Animal Welfare Bill

I shall speak to opposition Amendments Nos. 110 and 111, which deal with the same subjects as the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, and the noble Baroness, Lady Miller. In fact, we were pleased to see those amendments on the Groupings List, especially Amendment No. 109, which is the same as that tabled by my honourable friend Bill Wiggin in another place. Clause 30 would allow three years’ grace for prosecutions under the Bill to be brought. We support Amendment No. 109, which would reduce that time to just one year. The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, laid out the significant burden that will be caused to small businesses and domestic pet owners. A three-year delay in bringing cases suggests a lack of urgency, and it could become a waiting period that would result in the undesirable situation of keeping an animal in custody, or keeping a dead animal, for up to three years. These amendments would ensure that where a prosecution is brought after the usual time limit of six months, the evidence must be judged by the court to be sufficient. The noble Lord mentioned the total number of small businesses that would be affected, and we agree that if 10,000 pet shops, catteries and kennels are affected, that is a considerable burden. They will have to keep routine check sheets and other paperwork that could be used for evidence in hard copy. That could pile up, and would pose a considerable challenge to their storage space. For a pet shop to demonstrate in court that it has ensured a customer is aware of their duty of care, it will need to issue written care information as a post-sales reminder and ask the customer to sign for it. It will need to record the customer contact details for the sale of all animals, including fish. The burden of this paperwork was highlighted to us recently when we received a bundle of paper representing a month’s paperwork, at only two-thirds of what it would be under the new requirements, which weighed in at 1 kilogram. Over three years that would amount to 108 kilograms of paper. For private owners the burden will fall in having to log the domestic treatment and welfare of their animal for a running period of three years. Without such records, pet owners may find themselves unable to demonstrate that they have upheld their duty of care, should they be challenged by a prosecutor. In another place, the substantive reason the Minister gave for extending the period for three years was that,"““it is the same as the one included in the Animal Health Act 2002, which extended the time limit in the Animal Health Act 1981 to three years””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee A, 24/1/06; col. 251.]" As I am sure noble Lords are aware, those provisions were brought in to deal with the specific situation of foot and mouth disease. There, the Government were dealing with a situation that had already occurred, so the three-year provision had a retrospective effect that could deal with past crimes that could not have been anticipated by legislation. While members of my own party questioned the wisdom of such a decision at the time, I believe the general consensus then was that it was an expedient measure, given the circumstances. Past expediency does not put a convincing case together for the application of the same measures in totally different circumstances. We have already debated the place of inspectors today, but I remind the Committee that the roles of the prosecutor and the inspector will invariably overlap, and that the three-year period increases the opportunity to prosecute. While I understand the Minister’s motive for that, the prosecution needs to be held to further account regarding the evidence it brings forward, and appropriate safeguards need to be in place to ensure only genuine prosecution of welfare offences.