Animal Welfare Bill

I shall speak to Amendment No. 125 in the group. It is really a probing amendment. The courts have considerable experience of determining ownership, but the notion of keeping an animal is rather different. As the Minister has just said, if you hold a lead for someone, you are the person who is keeping the animal at that moment. If you have a friend who asks you to keep her car in your garage, you are actually keeping it for her. I shall now draw the Committee’s attention to the question of actual responsibility for an animal. This group of amendments obviously precludes someone who has been found guilty and then disqualified from keeping animals, so I want to know whether the provision relates only to that person. A husband may have been disqualified from keeping animals, but other animals may be kept by his wife or children. The amendment aims to probe the question whether the restriction ““or keeps”” relates only to that person, or whether it refers to other animals that are kept in the same family environment. It would be very harsh if other members of the family who care for their animals extremely well are banned from keeping animals or if their animals are taken away from them. That is the thinking behind our amendment.