Animal Welfare Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). I assure him that I have not been given the chop, as he suggested earlier, but have resisted the temptation to carry on in my present post. I am merely withdrawing from it for the time being. I am happy to give him that reassurance and correct his statement. New clause 2 has much to commend it. The hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) has highlighted an important issue which has not been properly dealt with in the Bill. More and more species—often endangered or exotic species—are being traded on the internet as pets, which is hardly a suitable medium to sell such animals. There is no guarantee that they will be properly looked after during transportation, or, if they are still alive when they arrive, that the people buying them will know anything about how to care for them. Of course, many of those animals are listed in CITES—the convention on international trade in endangered species—and should not be traded at all. So this is an important issue. As I said in an intervention, the Home Office has done some good work on countering child pornography, so the systems are in place in the Home Office to deal with such matters, and I hope that they will be taken more seriously than they have been so far. As the hon. Member for The Wrekin is my brother’s MP, I shall pass on the news that he is doing something useful in the House when I next speak to my brother. New clause 6, on abandoned animals, is also something for which I have considerable sympathy, and if it were pressed to a vote, my colleagues and I would support it. We heard a very long presentation about new clause 10, on circus animals, from the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) and a long discussion of it, too, all of which was slightly academic because we heard from the Minister last week that he intended to take some action on the matter. I very much welcome the statement that he made last week. We need to get to the stage, with which many people are comfortable, whereby dogs, horses and certain other animals can carry on in circuses and animals with much more complex needs—lions and tigers, and so on—do not end up in circuses any more. That is where the centre of gravity lies in the House, and the Minister seems to be getting there, so let us allow him to do so. Incidentally, some of the animals shot by circus owners are doubtless endangered species, such as tigers, so I ask the Minister to investigate whether it is legal for circus owners to shoot endangered species if they no longer require them in their circuses. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes referred to Ming. Ming has clearly had a very bad deal. Ming deserves full respect and support from hon. Members, and I am sure that that will happen if the Minister’s actions are forthcoming. Ming needs to achieve full potential, and I am sure that that will be achieved if we end up with the Minister’s proposals. I want to refer briefly to amendments Nos. 107, 108 and 109, which I tabled. I hope that, if the Minister has a chance, he will respond to them, because they deal with matters of concern. I particularly want to refer to amendment No. 107, to which the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) also referred. As the Minister knows, I have supported the Bill throughout, as have my Liberal Democrat colleagues. The thrust of clause 4, on unnecessary suffering, is the right way forward, but he will be aware that it uses the word ““property””, which is of great concern to me, as it seems to provide the opportunity for a large loophole—a significant exemption from the provision on unnecessary suffering in that clause. When I raised the issue in Committee, the Minister mentioned that, for example, the police or the armed forces may need to use animals to defend property. I accepted that there might be occasions when it is necessary to use animals in those circumstances. However, in return, I asked the Minister to accept that, by including the word ““property”” without qualification, we could end up with the opportunity for a defence against the charge of causing unnecessary suffering being made to stick because property has been defended. The Minister has not qualified that word in any way, and I am very concerned that the use of the word ““property”” significantly weakens the clause on unnecessary suffering and provides a get-out for those who want to use that as an excuse. I tell the Minister quite seriously that he needs to do something about that, so I encourage him to respond to amendment No. 107 in particular, and I look forward to his comments on that matter. If he does not accept amendment No. 107, I hope that he will undertake to consider something similar in another place, as the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire suggested. Amendment No. 108 also picks up points, to which the Minister responded in Committee, about people receiving animals as prizes. He will remember our discussion about ponies being won at gymkhanas and so on. My amendment recognises that individuals win prizes in such circumstances, but it imposes a duty on entrants, requiring them to be prepared to meet the animal’s needs if they are successful in the draw. That would allow ponies to be raffled, but it puts the onus on the person winning the prize. Finally, amendment No. 109 deals with a concern that I raised in Committee. The Minister will remember our discussions of the words ““yard”” and ““garden””. I expressed concern about the fact that there is a big difference between a yard in which an animal can be seen—people may have a genuine desire to intervene if they see that the animal is subject to unacceptable treatment—and a private area such as a garage. The Minister said that a yard could be enclosed, and asked whether we would like someone climbing over our back fence to deal with a problem. Amendment No. 109 deals with his objection by defining a yard more closely. It says that the provision would not apply "““to a yard or garden where an animal is in the open and can clearly be seen from public land.””" That answers the point that the Minister made in Committee, so the example that he gave of an enclosed garden would no longer be a problem. The amendment is constructive and tries to meet his concerns while retaining my point about the area being seen from public land. If there is a vote on new clauses 2 and 6, or new clause 10, I shall recommend to my colleagues that we support those provisions. I shall be grateful if the Minister responded to amendment No. 107 when he has the opportunity.