Animal Welfare Bill

moved Amendment No. 33:"Page 5, line 33, at end insert ““unless that person is reporting an animal fight to the police”” ." The noble Baroness said: Clause 8 deals with the subject of fighting. In moving Amendment No. 33, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 34 to 38. As constructed, Clause 8(1)(d) would allow a person to talk freely about a fight that had taken place on the grounds that, by doing so, he could not be accused of enabling or encouraging attendance at the fight. That would allow him to persuade some people that such a fight was good entertainment and that it would be worth making an effort to discover the time and place of the next one. To those who organise these events, persuading a potential audience is preliminary to taking their money for attendance. We on these Benches feel that any form of publicity is to be discouraged, and talking about a specific fight, whether past or future, should be an offence. Too often, the police capture a criminal only to find that the Crown Prosecution Service declines to take the case on the grounds that it would be hard to meet the full requirements of the charge. Unless someone willing to testify in court heard something such as, ““It’s great entertainment. You should come and see for yourself””, surely it would be difficult to charge anyone under this paragraph. By leaving out the qualification of intention, it should be easier to charge someone after arresting a member of the audience and discovering who provided the details of the event. I turn to Amendment No. 34, which relates to page 5, line 39 of the Bill. If anything designed for animal fighting cannot be used for any other purpose, possession should be a sufficient reason for a charge. Things adapted for use in an animal fight are unlikely to be found in people’s possession unless they intend to use them for a particular purpose for which they have been altered. That will be so particularly if they are caught in the vicinity of a fight around the time that it takes place or perhaps in the company of others who are known to take part. Leaving out the intention phrase will make it harder for those arrested to use it as a loophole through which to escape the charge. It should also enable the police to complete an investigation and present their case to the Crown Prosecution Service without having to play the part of a jury. It is fairly straightforward to prove possession of a particular article. The proof of intention is less hard-edged and, in our view, better left to the court. Amendment No. 35 is a probing amendment designed to elicit the intended meaning of the paragraph. If I build a garage for housing a car and then, as happened with some of the garages when the 1987 hurricane ripped off their roofs in the south east, I fill it with household rubbish, could it be successfully claimed in court that I had intended it for storing rubbish? If I have a barn that I use for half the year for storing hay bales and then allow the odd animal fight in it, could I be successfully prosecuted for keeping it—keeping is the important word—for use in an animal fight? Does the wording in the Bill actually mean more a case of knowingly allowing the premises that the accused owns or rents to be used for an animal fight? As the paragraph stands, would proof depend on there having been more than one or even two occasions on which an animal fight had been held in the premises in question? Amendment No. 36 relates to video nasties. The existence of a video nasty, whether of animals or people, is bad enough; possession, knowing what it contains, is reprehensible and should be prosecuted wherever it is discovered. We contend that the need to prove also that the possessor had intended to supply it to someone else is far too stringent. Our cinemas and television screens are used constantly to project scenes of fighting that range from the news of Iraq to classical depictions of the American frontier struggles and the rivalry between criminal gangs here and elsewhere. Presumably those who take part in the reconstructions are willing to do so. Those who appear involuntarily on the news reels, it is hoped engage our sympathies and reiterate the horrors of war. Animal fights engineered so that they may be captured on film do not involve the consent of the participants. Basic survival instincts may ensure that they attack rather than flee. To facilitate a fight that would not otherwise have taken place is, however, nauseating and reports that animals trying to escape are herded up and returned to the fray cause revulsion among all of us. The filming of the proceedings is disgusting and should be punished most severely. The possession of a copy of the film should be prosecuted and punished sufficiently to discourage others from supporting the trade. There should be no get-out clause in the law, such as is contained here. I turn to Amendment No. 36. We cannot believe that a Bill intended to improve standards of animal welfare can even consider excluding cruelty that takes place outside this country. Nor can we agree that possession of a film of animal cruelty should be legitimised if it can be proved that the fight took place before the commencement of the Act. Were the authorities to obtain a copy of a film covering a fight that took place before commencement, I would not expect them to prosecute the film crew or the fight organisers unless they could do so under different legislation. I do not, however, see how possession of a film can be excused on grounds of the date of the disgusting activity it contains. The final amendment in the group is a probing amendment designed to find out what is meant by the words of this subsection and in particular the qualification concerning the limits imposed by Schedule 2 to the 1972 Act. I beg to move.