Animal Welfare Bill

I thought that I understood the provision until I heard the last few exchanges. I, too, served on the Select Committee that conducted pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill, and we discussed improvement notices at considerable length. That was a worthwhile discussion, which is reflected in the Government new clause. The word ““must”” suggests compulsion, but timing is an important issue too. There are sometimes conditions under which it is impossible for improvement to take place in a realistic time scale. Improvement notices, however, should be written in such a way that they are meaningful. People should try to write something to show how, step by step within a reasonable period, the animal’s welfare can be addressed and hopefully it can recover. On some occasions, however, the abuse has gone so far that it would be difficult to codify a notice to deal with the problem. In those circumstances, the only logical thing to do is to proceed to prosecution, because an improvement notice would be meaningless.