Animal Welfare Bill

I have fought for the inclusion of the improvement notice in the Bill, and I am pleased that the Government have wrestled with the very difficult task of proposing such an amendment. New clause 9 will serve as a statutory provision that represents an intermediate step before prosecution and will operate as an independent measure that will help to improve animal welfare standards. The principle of issuing warnings—or, in footballing terms, yellow cards—with a statutory requirement before pursuing prosecutions will not only save time and money, but help to focus resources elsewhere, on the most serious cruelty crimes. However, although I can see that the Minister’s officials have done a good job in drafting the new clause, I am disappointed that it does not include a mandatory mechanism to ensure that suspected offenders are issued with an improvement notice before any prosecution can commence, and I have tabled a ““one-word”” amendment accordingly. The offences under clause 8, for which the improvement notice will apply, relate to the raft of codes of practice that the Minister plans to introduce under clause 12. Given that many owners may not have read a copy of the draft cat code and may not have read it carefully enough to know whether their cat happens to be too fat or too slim or is receiving sufficient mental stimulation, it is only right that we give them the opportunity to alter for the better the way that they care for their animals. The vast majority of animal owners would be prepared to do the right thing if they knew what it was. Of the 257 improvement notices issues in the RSPCA’s eastern region, only 17 were ignored. Let us just think of the court time saved and how beneficial it would be to inspectors to be empowered in that sensible and practical way, which would improve animal welfare. It is those 17 people whom we are after. That is the path to cruelty, so they are the people whom we want to prosecute, and we want to do so in the spirit of the Bill, before their animals have suffered cruelty; we do not want to prosecute people who are willing to change. Furthermore, the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which considered a draft version of the Animal Welfare Bill more than a year ago, recommended that provisions for improvement notices should be included in the Bill. So if we fail to amend the Bill to give law enforcers the power to issue improvement notices, we will open the floodgates to prosecution. The RSPCA has pointed out that some clarity on those notices would be helpful, and I am sure that there will be opportunities in another place to clarify how we deal with people who abuse this important merciful intervention. We can overcome the technical difficulties associated with people who hide behind the time frame, or who repeatedly fail for different reasons. We know that such orders work, so let us give them the full backing of Parliament by ensuring that they are issued on a mandatory basis before all prosecutions under clause 8(1). Amendment (a), which I tabled to new clause 9, would serve that purpose, as would new clauses 3, 4 and 5, which I also tabled. However, it was the Minister’s wish that I should not press that amendment or those new clauses to a vote. I shall happily take his advice on the new clauses, but I intend to vote on amendment (a), which would make Government new clause 9 mandatory.