Animal Welfare Bill

Luckily, we are not particularly sensitive, as I think we have proved. I shall ignore the hon. Gentleman’s comments, which is what they deserve. Last summer I paid my first visit to the Yorkshire animal shelter, which is in my constituency. Like many other such shelters up and down the country, it is run solely by volunteers. It takes in animals ranging from cats and rabbits to ponies and goats. The majority of the shelter’s work involves taking in animals that have been abandoned by their owners. The shelter is, like many others, in a very difficult situation. It receives no public funding and is constantly full to capacity. The shelter manager tells me that, every week, it receives between 50 and 100 animals that have been abandoned. However, it simply does not have the capacity to deal with them all. To its credit, it manages to rehouse between 25 and 30 of those animals every week, which is a tremendous achievement considering the limited resources of the operation. This illustrates a serious national problem. The RSPCA investigated complaints of the abandonment of 14,311 animals between December 2004 and November 2005. Yet in 2004, the organisation managed to secure just 88 convictions. From those figures, we can estimate that the number of abandoned domestic pets nationally must total thousands every week. The problem of abandoned animals is one of the biggest animal welfare issues in the country, yet it is not even a grey area in the Bill. Rather, there is a gaping hole where any provisions on it should be. The Bill at last introduces the duty of care of an animal’s owner to ensure its welfare. I am sure that we all agree that that is the most positive measure in the Bill, and it will make a difference to many of the animals looked after by people in this country. However, the Bill does not address the problem of abandoned animals. The Bill repeals and replaces the Abandonment of Animals Act 1960. This was discussed by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, in regard to what was then clause 3(3) of the draft Bill. I am sorry to say, however, that that provision has been removed. The Committee’s recommendations stated that"““we recommend that the Government amend the draft Bill so that the act of abandoning an animal continues to be treated as a cruelty offence without the need for evidence of the animal having suffered as a consequence of abandonment.””" Unfortunately, the Government did not agree that that would be necessary. They claimed in their response to the Committee:"““Under the welfare offence in the Bill, an offence will be committed if an animal is abandoned, and the abandonment amounts to a failure to take all responsible steps to meet the needs of the animals concerned.””" That is ridiculous. How could abandonment not amount to such a failure? Perhaps the answer would be popping a tin of cat food in the sack as it is left outside the gate, or leaving a ““happy new home”” card attached to a dog’s collar as it is left to roam the streets? The explanatory notes attempt to clarify this matter. They state:"““anyone who leaves an animal without taking reasonable steps to ensure that it is capable of fending for itself and living independently will commit an offence under clause 8””." Are the Government seriously arguing that a domestic pet can, in any circumstances, be released to live independently as a stray or in the wild? The Minister may nod his head, but the reality of the Bill is that abandonment will not in itself be an offence. In fact, anyone who abandons an animal in the right way will have no problem at all. This omission gives the impression—and possibly even a case to be argued in court—that, so long as someone leaves an animal near a sanctuary or a refuge, they will not be doing anything wrong. What kind of message is that? It will certainly be received with heavy heart by the many excellent organisations attempting to tackle the problem of abandoned animals. Abandonment of domestic pets is wrong. To omit that from the Bill is to fail to face up to one of the most serious and under-reported problems of animal welfare in the country.