Animal Welfare Bill

I am grateful to the Committee. I realise that there is a fine point about the stage at which the animal may be classified, but I hope that I can give a satisfactory response. I do not have much to declare but, at my previous home in Birmingham, I regularly fed the foxes in Handsworth Wood. There was a block of flats with a little lake from a blocked-up stream. It was very urban. The foxes cleared the plates, and the grass. Everything disappeared and I was happy. I did not consider that I was responsible for the foxes, I must say. In most cases, the fox or rat would not be a protected animal and would be outside the protection of the Bill. Neither is commonly—I use the word carefully—domesticated in this country and they are not protected while living in a wild state and not under the control of man. However, if a fox or a rat were brought under the control of man, it would become protected. It is right that any animal should be protected by the Bill in those circumstances and there is no case for specifically exempting foxes or rats. The consequence of their protection is simply that there is an obligation not to cause the animal unnecessary suffering. If a previously wild animal has been made dependent on man or has been domesticated, it may no longer be living in a wild state and could be protected. In those circumstances, we again consider it right that man has an obligation not to cause the animal unnecessary suffering. The drafting of the amendment would not prevent such animals from being classed as protected animals. Rather, it would mean that any animal which was not a fox, rat or wild animal adapting to domestic circumstances would always be a protected animal. That would greatly expand the scope of the Bill to include all other wild animals, such as pheasants and deer. I shall return to the question about pheasants in a moment. We consider such a widening of the Bill to be undesirable, as the Bill is aimed primarily at regulating conduct towards animals over which man has control or responsibility. Wild animals are already protected by other legislation, such as the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996 and, for birds, the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. On Amendment No. 3, under Clause 2(c) an animal will be protected if it is not living in a wild state. Several examples of that are given in the Explanatory Notes. For example, if an animal from a non-domesticated species escapes from a zoo or a circus, it cannot be said to be living in a wild state. It would be unfortunate if by virtue of its having escaped the control of man it ceased to be offered the Bill’s protection. The rationale behind Clause 2 is that, if a person has taken an animal, rendered it under his control, and thereby rendered it incapable of fending for itself in the wild, that animal should be offered the protection of the Bill. Amendment No. 3 would exclude from protection an animal released into the wild where it appears to be no longer dependent on man or where animals of the same species have not been under the control of man during the past 18 months. The amendment is misguided because it does not give sufficient regard for the unique circumstances of an individual animal, independent of the state of other animals of the same species in the locality. We would say that the presence of the same species of animal in the locality is, frankly, irrelevant to an animal’s individual need to be protected or, indeed, to whether it is in a wild state. It may be helpful if I give some examples, because that is the best way to explain how the Bill is intended to operate. If a fox is released from a sanctuary and has only briefly been in the custody of man—for example, for a day or two—it is likely to be considered to be in a wild state as soon as it is re-released. It will probably not have become dependent on the sanctuary and those who release it should not be accountable under the Bill for what happens to it. But if a fox has been in the custody of a sanctuary for many months, experience would indicate that it will not be capable of looking after itself in the wild. In that case, it will need a rehabilitation programme that gradually re-accustoms it to the wild. For the majority of that programme, it should still benefit from the protection of this clause. If a fox is just cast out and it suffers unnecessarily, under this amendment an irresponsible sanctuary will have the opportunity to argue that, notwithstanding what good practice should dictate, the animal is not protected because other animals of the same species in the locality happen to be living in a wild state. That may be an extreme case and I am not arguing that sanctuaries are irresponsible, but it provides an example of the different status of such a fox. Amendment No. 3 would lead to uncertainty as to what the clause means and, as a result, the scales would be tipped firmly in the favour of those showing irresponsible behaviour towards wild animals. Under the Bill as drafted, we would expect a court to conclude that, by the stage an animal was roaming widely and obtaining its essential feed by itself, it would be considered to be in a wild state. It might still suffer for a range of reasons, but that would be little different from a fox in a similar position that had never been in the custody of man. It would be in a similar position to a bird that comes each day to a bird table for food. For the avoidance of doubt, such a wild bird would not be protected, even if the bird table had helped it to survive in cold winter months. So feeding a bird would not impose that responsibility. There is an interesting point with regard to the life of a game bird and the ending of its life. Game birds are clearly in the custody of man when in a rearing pen. They are then subject to a process of introduction to the wild, which is accomplished by placing them in a release pen. Methods vary, but in many cases the birds are free to fly from the moment that they are put in the pen. Initially, they might spend long periods in the pen and, even after they have started to roam during the day, they will return at night, encouraged by the keeper. That ensures that they have a guaranteed food and water supply and that predators cannot reach them. At that stage, they are clearly not in a wild state, but, under this amendment, they would not be protected by the Bill. As the Bill is drafted, it is only by the time that they are free to roam at will 24 hours a day that they can be considered to be in a wild state and no longer a protected animal. We think that striking the right balance is important: a keeper should be able to be held accountable in the early stages for ensuring that the game birds do not suffer unnecessarily. But once all he is doing is trying to ensure that they do not stray beyond the boundaries of his shoot by providing food at dispersed sites around his land, the released pheasants are in a comparable position to pheasants on the same land that have never been, or have not been within the previous 18 months, in the custody of man. Amendment No. 3 unnecessarily tries to define ““a wild state””. That term is widely understood and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, it will be clear to anyone whether an animal is wild—although if that was always the case, we would not need a lot of legislation, would we? That is why it is important for us to write things down. I agree that animals that are in transition from being in the relatively long-term custody of man to being in a wild state pose particular issues. There is a grey area on the borderline, but we believe that it is preferable to trust the courts to exercise their discretion—as in my earlier example—than to try to pin down an exact definition in the legislation. There are too many scenarios to address in a single definition, and there would be a high risk of failing to account for situations that we, the parliamentary draftsmen and our experts do not know about—you can bet that in a country of 60 million people there will be someone, somewhere, doing something that we had not thought about. It would be unfortunate, if we are being prescriptive, to leave animals at risk in that way. Having listened to the points raised by noble Lords and Baronesses, I believe that we have a reasonable argument to cover these issues, and it is an argument that we justifiably have to give. These are areas where animals that would normally be wild vary their status over a period of time. At some points, they clearly need the protection of the Bill; at others, the person in charge—if I can put it that way—would not be committing an offence, because the animal would be back in the wild.