Animal Welfare Bill

We have opened up a very interesting topic. As the Minister says, it goes into realms that are very hard to encompass altogether. From what the Minister says, the topic covers the two pigs that escaped from an abattoir and took weeks to be caught. At that point, someone owned them and probably wanted to get them. There are other areas where wild boar escape and no one ever catches them; they presumably end up living in a wild state. One interesting aspect of the Bill is something that I have come across myself. We go around shooting foxes at night. One night, the light was shone into a field and there were about five or six foxes sitting around in a rather startled state just inside the door. I am afraid that they were all shot, but what had obviously happened was that someone in the town had been catching foxes and had then released them in such a way as to fail to make provision for their welfare. Whether these people could then be charged is an interesting aspect of this Bill. We all need to take this away and look at it further in the light of what the Minister said.