Animal Welfare Bill

My Lords, like the speakers who preceded me, I welcome the Bill. I had better declare one or two relatively minor interests. The first is not minor. We have a 10 month-old dog; a replacement for two who died a while back. She is still learning a lot and I have plasters on my arm to prove it. The other interests are that I am one of the four trustees of the Douglas Houghton Memorial Fund, named after the late Lord Houghton of Sowerby, which is primarily concerned with the training of students who are to be involved in dealing with animals, and I support a number of charities, not least the wonderful Cambridge University Veterinary Training College which is quite remarkable. Bills like this always seem to me to be a bit like receiving an architect’s drawing. You can see that it has all the bits in, but you have no real idea what the final building will look like. There are so many potential regulations to come forward that it is not easy to decide in your own mind what you need to have in the Bill and what one can leave to regulation. I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell us what degree of consultation will be involved in the preparation of those regulations. That is extremely important, as it was, for example, on the Mental Capacity Bill a while back. That we still have some pretty awful cruelty in this country is still very evident. In the year ending 31 May 2005, the RSPCA saw about 1 million animals and nearly 70,000 of them were in need of attention and care. Recently—this begs a lot of questions about the scale of penalties—two appalling cases have been reported in the press. The first that I saw of the first case was in the Sun—I do not admit to buying that paper—on 6 April. A man called Shaun Ferguson subjected a neighbour’s dog to three days of the most hideous cruelty. He broke five of its ribs; he cut off one ear with scissors; he broke one front leg; and he shattered the dog’s skull. He has not even been sentenced, because he has absconded, but when he is sentenced—assuming that he is found, as I suppose he will be—whatever the sentence is must be woefully inadequate compared to what is appropriate in a case of that nature. In today’s Guardian, it is reported that in a breeding establishment, the owner of which died of a heart attack—which is perhaps as well for her—they found 200 Yorkshire terriers, some of them dead, and 37 cats in a windowless breeding shed in West Sussex in unspeakable conditions. I assume that that establishment is technically inspected. As my noble friend said, there is provision for inspections in the Bill, but I have no confidence that that will turn out to be wholly real because, as things stand, not only the will, but the means are unlikely to be there. Even in medical research, with 3 million procedures in 227 establishments, there are only 30 Home Office inspectors. We need to be aware of that when we consider the Bill. One of the serious gaps in the Bill is the lack of any serious reference to the pet animal sales arrangements. The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, mentioned that. That is a retrograde step. I mentioned Douglas Houghton. In 1983, he was a major player in introducing the amendment to the previous Act which outlawed sales in certain areas:"““in any part of a street or public place or at a stall or barrow in a market””." I can remember that, at the time—those who knew him will know that he was of modest stature; distinctive but modest—he spent many weekends disguised. I saw him in his disguise—at least, he thought that it was a good disguise—driving around Club Row and other places of that nature making notes of what he wanted to say to colleagues in this House. To have anything less than that provision—I think that it should be extended—would be an extremely unfortunate step. I would be interested to hear from the Minister how that change has come about. Defra has apparently held a number of so-called stakeholder meetings—my noble friend mentioned some future ones—in the early consultations on the Bill. Some, I think, were held in June 2004. I am sure that the Minister cannot provide an answer today—indeed, I would not expect him to—but perhaps he will write to me, and copy in others who are interested in the Bill, and say what meetings have been held, when they were held and with whom. It is important to know whether we can be confident that Defra has had the breadth of contribution that would have been appropriate in these circumstances, given that the Bill is designed very sensibly to stand the test of time and provide for changes in regulation from time to time when they are needed. The noble Baroness, Lady Byford, mentioned circuses. I will not go into detail on those, but I am quite sure that we should deal with them specifically. The evidence that has been sent to many of us, if not all of us, is quite appalling. Admittedly this was some years ago, but the worst circus I have ever seen was in China, and I suspect that we have some circuses here which in certain respects will not be a great deal better. I wanted to say a few words about docking, although I shall not talk at length about the subject because we will deal with it later. There is a lot of confusion about this, and it is difficult not to be schizophrenic. One can see that there is a case for a dog being docked in certain circumstances, although docked breeds are in the minority, as the noble Lord, Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, indicated. According to the Kennel Club, about 18,000 Springer spaniels are registered with it each year. Probably no more than a fifth of those will ever become working dogs. I asked the Kennel Club for its definition of working dogs. It is surprisingly limited, although it has escaped me for the moment—these papers slide about. The club has identified only 19 breeds, of which about five are of the spaniel variety, a couple are pointers, and two or three are of the Bichon Frise variety. What is widely regarded as appropriate in the docking field is quite remarkable. I am sure that noble Lords have had the letter about bobbed tails and the trials and tribulations when a dog gets diarrhoea. I know all about that. One of my last dogs was an Airedale with a full tail that was mostly docked, although goodness knows why. He did have weak insides, but if you are not prepared to deal with that, you should not have a dog, in my view. It is quite appalling to cut his or her tail off merely because of the difficulties to you of cleaning up. Some of the stuff that we have had from the dog breeders gives the game away in many respects. Yes, they have arguments for doing it, but some of them are purely self-interested. I shall not go into detail at this stage. If we are to have docking at all, we have to have a very clear definition of it. I am not sure how we should deal with the difficulty highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, but it is a very real difficulty. Some breeds are docked and some are not. You cannot for the life of you understand why some breeds are docked, except to say that it must be for fashion and cosmetic reasons. It cannot possibly have anything to do with the difficulties of owning and using such dogs for any particular working practice. I do not expect my noble friend to be able to respond to this point, but the noble Lord, Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, may be able to. In none of the correspondence that I have received has anyone referred to what a dog’s tail is for. Apart from wagging, it is a very important signal to other dogs and to people of pleasure, fear or apprehension. It is used to protect the soft underparts of a dog. If you watch any dog which is lying down, you will see its tail curl backwards over its stomach and vital organs. When a dog is running, the tail is a significant part of its balance and its control over direction and particularly of turning. I do not stress these points, but it would be nice to feel that we knew exactly what it is we are talking about and may be allowing people to continue to do. So I do not think the definition here is satisfactory. Lastly, I would like to say a word about penalties. Yes, they are increased under the Bill, but not in my opinion adequately for the most serious offences. I have illustrated two which were pretty awful. There are many more of those around. Is five years, perhaps without a limit of bringing a prosecution, really unthinkable for cases of this nature? You cannot define what cases you are talking about, but there are judges or magistrates who clearly should be able to say whether a case is in this category or not. So I repeat that I support this Bill, I look forward to the Committee stage and I hope that we are able to deal with many of these issues more helpfully then.