Animal Welfare Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for endorsing my point. I hope that the Government will examine the matter in detail because hon. Members on both sides of the House are worried about cruelty towards, and the neglect and abuse of, children, which has been ably addressed by the campaign of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which I hope that all hon. Members will support and endorse through the relevant early-day motion. I hope that the Government will consider educating people who have been convicted. Perhaps such people could attend compulsory classes that could be put on by the RSPCA or the Dogs Trust. Offenders could be educated about what their actions had brought about in the life of an animal and how they could be prevented from repeating their offences in the future. We need to lift the debate so that we speak more about the stewardship of animals and not just about the ownership of them. I do not support the docking of animals’ tails for cosmetic reasons, but I am open-minded and flexible about tail docking for working dogs. Several hon. Members have asked how one can prove that tail docking affects animals’ welfare, but hunting dogs and gun dogs can be caught up in undergrowth and brambles and I know of circumstances in which dogs have suffered as a result of that. We need a debate on the matter. It is interesting that the Government say that they want to license pet fairs because that presupposes that the House has given its consent to the re-emergence of pet fairs. I do not support pet fairs. They would lead to even more abandoned and stray dogs. It is interesting that the local authority that destroys more dogs than any other authority in the land is Sedgefield, so I hope that relevant dispatches will be sent off to No. 10. I was also briefed that the authority was perhaps Liverpool, but Liverpool has had its fair share of stick from the Conservative Benches in the past—I do not want to contribute to that today because I think that it is a fantastic city. I support the Bill. I hope that inspectors will be given the appropriate amount of training and that local authorities will get the appropriate amount of resources. I hope that clause 29 will not lead to more dogs being killed as a result of their owners’ cruelty.