all find it too easy to do nothing and to suggest that somebody else should".

He identified the Levy Board as the organisation with funds that could be redirected from prize-money to aftercare and said, in comments that he later conceded were intended to be provocative: "Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge prizes for winners in competitions. But what's wrong with a cup?"

After an intervention by Laurence Robertson, whose constituency includes Cheltenham racecourse, Eustice appeared to accept the importance of prize-money but continued: "Why can't the industry find sponsors to help provide prize-money? Why is it always the animal welfare sector . . . that is expected to go around with a begging bowl, asking for charitable donations while prize-money is deemed to be a right?"

Addressing the sports minister Stuart Andrew, he said: "This is a moment when he could really effect change. If he felt that I was being too generous to charities by saying they should have £12m, maybe a few million pounds a year would be a start."

Stuart Andrew: sports minister pledged to raise the issue of aftercare with BHA

Andrew began his response with some comments about racing's national importance, adding: "There is a misconception that this is about lining the pockets of a few millionaires, the owners of the horses. In fact, prize-money is a means of injecting funds into the wider racing ecosystem."

However, he said Eustice had raised important points and told him: "I have regular meetings with the likes of the BHA and at my next meeting I will most definitely raise the issue that he has highlighted because the welfare of those horses that are no longer racing and the sustainability of the charities that he has mentioned are very important.

"Recognising that there are challenges across horseracing as a whole, I will see what I can do to highlight those important issues."

The Levy Board (HBLB) responded with a statement, saying: "HBLB has been a longstanding funder of RoR and we also provide funding to the HWB. But the sport agreed last year that the Racing Foundation, rather than HBLB, should take the lead on horse welfare funding and the foundation announced a £3m grant over three years. Nevertheless, HBLB still spends around £800,000 in this area per year as part of £3.5m towards equine health and welfare projects.

"We are providing funds to RoR this year in support of its development of an aftercare strategy for the sport. Racing, by its nature, draws its funding from different sources. We are not against looking at increasing our budget but what we give is only part of an already large effort in the sport. We are looking for a clear strategy and programme, fully costed, and will play our part in supporting it."

A BHA spokesperson said: "Today’s Westminster Hall debate was timely in demonstrating why levy reform that delivers a higher rate of sustainable funding for the sport as a whole is urgently needed. This is one of the many reasons that we have consistently welcomed this review and continue to work closely with government to achieve the best possible outcome for racing.

"Over the last 20 years, British racing is proud to have committed over £47m in veterinary research, education and equine welfare initiatives with funding invested by the HBLB and, more recently, the Racing Foundation. £5.5m of this funding has been allocated to the sport’s five-year strategic welfare plan, A Life Well Lived, which identified 26 projects to drive continuous improvement across equine safety, traceability, wellbeing and aftercare."

Read these next:

The Front Runner: why there's no quick solutions to aftercare challenges 

Where will the money come from? Aftercare centre for ex-racehorses struggles to keep going 

'It's a scandal' - winners and losers as racehorse aftercare is transformed 

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