Animal Welfare Bill

moved Amendment No. 100:"Page 13, line 44, after ““reimburse”” insert ““the””" The noble Lord said: In this considerable group, the vast majority are government amendments, which are of a technical nature, designed to bring the Bill’s provisions on the recovery of expenses into line with the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980. I understand that there is concern about the proposed changes. Therefore, I will outline as briefly and simply as I can why the changes are necessary. There is a difference in the Magistrates’ Courts Act between a sum that is enforceable as a fine imposed on conviction and one that is recoverable as a civil debt. The former is enforced by the courts; the other requires a person to bring a private debt action to the courts. A fine is principally about punishment; enforcement of a civil debt is not. The problem with the Bill is that it treats all orders to reimburse expenses as fines imposed on conviction. In other words, the orders should be enforced by the courts. But this mechanism is only available where the sum is ascertained at the time the order is made. Also, the methods of enforcement available under the current legislation and under Schedule 5 to the Courts Act 2003, which is not yet in force, are not geared toward obtaining reimbursement of the full sum. The powers in the clauses are for the courts to order the reimbursement of expenses incurred by the person carrying out the court’s order for disposal of the animal. Contrary to the RSPCA’s submissions—it has expressed some concern about this—they do not relate to previous expenses, such as veterinary bills, accommodation costs et cetera. Where an animal needs to be taken care of for its own protection before conviction, those expenses will be recoverable under Clause 18(3). The expenses we are concerned with here relate to the person who, for example, is told by a court to destroy a dog. He can recover the costs incurred by taking it to the vet and paying the vet’s bill. So, by definition, the court’s order will not have been carried out at the time of conviction and the point at which the order is made. At that time it will be impossible to tell how much it will cost to carry it out. This means that the sums are unascertainable at the time orders are made. We think that expenses incurred in dealing with animals are more like a debt owed by one person to another and therefore intend to make that explicit in the Bill. This is the more normal approach in other legislation—which means that for the life of me I can’t see why we didn’t do this in the first place—where expenses are incurred by a person in authority. Our other amendments simply ensure that consistent terminology is used, so that ““expenses”” is substituted for ““costs”” and ““sum”” and ““reimburse”” replaces ““pay a sum representing””. That ensures consistency throughout the Bill, so they are technical amendments in that sense. Noble Lords will see that our thinking on Amendment No. 116 is the same as theirs and that I added my name to their amendment, which I therefore hope will be accepted. On Amendment No. 132, I appreciate that the idea of ordering the recovery of expenses against a person other than the defendant may appear somewhat odd. The power is there because an order under Clause 36 or Clause 37 may be made in relation to an animal, notwithstanding that its owner is not the person convicted. It will be a rare circumstance in which the court orders the destruction of any animal whose owner has not been convicted of an offence. In such circumstances there may be some question about who should be made to pay for or reimburse the expenses of carrying out the destruction order. For example, a farm manager on a fixed income may have been convicted of cruelty but a court may consider it appropriate to order the wealthy farm owner to reimburse the expenses of destroying the animals. It is difficult to conceive of many examples, as that would be a wholly exceptional situation. None the less, we think it important that the court has a measure of discretion in ordering the reimbursement of expenses under Clauses 36 and 37. As the animal may belong to someone other than the convicted offender, there may be occasions when someone other than the offender should bear the costs of destruction. It is important not to tie the court’s hands in dealing with such cases. On Amendment No. 118, I have already outlined my view that we do not consider it necessary to spell out in the Bill that the courts can only order reasonable expenses. Indeed, I mentioned that in relation to Amendment No. 101. I beg to move.