Animal Welfare Bill

I shall deal with the amendments in reverse order. Amendment No. 48 proposes that we should adopt in the Bill a similar approach to that in existing farm animal legislation for both farmed and non-farmed animals, making it an offence not to comply with an improvement notice. That situation was explored at the time of the previous legislation. Clause 10 is the result of a request from the honourable Member for Leominster in the other place; that is, those accused of an offence under the Bill should be told in a statutory improvement notice how they have broken the law. Obviously this is new material and the Government have looked at introducing it. I am glad that certain colleagues in the House are not present. They may wish that they were, although we would be here all night. We have been strongly advised that since the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998, this approach may require an appeal process. We have discussed the situation with the draftsmen of the legislation but appeals are not appropriate in this context. That is the difficulty. They are impractical when the time period involved in an improvement notice is frequently short—perhaps 24 hours when dealing with water and feed. They are also resource-intensive. Prosecutors may have to go to magistrates for an appeal hearing and again for the prosecution. The appeal process is easily abused by those who deliberately want to be obstructive. Without the possibility of an appeal being written in, it was not feasible to make non-compliance with the notice an offence, as the amendment proposes. As I say, because of the Human Rights Act, there has to be an appeal process. Therefore, we propose instead that, where a person complies with the notice, he will have a shield against a prosecution under the welfare offence. That gives effect to what most people would expect to be the consequence of an improvement notice in any case, and it is in keeping with the spirit of the Bill of encouraging responsible ownership rather than imposing sanctions. So it is approached from the other direction. We have some sympathy with Amendment No. 47, but we do not think that it adds to the Bill. The proposed amendment takes into account the impracticality of an appeal procedure and proposes instead a system for formally lodging a complaint against a notice. There may be situations in which the recipient of an improvement notice feels aggrieved by the notice’s contents and wants to do more than simply refuse to comply. The recipient may, at any time, write to the issuing authority and complain about the contents of the notice. He may complain to the inspector in person at the time that it is issued. Of course, in any subsequent proceedings under Clause 9 he may argue in his defence that he did not commit a welfare offence and that the contents of the improvement notice were unreasonable. Nothing in Clause 10 affects the person’s ability to do that. The amendment seeks to put the ability to complain on a statutory footing, but we do not think that that adds anything of substance. The recipient either complies with the notice, in which case there will be no subsequent court proceedings, or he chooses not to comply, in which case it will be open to him to challenge the contents of the notice in any subsequent court proceedings, whether he has lodged a complaint with the issuing authority or not. We do not see that the statutory footing adds anything, other than administrative burdens for the issuing authority to deal with. However, adding a provision such as this to the Bill could—I say only ““could””—prejudice the defence of those who do not lodge a complaint at the time that the notice is issued but wish to rely on the notice being unreasonable in subsequent proceedings. The implication might be that the notice must have been reasonable because they did not object to it at the time. So it may cause a further problem. If we have the drafting and the legality right, the amendments do not add anything to the Bill. As I have said, a person who receives a notice has rights to complain and register a protest, none of which is taken away by Clause 10. The amendment does not add anything, so I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw it. Obviously, she may want to come back on it, but I have given those caveats because it could have a bad effect on the person receiving the improvement notice if we follow the wrong route.