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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1032-viii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS committee (SUB-Committee on the DRAFT ANIMAL WELFARE BILL)
Tuesday 12 October 2004 MR RICHARD BRUNSTROM, MR ANDREW GRIFFITHS, MR PETER SMITH, MR GRAHAM CAPPER, MS ABIGAIL MAHONY and MS PAULA WILLIAMSON Evidence heard in Public Questions 625 - 679
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Sub-Committee on the Draft Animal Welfare Bill on Tuesday 12 October 2004 Members present Mr Michael Jack, Chairman Mr David Drew Patrick Hall Joan Ruddock Alan Simpson David Taylor Mr Bill Wiggin ________________ Witnesses: Mr Richard Brunstrom, Chief Constable of North Wales Police and senior police officer with responsibility for wildlife and environmental crime matters on behalf of ACPO, Association of Chief Police Officers; Mr Andrew Griffiths, Principal Policy Officer, and Mr Peter Smith, Senior Environmental Health Officer, Crawley Borough Council, Chartered Institute of Environmental Health; Mr Graham Capper, Senior Animal Health & Welfare Officer, Wrexham County Borough Council, and member of both National Animal Health & Welfare Panel and Welsh Animal Health & Welfare Panel, and Ms Abigail Mahony, Policy Officer, LACORS, (Local Government Association); and Ms Paula Williamson, Solicitor from Worcestershire County Council, examined. Q625 Chairman: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to this further session of evidence-taking by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee on the draft Animal Welfare Bill. Some of my colleagues have to go to Foreign Office questions which commence at 11.30, so we hope we can concentrate the bulk of our activities into the next hour. For the record, I would like to welcome, on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Richard Brunstrom, the Chief Constable of North Wales. Mr Brunstrom, are you accompanied by anybody or are you a lone act? Mr Brunstrom: Flying solo, Chairman. Q626 Chairman: For the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health we have Mr Andrew Griffiths, who is their Principal Policy Officer, and Mr Peter Smith, Senior Environmental Health Officer, Crawley Borough Council. On behalf of the Local Government Association we have Mr Graham Capper, Senior Animal Health & Welfare Officer, Wrexham County Borough Council; and you are described as a member of both the National Animal Health and Welfare Panel and the Welsh Animal Health & Welfare Panel. What a busy man you are! You are accompanied by Abigail Mahony, the Policy Officer of LACORS. By definition, that leaves Paula Williamson, solicitor from Worcestershire County Council. Can I thank you both collectively and individually for the written evidence which you have sent to the Committee - that was extremely helpful. I would like to start, Chief Constable, with you if I could, and ask if you could say a few words about the current role of the police regarding prosecution and enforcement in the context of animal cruelty. Mr Brunstrom: Thank you, Chairman. We do recognise that the law needs overhauling. We very, very much welcome the new legislation. Our position is that we feel, under Home Office direction, no significant role to play in registration and licensing. We do have a role to play in the higher end of the cruelty offences, animal fighting - the cruelty clauses in the first part of the new Bill. We are a bit concerned to achieve more clarity as to what the Government intends should be our role with the proposed welfare offence. At the moment almost all of the welfare work is done by the RSPCA with police support where required. We are a bit concerned that that position is in jeopardy with the drafting of the current Bill. Q627 Chairman: I wonder if we could just develop that point. You said very clearly in your evidence "we do not see welfare as our problem". That goes a little bit stronger than "I'm a bit concerned about it". It sounds as though you want a clearer distinction between being involved in the investigation, arrest and subsequent prosecution for obvious cases of cruelty; but where it comes to welfare, which is obviously a key part of the powers conferred in this Bill, you do not want to know anything about it. Can you help us to define more clearly the separation between these two things which clearly is causing you a problem? Mr Brunstrom: I will do the best I can, Chairman. We are subject to a national policing plan run by the Home Office and a set of priorities. It has to be recognised that hitherto the Home Office has not seen animal welfare or animal cruelty as a police priority. That could change, of course, and we are at the disposal of Government to do whatever Parliament sees fit. Hitherto we have seen a continuum of offending. At one end you could look at animal murder and cruelty and at the other end somebody who has not fed their dog this morning. At some stage during this continuum the police should get involved on an ethical and moral ground. That continuum has to be divided up into a series of discrete offences. We have exactly the same issue with motoring legislation, from parking on a double yellow line to killing somebody in a traffic crash. It is always difficult to separate this continuum into discrete offences and there must be some overlap - it is inevitable. Hitherto our position has been that we see ourselves very much at the extreme end of the spectrum where cruelty is evident. The new Bill is proposing to introduce a welfare offence which one might perceive as coming lower down the continuum than the cruelty offence. We would very much support that as a principle. It is self-evident that there is a huge amount of animal suffering which is not properly captured by the existing legislation. The difficulty for us is that without further Home Office guidance as to what is the purpose of the Police Service in the United Kingdom in the 21st Century there is a risk here of the prosecution threshold being significantly reduced by the introduction of a welfare offence. It would create more criminal offending - I think a good thing, when looked at from the point of view of society as a whole, but where does society wish the police to be positioned in that. We are not funded for this. It is not indicated to us hitherto that the Home Office see it as anything like a priority for us. If the legislation goes through as the draft Bill proposes we will be hostage to fortune. We will be at the mercy of anybody who chooses to ring us up and say, "The next door neighbour hasn't fed their cat this morning, and we demand the police". I think we have got to find a better way of establishing the appropriate relationship between the law, the offences, the public body (the police) and the RSPCA - who of course are doing the vast bulk of this work at the moment and intend to continue but do not feature in the legislation at all. It is really impossible for a member of the public to see how this balance will be struck in the future. Q628 Chairman: I would like to ask Paula Williamson - because you are the lawyer on the panel here - does that make any sense to you? Do you think it is possible to change this Bill in such a way as to reflect the distinction the Chief Constable wants to see? Ms Williamson: I think it would be extraordinarily difficult. I have to confess my experience of looking at the Bill has come from a fairly narrow perspective. I have looked at it purely from the perspective of one single case which Worcestershire County Council has been involved in and, therefore, I find it very difficult to answer that question, to be honest with you. I see my colleague's point of view that members of the public would find it very difficult as well to answer that question. I am afraid I am coming at it from a different perspective really, and looking at it from a narrow angle. Q629 Alan Simpson: If I could go back to Richard Brunstrom. I welcome the fact that the police in principle support the idea of there being a welfare offence; but I am sure the police, better than anyone, would understand if you are going to create something as an offence it has to be enforceable. If the police are not going to be the one to enforce it, I think the Committee would welcome your thoughts on how the enforceability aspects of a welfare offence would best work? Mr Brunstrom: Could I just make clear that a) we do welcome the totality of the Bill; and b) we will of course do whatever Parliament tells us to do. Our concern is that that is not clear. It is not clear from the Government as a whole where it is intended we be positioned. I would not seek to exclude us from this, because we are not in charge. If it is Parliament's will that we do this then of course we will. Secondly, it would be possible to come up, for instance, with a statutory code of practice between us and the RSPCA as to what factors would trigger police involvement, for instance. That concept does not appear in the Bill. It would be possible to have an accreditation process, which was a suggestion we had originally which did not find favour and I do not seek to re-open it; but we will have to do something because it is not going to be possible to have a workable model here without a degree of negotiation and change. In my discussions with the RSPCA, they would also welcome some sort of formal concordat, or an MOU, or code of practice which would enable everybody involved to see who was going to do what. I think it is probably vital that the police powers enshrined in the Bill do exist for the welfare offence, because there will be occasions when negotiation has failed and the RSPCA cannot achieve their objectives and offending is going unchallenged. I think it will be necessary for the police to get involved in extremis and therefore I think the balance of power struck in the Bill is probably very appropriate. I think it is right we have powers to deal with the welfare offence - somebody has to and we are the public authority and the RSPCA is not. It is really: how do we deal with the person who rings up when a cat has not been fed? It is perhaps a facetious example but a very real one. Q630 Alan Simpson: Chairman, I do not have any difficulty in understanding that, if we pass this as law, the police will seek to enforce it as best they can. At this stage I am just trying to get a steer from you as to whether your own practices would still be for an accreditation scheme, or for a statutory code? It is really just to get a sense, given the draft legislation you now see in front of you, of what you see as the most effective mechanism to put in place which would separate responsibilities but in as seamless a way as we could? Mr Brunstrom: My own preference, and that of my organisation, is not an accreditation system. That is commonplace now within Home Office legislation. That does not make it the best solution, and I am not confident I know enough about the workings of this legislation in the future to be certain that an accreditation process is the best solution. You have asked for my opinion and my opinion has not changed. There are other ways of resolving this. As I have said, some sort of MOU with parliamentary oversight, or a statutory code of practice (and we have those examples elsewhere in policing) to ensure the will of Parliament can be delivered with some oversight. There are mechanisms that could work to do this. I would strongly urge that at least one of them be further explored and something reflects that in the Bill. At the moment it is entirely silent, which I think is unsatisfactory, to be honest. Q631 Joan Ruddock: Is it not a fact that the police just do not have the time; and I suspect, quite reasonably, the inclination of local officers would be that they should not be rushing about dealing with the odd cat or dog which has not been fed, has run up a tree or whatever and there has been the ability to discourage people from contacting the police about what are considered to be trivial matters. There is a need to find an alternative, but you may be aware there has been a lot of concern expressed about giving powers to the RSPCA and that they should be made prosecutors as a proposal made by Defra. What is your view about that, because if the distinction is to be made then, in practice, it seems to me to be necessary that there is another prosecution body otherwise, eventually, all prosecutions must come to the police? Mr Brunstrom: Yes, and that would not in any sense be wrong - it would be a piece of public policy. That is not a matter for me but a matter for Parliament. You are right in suggesting the police are not terribly interested at the lower level; but at the higher level the people who are mistreating animals can be shown categorically to be engaged in other aspects of criminality too; so a lot of these people are our customers for other reasons. We would not wish to reject animal welfare and cruelty legislation from the grand scheme of police work. I think there is a significant connectivity. There is an issue, of course, about handing over prosecution powers to somebody who is not in the employ of the State. While we the police have a great deal of trust in the uniform branch of the RSPCA, who behave to the very highest standards of integrity, you could envisage a future world where that was not the case. If Parliament was not careful it could hand over prosecution powers to people it did not like very much, and that could be very awkward indeed. This is why I feel there ought to be some parliamentary oversight of some sort of relationship which, to be honest, does not exist at the moment. The RSPCA are doing an awful lot of work to a very high standard completely outside any control other than through the courts. Public policy is really not enforceable in that sense. It would be possible, through any one of the mechanisms I have suggested, to create a degree of oversight that would enable Parliament to switch on the RSPCA (or anybody else) or switch them off by granting or removing some sort of permission. That is increasingly happening in other fields of work. I am allowed now, for instance, to accredit employees of private companies to enforce anti-social behaviour legislation. I can do that now under existing law. Why can I not do that to people looking after animal welfare? It seems to me the Rubicon has been crossed. There is already a mechanism to enable that and I would wish to see something reflected in the Bill. Q632 Mr Wiggin: What about the role of local authorities? We have got a fair few representatives here. Mr Capper: The role of authorities has existed for some time, certainly in large farm animals and also in the licensing of pet shops etc. We work within a partnership with Defra and the Welsh Assembly Government. At the present day we have officers on farms regularly and within Wales there are approximately 110 health and welfare officers who, as part of their duties, will be attending farms for various legislation which we are required to do by statutory obligation, such as cattle ID regulations, all the welfare issues and disease control; and we build welfare inspection into part of those inspections. There are people already out there doing this. As far as the Bill is concerned that gives us more powers to look after the welfare of animals. Those officers who are at present on farms will have their powers extended to look after those animals. With the pet shop system, normally the environmental health section of local authorities deals with those issues. Q633 Mr Wiggin: Does it not make sense that the local authority, which already has a role in terms of enforcement, can interact with the police and the RSPCA need not be involved in a way that they actually do not want to be, according to their evidence? Ms Mahony: The vast majority of local authorities do not have a role in terms of animal welfare in private homes for domestic animals - that is primarily the RSPCA. Our understanding is that local authorities would not wish to take on that responsibility because it would be very vast. They would certainly need to be appropriately funded for that if they were to take on that sort of responsibility. Q634 Chairman: In your evidence you say, "The Bill will give local authority officers significantly greater powers to prevent and alleviate the suffering of animals and bring sanctions against those found guilty of cruelty to animals". The significant point about the domestic home is the further application to a court for a warrant for an inspector to enter, but there is nowhere I see in this where you resile from the fact that the Bill extends to local authorities further powers to deal with cruelty in welfare issues. Yet you seem to want to carve out a chunk where you are going to have a no-go territory? Ms Mahony: That reflects the traditional role local authorities have had. Q635 Chairman: You have got a different role in this Bill, have you not? Ms Mahony: We do not see there is any duty placed on local authorities to enforce animal welfare in private homes under the Bill. Q636 Chairman: Why have you then written in your evidence, "The Bill will give local authority officers significantly greater powers to prevent and alleviate the suffering of animals and bring sanctions against those found guilty of cruelty to animals"? You make no distinction in that sentence between where the cruelty takes place? Ms Mahony: We feel that it improves our powers in terms of the premises we currently engage with, such as farms and licensed animal establishments. Q637 Chairman: You are effectively saying you do not want to have anything to do with domestic premises - yet the Bill covers that but in the context of application to a court for a warrant to enter to inspect. I am a bit confused now as to where you want your lines drawing? Mr Capper: Traditionally local authorities have always been animal health and welfare authorities, and as far as welfare and cruelty goes these have traditionally sat with farm animal practice. That is where our expertise is. We have quite a large number of inspectors out there who are professional and have that expertise with farm animals. We also have expertise in the licensing function of pet shops and the way they operate, and also the other licensed establishments. Where we have no real expertise (and this is why it has been answered in the way it has in giving evidence) we have never traditionally dealt with small animals. Q638 Mr Wiggin: There does seem to be an odd situation here where we have got the police saying, "At what point do we get involved?" We have got the local authorities saying, "We know about farm animals, but we are not interested in what goes on in our council taxpayers' houses". We have got the RSPCA who, on the one hand, do a tremendous job but who, on the other hand, have a very difficult side which is more political and are asking not to be involved in the domestic side as well. There does not seem to be a very clear steer from this Bill exactly what we should be recommending to the Government. Can you help? Mr Capper: As far as the local authority goes, we work exceptionally closely with the RSPCA and we have a Memorandum of Understanding with them which has recently been drawn up. There are communication channels and everything else, but we do traditionally pass all the small animal welfare complaints to the RSPCA. Ms Mahony: Local authorities are not funded to do any animal welfare enforcement. They do this to complement their wider duties without any specific funding for it. It is up to local authorities if they want to enforce it at all. Mr Griffiths: The problem I think the local authorities experience is that they have so much call on their funding they have to decide their priorities. Within the field of environmental health - which works in district councils mostly involved in animal licensing and so on, and not so much on farms - the difficulty is that other environmental health work (particularly in the areas of food safety, for example, where there are clear targets which have to be met) takes away resources. Many local authorities then have to decide where their priorities should lie. The reality is that some local authorities, maybe reluctantly, have had to decide their priorities lie with areas of public health where there are targets which have to be met, and where there are clear demonstrations of need where public health is concerned, which means their existing work (for example in riding establishments, pet shops and so on) perhaps does not receive the priority it should do now. If there is any question of that being extended to domestic dwellings I think that would dissipate and reduce the amount of work done in animal work by local authorities even further. Q639 Mr Wiggin: Is that not exactly the same story as the police. Word for word could the police not use the same line? Mr Griffiths: I am sure they could, Chairman. Mr Brunstrom: Chairman, I think we are all putting our finger on the same point. Were the RSPCA, as a charity, to decide next week not to do this work any more none of the rest of us in the public service could pick it up. Animal welfare would not be furthered; it would be significantly disadvantaged. I think this is simply an issue of tradition. As the old story goes - when asked for directions, "You wouldn't wish to start from here". Unfortunately we have a legacy - we do not have a clean sheet of paper - and our system is based upon a charity doing the vast bulk of the small animal work. That is neither wrong nor right it is simply where we are. I think we have a very welcome opportunity, after a hundred years of confusion, perhaps to inject a bit more clarity into it - but I do not think the Bill quite achieves that yet. I think the principles are extremely worthy and very worthwhile, but I think I hear from all of us a little bit of uncertainty as to how this is actually going to pan out in practice. Q640 Joan Ruddock: Have all of you had discussions with the RSPCA on this Bill, on the very issues we are discussing? Have you tried to obtain any clarity and consensus about the way forward? Mr Brunstrom: I personally have. I have no problem at all with the current position of the RSPCA and, as far as I can predict, how they intend to operate in the future. I am very certain, like the local authorities, we could strike a satisfactory MOU. What I cannot be certain of is what the RSPCA is going to do tomorrow because they are not under Government control. You can be fairly certain what I can do because Parliament can tell me. Q641 Alan Simpson: Who do you see as being responsible for the administration either of an accreditation scheme or a statutory code? Would it be the police who had a statutory responsibility for the oversight of that or the local authorities? You are saying it needs to be someone other than the voluntary sector. Where would that legal responsibility lie? Mr Brunstrom: If you are going to have an oversight code of some sort it must rest in the public sector. It can only rest with local authorities or the police, or it could be joint. We have such processes for crime and anti-social behaviour nowadays through partnerships which are extremely effective. It would be possible to replicate some process like that; but of course there is a different player in this field because the policy here is Defra's and not the Home Office or the regions. If you are going to have an oversight code it has to have some sort of local implementation and somebody who can be held responsible locally. I see no reason why that should not be the Chief Constable but I see no reason why it has to be. We would not object if it was, provided there was a mechanism which did not leave us the only one holding the baby. Mr Griffiths: Local authorities do have a wide experience of such schemes within the environment health world and the current housing legislation going through. There are accreditation schemes for landlords and they are well run and understood. There is a national scheme to do just that. I think local authorities would be well placed to run such a scheme. Q642 Alan Simpson: Are you saying that would be your preference? It is not so much holding the baby as feeding the cat. Is the responsibility for that best placed, in your eyes, with local authorities? Mr Griffiths: I would think it probably is, yes. The Chartered Institute is not a local authority body, but many of our members work in local authorities. I think many of them would welcome that opportunity because it does actually provide a framework for coordination and for communication, and would actually provide an opportunity for all parties to sit round the table and understand where each is coming from - which does not happen much at the moment. This is why we welcome the Bill's provisions, to bring a lot of disparate legislation under one roof. There is still some need for clarity under certain areas but, at the moment, this is definitely the right way forward and local authorities could have a part to play in that. I think they would see that as a benefit, because litigation is expensive and anything which can be done to reduce those costs would be welcomed by local authorities. Mr Brunstrom: I should say, Chairman, for absolute clarity that the RSCA, as I understand it, do not seek and do not particularly welcome the concept of accreditation and it might be better to find a different mechanism. The reason for that is a very valid one: the esteem with which they have been held in society would change dramatically if they actually had powers. It is not necessarily a good idea for them or society to empower the RSPCA. I would not wish to pursue that as the only option. Certainly trying to enforce something on an unwilling private body is not likely to be a recipe for success. I know it does not find a lot of favour in Defra either, but there are other means of achieving this. I would not wish us to get locked into accreditation that was simply an idea. Mr Capper: Some of the issues when we are talking about local authorities, an accreditation scheme, Memorandum of Understanding or whatever route is chosen, is that we must realise there are so many different types of local authorities as well. We have district councils; we have got unitary authorities; we have got county councils. They would all have to be brought together to discuss these schemes, probably through LACORS, the LGA or one of the national bodies. Q643 Mr Wiggin: There is an Assembly angle on this? Mr Capper: Yes. Q644 Mr Wiggin: Can I come back to the "Not me, guv" we were on earlier because there is another side to this which is very concerning which is: what protection does the animal's owner get from this Bill? From the panel today nobody really wants to touch this at all, but these people also need to be protected from excessive prosecution by a charity or body and nobody seems to want to protect them either. Mr Capper: All local authorities operate under the enforcement concordat which is agreed with the Home Office, and a lot of reliance is placed on that within local authorities. That lays down the road on which we would approach an investigation and prosecution. It gives us guidelines to give advice, enforcement, help and aid. Prosecution through local authorities is the last resort. There is a lot of protection built into the enforcement concordat to look after the owner of the animals Q645 David Taylor: The Pet Care Trust has put to us (and I would like to put this to Mr Capper or Ms Williamson) that the draft Bill appears strong on recovering the enforcement and legal costs but short on ensuring adequate compensation if inappropriate action is taken. This can have a serious effect if the subject of the inappropriate or excessive action is a business. Could I ask Ms Williamson her views on what the Pet Care Trust say? Ms Williamson: In terms of protection for the individual we have hitherto relied upon the court's own judgment. When we have investigated an individual we have applied our own enforcement concordat and that is heavily regulated in itself. Although we are not the police our investigations are subject to PACE and, therefore, they are afforded a certain level of protection there. When we prosecute them the situation up until now has been that the public purse has had to foot the bill for a lot of the investigations, and there has been no statutory regime whereby local authorities can recover their costs, not only of bringing the matter before the courts but also, as things currently stand, actually caring for animals in the interim. I think the Bill does assist local authorities in recovering costs. In terms of protection afforded to the individual, I have not seen that to be the case that the individual was not going to be protected and would not be compensated if an action was brought wrongfully. Mr Capper: I can repeat what I have said before. There is a system in place within all local authorities that we are not overzealous on prosecutions, we are not out to harm the industry and the protection for the owner of the animals is looked after by the court. Q646 Chairman: One of the things I am intrigued about from both the police and local authority standpoint is channels of information that come to you which determine whether you actually will, if this becomes law, a) look into welfare issues and b) into cruelty issues. My impression up until now is that the flow of information has come as a result of members of the public communicating - say, to the RSPCA or possibly to the police - certain concerns; but the Bill invites local authorities to effectively make up for any deficiencies in its own experience by the appointment of inspectors, however those may be defined - they could be the RSPCA or other persons. You have just made an interesting point that, "We want a light touch. We do not want to go after people"; but the implications of the Bill is a bit more proactive. Could you help us to get the balance between the new opportunities to deal with welfare issues, the powers it confers upon authorities to appoint inspectors, and how you envisage in the real world local authorities actually using those powers? Are you going to send inspectors out or simply wait for information to come in? Mr Capper: I repeat what I said earlier, as far as local authorities go in my experience, which is mainly large farm animals, we have inspectors - and in Wales there are 110 of them - who are out there every day, some seven days a week. Some authorities cover the area seven days a week on a rotating basis. Our inspectors are out there already visiting farms, visiting cattle markets and livestock auctions. They are actually looking for problems because we enforce a whole host of other legislation to do with farm animals. Therefore, we do not rely on the public as much as maybe the RSPCA do. Our own inspection force has routine programmed inspections. Q647 Chairman: Could I just raise with you a point out of your evidence that picks up on that point. In paragraph 4.1.2 you pose this question: "Is it the intention to widen enforcement of animal welfare during transport and at markets to District and Borough Councils?" Could you just expand on that point? It is almost saying the current situation is okay but if we dilute resources and bring more authorities in there could be problems. Could you just develop that point? Mr Capper: Basically the Animal Health Act is a function that is operated by county councils, by unitary authorities, by London boroughs and metropolitan authorities. Those authorities all enforce animal health legislation. What we are actually asking there is not whether we will dilute those authorities and include the districts; what we are asking is, is it the intention with the Transport of Animals Bill and the Markets Bill (which are a statutory responsibility on those authorities I have asked) if they come under this Bill a) will they be statutory, and we lose statutory power because they have got EU Community obligations which gives our inspectorate force greater powers which we need to enforce that legislation; and b), more importantly, the last thing we want is to have duplication of workings. If the Bill is not defining which local authority does what, we could be in the position that we have three or four different types of local authorities in one area running round doing the same work. Mr Smith: We get many complaints, either from the general public or from other organisations, and one of the problems we have is if other organisations receive complaints they are reluctant to pass the information of the complainant and the details to us. They prefer to deal with the complaint themselves, even if it relates to a premises licensed by our local authorities. That is one of the comments we have made in the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health's response that all bodies that receive information regarding animal welfare should forward those on to the licensing authority, or the inspectors, or the constables or wherever the role ends up. We often get complaints, for argument's sake, with regard to two kittens in a pet shot which have got no water. When we have to prioritise that against visiting a health and safety incident or a food safety premises where a suspected food poisoning may have occurred you can see the position we are in as a local authority. We have got to try and prioritise these things and it is a difficult situation for us in local authority to deal with. Q648 Mr Drew: I am interested in what you were saying a moment or two ago and I pose this as a dilemma. As we become apparently more mobile as a society and, in the case of large animals, there are less markets because the idea is that farmers will, for one reason or another, send their animals to the most appropriate place, how do you balance these two issues of the transport of animals (which for some animals is essentially going to be a quite difficult experience) as against more local facilities that may not be as good? Is this something you are discussing amongst your profession association? Mr Capper: There is a great deal of discussion not only amongst ourselves and through our associations regarding transportation but it is area which has had major discussion within Europe as well on reducing the length of time that animals can travel. We are discussing it. The problem is that for some reason the animal movements within the UK are vast and enormous even within the UK without actually exporting livestock and it is controlled by the open market, the free market, and that is our major problem. Certainly as far as slaughter animals go the position is that the large retailers now control the market and they have their own slaughterhouses or contracts. In Wales we have the silly situation where we have the largest density of sheep and we actually send sheep to Scotland to be slaughtered, and on a wagon coming down there will be sheep coming from Scotland to be slaughtered in Welsh slaughterhouses. That is the free market and those issues we cannot get over. Particular attention is paid to transportation and whether, in the end, transport will be reduced but that will be on the legislation that takes care of that. Q649 Mr Drew: I would be interested to know on what grounds you could take action against someone who is transporting animals - and there are obvious ones such as lack of water - but overcrowding, for example, is a very subjective view. Some people say animals can cope with that; others would say it is horrific. How can you make judgments? Is this legislation in any way going to affect that, or this is outside of it? You shake your head. Should we be looking at these areas, because we are picking up what I call some of the "specialist interest areas" but we are not looking at the huge area of transportation? Mr Capper: Transport is a whole area on its own. When we talk about "stocking densities" it is in each inspector's mind and eye what he sees, because there is no laid down law on stocking densities. There are guidelines both in the EU Directive, which our national legislation puts in place, and in the guidance that is issued by Defra for the welfare of animals during transport. There are guidelines. It is very difficult to work out stocking densities. Certainly I was involved in investigating live export and I did a lot of work on stocking densities and I just could not come up with the answer. It is a visual thing that has to be taken on the condition of the animals on the vehicle and the way they are travelling. I do not think you can actually lay down that "You can have three animals in that compartment and four in that". I think that is unworkable. It is the experience of the inspector who has gone to see the problem. Q650 Alan Simpson: In the submission from both the Local Government Association and the Chartered Institute there is a reference you each make welcoming the improved powers of inspection. Specifically in the document from the Chartered Institute you make a reference to the difficulties experienced currently by members who have sought to gain entry to premises that are part used by a private dwelling. You just trail off interestingly saying, "We would welcome the opportunity to contribute to further discussions on these matters", presumably on the specifics of how those powers of entry should be strengthened. Would you like to elaborate on those points now? Mr Smith: On the particular case I dealt with where we had a successful prosecution on a lady with 22 counts of cruelty, this inspection and the following prosecution was following a warrant under the Breeding of Dogs Act which prevented me going into the lady's house. The police officer accompanying me (because she had threatened to shoot me before) went into her house under his powers of PACE and said that the conditions in her house were worse than the kennels on which we successfully got 22 prosecutions. In this particular instance the animals in her house (and she was breeding a particular breed in her domestic accommodation) I could not touch and they had to stay there. We certainly believe the powers should include domestic accommodation. It would rest again with the professionalism with the inspectors or the police constable and the use of PACE and the enforcement concordat to ensure that the domestic accommodation, and the rights of that person regarding his or her domestic accommodation, were not violated. Mr Griffiths: One of the problems I know a lot of our members have experienced very specifically - and I have to confess I am not absolutely clear, from the way the Bill is drafted, whether this is covered or not and I am happy to be reassured if it is - is where a pet shop is operating and selling animals but does not have a licence, as is required by law, and there is no power of entry so if the owner of the pet shop refused access physically to an inspector that that would not be an offence. That is a very specific issue which we would like clarity on. It is not clear to me whether in fact the Bill does provide that. Mr Capper: I think the major criteria here is that it has to be used sensitively. I think my colleague mentioned it. We in large animals are used to having this power to enter a dwelling; it is used as part of the business and is contained in a lot of our legislation, such as Cattle Identification Regulations, the By-products Order and various other regulations because most farms, and certain unlicensed premises, use their dwelling as part of their business. To enforce the legislation we enforce we need to look at records. When we are talking about welfare we need to look at medicines records and other issues. Apart from the licensing there is also the recordkeeping that we need to be able to deal with. If we do not have powers to enter those dwellings, or that part of the dwelling that is used in the course of the business, we will struggle. Q651 Alan Simpson: In other parts of criminal legislation and in childcare legislation the powers of entry are based on "reasonable grounds to believe that an offence is being committed". Is that the sort of catch-all phrase you would wish to see in animal welfare legislation? Mr Capper: The vast majority of our legislation gives us the power to enter a dwelling which is used not solely as a dwelling. There is no caveat with it; it is an open-ended one because most of the records or the offices in farms are certainly kept within farmhouses normally, or in 90 per cent of the cases. We need access to those records and to medicines records as well. That is why, in most of our legislation, it is an inbuilt open-ended issue. Q652 Alan Simpson: I need to bring that back to the local authority experience in terms of your example of not being entitled to enter someone's house? Mr Smith: The particular premises did not have a licence. As Mr Griffiths has said, without a licence I had no rights of entry, so we had to apply for a warrant to go into that premises. We had received information from private individuals who had worked at that premises they were so disgusted with what they had found they reported it to us; but without a licence we had no rights so we applied to the court for a warrant. We still could not get into her domestic premises but it did allow us to go onto the rest of her premises, which was a farm, and was used for breeding dogs. Mr Brunstrom: Unsurprisingly the question of access to dwelling houses is under almost constant review in other aspects of the criminal law. The Home Office has a great deal of experience in this and we would very much welcome more consistency in powers. I think it would be very much in the public interest if there was one set of justifications for entering a dwelling house, and not dozens and dozens depending on where the power appears. I think that would be reasonably easy to achieve. Of course, we would fully recognise that there is a need for the police to be present when things get awkward. Q653 Chairman: I want to turn to Ms Williamson because we have asked you to comment on various issues which have come out of our discussion, but you were kind enough to send in a paper of your own as evidence, which I think particularly focuses on clause 26 of the Bill which refers to disqualification of people from engaging in activities involving animals. I wonder if you would care to say a few words by way of introduction to your paper and the very specific point based on one case you were involved in which makes you question this particular clause. Ms Williamson: Worcestershire County Council prosecuted various individuals in its county repeatedly spanning approximately three years. We got convictions for cruelty to their cattle. They owned six farms in the locality; they certainly were not penniless farmers. They had a lot of property and a lot of land. We prosecuted them successfully, we got convictions and we also got two lifetime Disqualification Orders - in other words, they were banned from keeping animals for life. They appealed and we went to the local Crown Court. Q654 Chairman: I noticed you mentioned that in your evidence. I raise the question in the context of this Bill as to whether, if somebody had carried out acts of such cruelty, you might say, "You're not fit to keep an animal at any time in the future". I was quite surprised that this power existed. Is that under the Farm Animal Welfare legislation? Ms Williamson: It is under an Act, not as old as the 1911 Act, made in 1954 Protection of Animals Amendment Act. It gives the courts a power to ban somebody from having custody of an animal if, but only if, they have been convicted of one offence, which is causing unnecessary suffering to an animal under the 1911 Act. The circumstances in which a court, under the existing legislation, can ban somebody is much more restricted than that anticipated by this Bill, which is why we welcome section 26 because it enlarges the circumstances in which somebody can now be banned from keeping an animal. Q655 Chairman: But not banned for life? Ms Williamson: I anticipate banned for such term as the court thinks fit, and that can range from a year, two years or for life. In our case we were able to successfully ban three individuals from keeping animals for life. The problem we then encountered was that we had no statutory power to go onto their land take away their animals in the event that they would breach that Disqualification Order. We were absolutely powerless. We are creatures of statute and we cannot do that which statute does not empower us to do. Q656 Chairman: That is under the current legislation? Ms Williamson: That is under the current law, yes. We sought help from the civil courts which is why we went through the High Court and through the Court of Appeal to ask for an injunction. The Court of Appeal, although they wanted to help us, basically said, "We're not here to cure loopholes in the criminal law. Go away and get it cured in this way". This is where this Bill helps us. At the moment section 26 of the Bill provides that a court can disqualify an individual from carrying out certain activities in connection with animals and it provides for four scenarios: owning animals, which we say is a welcome addition; keeping, arranging or participating in the keeping of animals; dealing in animals; or transporting them, or being connected with the transporting of animals. My concern is this: that in cases we brought against the individuals in our locality we were only able to successfully convict them in relation to certain offences because we relied upon the existing definition of "custody of an animal", which is where it is defined in case law at the moment as "control of an animal" or "the power to control an animal". Hitherto a court has looked to a case for a definition of custody because it is not statutorily defined, unlike now when it is. Although I can see that courts might like to rely upon statutory definitions, such as we have got contained in the Bill, rather than having to rely on case law, we actually found it very helpful to rely on quite a broad definition. The reason we found it helpful was because, in our case, the defendants concerned argued that they no longer owned the animals; they argued they no longer kept the animals; they argued they no longer arranged or participated in the keeping of the animals; they argued that they did not deal in the animals; and we could find no evidence that they had transported them or arranged for the transport of the animals. They were clever defendants and it was unusual circumstances. I accept in the majority of the cases the Bill would be very helpful. My concern is with the more complex situation where the local authority has to engage in convert surveillance in order to be able to prove that a defendant falls within one of these four categories in order to be able to successfully disqualify them from keeping animals. Q657 Chairman: Just to clarify, because it has come up before in evidence we have received that during the process of prosecution cruelty having been identified people then take steps to divest themselves of any responsibility for the animals - in order words they could sell them to third parties; so that by the time the case comes to court they can say, "They don't belong to us any more", and they get round the procedures where the animals may be taken away from them and their ability to do something with them is removed. Are you saying you either want a better definition of cruelty in the context of the Bill, or you want to go back to the wider definitions which are conferred by reference to precedent of previous cases? Which would you prefer? Ms Williamson: I think that is an interesting question. I have seen LACORS' submission that they would like to see an enlarged definition. I myself am happy with the four activities included in the Bill, but in our own experience at Worcestershire County Council we feel there should be another category which would be "having custody of an animal where custody includes control of that animal"; or, and this is the crucial point, "the power to control that animal". I think that would then capture those defendants which are clever enough to argue that they have divested themselves of custody of an animal. Q658 Chairman: Is there any merit in having a situation where at the point at which the cruelty offence has been identified (in other words, the observations to which you referred earlier have been concluded) you should be able to somehow freeze the position of the people who have control, own or are in some way dealing with those animals? The impression I get is that as soon as people are discovered to cause welfare problems they then take steps to move away from the situation; whereas what you would want to do in a prosecution sense is say, "I have seen that at a moment in time and that is the situation we need to look at", and not some evolving situation? Ms Williamson: I can see merit in that, although by the time you get to court the court are not only interested in the relevant period, i.e. when the offence was committed, the bit you have captured, but they are also interested in how an individual defendant has behaved since they have been discovered up until the point when the case actually arrives at court. If they have behaved much better and are now toeing the line and are caring for the animal etc then they will be much more lenient on them and are much less likely to impose lifetime Disqualification Orders on those individuals than they would be if they had totally ignored any advice from Defra vets or local authority inspectors. The problem we face is I think the majority of cases would not be bothered by this particular definition of section 26 disqualification. The problem we have had is that we have spent an in ordinate amount of public money in enforcing current animal welfare legislation against certain individuals because it just would not have fitted neatly within this definition. I think individuals can be quite smart and on the face of it they have divested themselves of custody. I think it takes a lot of effort to get to the truth. A magistrates' court is not always best equipped and does not have the time to look at the minutiae of a case. Fortunately the Court of Appeal got to the truth of the matter in our case - our individuals had got legal tenancies - and were able to demonstrate they had passed animals to another person and they had granted that other person legal tenancy in relation to their farm dwellings. They turned out to be fictions, of course but we had to rely upon very unusual circumstances. If we were not able to argue that they had retained power to control that animal we would not have succeeded in convicting these individuals in relation to a large number of charges. The common scenario is that an individual would pass ownership or custody of an animal to a partner, wife, spouse or a girlfriend. From research I did in preparation of our Court of Appeal hearing my understanding is that a large number of local authorities were not enforcing Disqualification Orders simply because of that fact because of the resources it would take to actually investigate the matter further. I think the main concern we have is that although section 26 is good, we would not like the old definition of custody to go because we would not succeed in getting home a lot of our cases, because farmers are getting very clever. Mr Capper: I agree with everything my colleague has said, but I think the wider issue that bothers me, and the general public know about it, we all know about it, is where people are banned but because of the way appeal cases have gone and the way that legislation is at the present time under the old fashioned legislation it is almost meaningless. There are so many ways round the keeping of livestock even though you have a ban from the court. I know of a farmer that lives in North Wales being sent to jail three times because he was in breach of the ban. Everybody laughs at this and says, what is the point of having a ban if it is not going to work? This is why we ask in our submission for this custody to be widened so that there is no way out of it. Maybe our submission is slightly over the top. Our submission includes ownership and management, care or control of, or power to control any animal, and, whether accompanied or not. Then we go on to say about working with animals and we list all the issues. We need something which says that if a ban is served by the court then the definition of custody and control must be so tight that it does not make a fool of us like the present legislation is doing whereby it is so easy to get round the ban because of the definitions that we have a major problem. Q659 Alan Simpson: I am sure you will understand that as a Committee it may be of some interest for us to hear the difficulties that you faced in the past and about the ability of people to bob and weave around the existing legislation. For me the central point is to check with you the different wording around the same themes that each of you have submitted. If that were in the Bill then that would give you the enforcement powers to partake in legislation that gave you the ability to intervene and enable you to follow it through in effective terms. Mr Capper: Yes. Ms Williamson: I think for the most part it would, but there are going to be a large number of cases that we are aware of that would slip through the net because of this definition. Q660 Chairman: Ms Williamson, you are of the view that the sort of approach that we have just heard outlined may itself still be challengeable unless you have this breadth of precedent to be able to draw down on in terms of future legislation. Mr Capper was saying earlier that in his evidence they have given a definition of custody. I sense that the lawyer in you is saying that, even so, this still may not be broad enough or tight enough, depending on which way you come at it, to give you the comfort that you are seeking. Ms Williamson: I suppose the reason why I am here is because we spent three years on one particular case and a lot of money was spent. I am coming at it from quite a narrow perspective and I may not have all the global answers that you are seeking. My view is that the section 26 definition is fine insofar as it goes but it does not go far enough. The custody and the control and the power to control an animal is not adequately covered by section 26 in its current form. Alan Simpson: Would your concerns be addressed in the alternative definition? Q661 Chairman: That is a point we have just established. The answer is no to that question. That is why I asked the question whether Ms Williamson had read LACORS' evidence about that. I hope I am not putting words into her mouth. Ms Williamson: I am aware that that lengthy definition exists. Q662 Chairman: We do not want to get trapped too long on this. Those of you who are at the practical end of having to implement this legislation need to have had, or need yet to have, the Bill run past you in such a way that you can test it to destruction to see if it is going to work in practice. The main message I get from all the things you have said is that you welcome the thrust but that in the real world there are a lot of rough edges that need to be sorted out if it is going to be a piece of workable legislation. The other impression I get is that, from the local authority's standpoint as well as the police's standpoint, unless you have got the resources to deal with it, you have got a fine set of words in prospect, you may not be able to make it work as comprehensively as the designers would have liked in practice. Is that a fair summary? Mr Griffiths: I would agree with that, Chairman, I think it is a fair summary. One point I would make is that there is a need for the guidance from Defra to be as clear as possible as to the sort of priorities they would expect local authorities to afford to this kind of work, but there is also a need to spell out the benefits of it because priorities are decided at a local level by elected members and it is important that elected members and the officers who serve them are clear as to what the benefits to the community are of this sort of work. Resources is always a common cry from local authorities, but the Chartered Institute is not a local authority so I think I can say quite comfortably that we believe that more resources are necessary and that local authorities need to address these issues seriously. I would urge the Committee, if I may, to take a leaf out of the work that has been done under the Housing Bill by the ODPM whereby they are going to give significant sums of start‑up funding to local authorities for new regimes which are being introduced and if you can encourage that process to be replicated, we would welcome that. Q663 Patrick Hall: I would like to go back to the points that were raised by Ms Williamson on the issue of widening definitions to include power to control. I take it that evidence still needs to be obtained to cover that. Does that mean that the resource implications on local authorities would be as heavy as they are now? Ms Williamson: I think that depends on how much extra enforcement work a local authority would be expected to take up under the new Bill. Q664 Patrick Hall: This use of words sounds very sensible. The reality is that some people, it may not be the owner, do not look after the animal very well, but in order to prove that there has got to be a lot of covert evidence. Ms Williamson: In order to prove what? Q665 Patrick Hall: That someone is de facto meant to have control of an animal and not doing so. Ms Williamson: Yes, that is a fair point. Q666 Patrick Hall: So it is covert work? Ms Williamson: Sometimes it is covert work in order to prove that they still have control of an animal. Without having that there certain individuals will escape disqualification because they will not fall within owning, keeping, dealing and transporting. Q667 Patrick Hall: I would like to clarify my understanding in a lay person's language because I am not a qualified lawyer. In paragraph 4.1 of your evidence you talk about the perception of animal welfare regulation being "toothless" and that is a very important point. What would the effect of "either way" be on addressing that toothlessness because I do not understand what that means? What is the difference between the summary and either way cases and how would it apply to the issues that we are discussing? Could you give some examples? Ms Williamson: Certainly. The summary only offences are those that are dealt with in the Magistrates' Court and they are disposed of in the Magistrates' Court and therefore they usually attract lower sentences. "Either way" matters are those that can be dealt with either in the Magistrates' Court or in the Crown Court, and if they end up in the Crown Court the individual could be faced with a much stiffer sentence. The reason I raised it was because in our experience at Worcestershire County Council and certainly from speaking to colleagues who work for other local authorities currently animal welfare matters are summary only and because they are not either way matters they tend to attract very low penalties. Q668 Patrick Hall: But they could attract custodial sentences, could they not? Summary offences can. Ms Williamson: Yes, they can. Q669 Patrick Hall: So why is that regarded as toothless in practice? I am trying to understand what you already know. Ms Williamson: You are quite right, some of the current animal welfare matters do attract custodial sentences. For example, if you breach a Disqualification Order you can serve up to three months in custody and we have had defendants prosecuted in that way and they have received custodial sentences. I am talking about a more global perspective. It is very rare that an individual will get a custodial sentence in relation to what we consider in our experience to be quite serious offences. Similarly, pre‑sentence reports are prepared by probation officers when they are used to preparing reports in relation to what they would call the more serious offences such as rape and murder and burglary, they very rarely recommend custodial sentences. I think it would be welcomed if at least some of the offences of section 1 and perhaps section 2 were made "either way". We could not quite see why that was not the case given that there are a lot of other regulatory offences out there that are "either way" that we consider to be less serious and certainly cost the local authority far less to investigate and bring before the courts. Mr Brunstrom: I entirely agree with Ms Williamson. This is as an issue of perception on the bench in a Magistrates' Court and it would change the perception of the serious nature of the most serious offences quite significantly. She is quite right, it would raise a higher likelihood of a custodial sentence being implied even in the Magistrates' Court. It has another benefit in that it would enable the magistrates to remit for sentencing those cases which they thought were the most serious to a Crown Court. While she is entirely right, it is a matter for Parliament how seriously it wishes to see these offences. At the moment the Bill excludes access to a Crown Court and that is neither wrong nor right. The proposal she makes would work in the way she suggests and it really is an ethical issue for Parliament as to what it sees as the maximum penalty for these offences being. Q670 Mr Drew: This is a question for Ms Williamson. You seem to have fallen foul of the people in support of pet fairs. Am I to believe that Worcestershire is a place where if you want to hold a pet fair you should not go there? I am intrigued by some of the material we have received. What is your approach to pet fairs in Worcestershire? Ms Williamson: I am sorry but because I do not work within the animal health division, I only get what they give me; I cannot answer that question helpfully. Q671 Chairman: I was going to take this up as a concluding question with Mr Griffiths and Mr Smith. You do not mention it in your evidence, but no doubt you may, from your considerable experience, have something to tell us about pet fairs because we have received conflicting evidence from witnesses. There are some who are passionately in favour of pet fairs both as places where people can make comparisons as to the best breeds of various types of animal and for opportunities to sell animals to others who have an interest, and you will be unsurprised to learn that there are others who are passionately against pet fairs as vectors for disease transmission, for selling to the unwary and the unknowledgable complex animals and therefore creating potential welfare situations and so on and so forth. Perhaps you might give us a few words on pet fairs. Mr Griffiths: I think the Chartered Institute has found itself at the eye of a storm around this issue and been battered about the head by both sides of the argument. We issued guidance a couple of years ago about the relevance of the Pet Animals Act and pet fairs on the basis that our legal advice is that it is not possible currently to license the sort of pet fair about which there is a lot of discussion, for selling principally birds and reptiles but also Coi Carp for example. Our view is that provided the law is clear and there is a specific licensing regime where conditions can be properly applied and monitored with veterinary support as appropriate then that is something that would be acceptable. The regulation must be clear. At the moment the system of regulation is not clear. Whilst in our view most local authorities have gone along with the guidance we have issued, some have not, they believe that it is appropriate to licence. They have taken the view that if you do licence then you do have a measure of control, even if at the end of the day it is not possible to physically enforce that. I think it is the measure of control that is important. Our main concern is the transmission of infection and the control of human health but to do that through proper control and the welfare of animals. Q672 Chairman: Is there a body of work or research which gives us some hard answers as to whether in fact pet fairs are involved in the transmission of disease, as you have rightly identified, to animals or to people? Is there anything that says the following has occurred as a result of the high proximity of one animal to another in the context of pet fairs? Mr Griffiths: I am not aware of any evidence specifically for pet fairs. There is a wealth of evidence about the zoonosis season and the way in which animals can transmit infections to humans. I think it is a logical assumption to make that where you have a concentration of animals and you have people actually present buying them and the welfare of the animals is not being protected as well as it might be then that raises the possibility of infection. There are organisations who have sought to portray this as being a hotbed of infection and so on, but generally organisations are not opposed to pet fairs in principle. Q673 Chairman: On the basis of that line of argument you would not have anybody on the Northern line at eight o'clock because of the way that fellow human beings are squeezed together, with a degree of intimacy and proximity that would not normally be one that you would seek. The opportunity for disease transmission seems to me to be highly prevalent on the London Underground and yet we have not had people saying we have got to abandon ship on that, but we have had views put to us about pet fairs and their risks vis‑à‑vis animals. Mr Griffiths: I would endorse that as far as South West Trains are concerned every morning too. The issue for us is that we want to control infection where that is possible. I fully accept your argument about the fact that we all give diseases and colds to each other all the time, but where it can be protected and at the same time protect the welfare of animals then I think it is important that that should be done. The crucial issue for us is that the regulation system and the transparency of it is clear for all to see. I was a member of a working group which Defra set up to look at pet fairs and I fully endorse the conclusions of that group, which is to have a series of tiers of different types of fairs with different types of levels of regulation applied to them. Q674 Chairman: I think we are going to have to draw our lines of questioning to a conclusion. May I thank you all very much indeed. You have given us a very interesting insight particularly into the practicalities of the legislation. Did Defra get in touch with you prior to the publication of the Bill to hear your views on the practicalities that they were putting into it? Mr Capper: Yes, certainly. We actually attended meetings and discussed the Bill section by section with Defra. Q675 Chairman: So you put to Defra the concerns and yet the Bill has emerged in the way that it has done? Mr Capper: Some of our points were taken on board and there was some alteration. All the issues we have mentioned as LACORS were mentioned to Defra. Q676 Chairman: Mr Brunstrom, was ACPO similarly consulted? Mr Brunstrom: Yes is the answer to that. Q677 Chairman: Were many of the points that you have put to us both in your oral and written evidence communicated to Defra at the time? Mr Brunstrom: Yes, they were. Q678 Chairman: Were you surprised to see perhaps some of the issues which you put in very stark terms to us this morning not dealt with as effectively as you would have liked in the Bill? Mr Brunstrom: Only mildly. It is a new procedure to me to have a draft Bill at this stage. I am very content with the attitude of Defra officials to take on board issues that I have raised subsequent to seeing the draft Bill, but, clearly, as I have said this morning, they are not resolved. Looking beyond your words, I have no complaint to make about the way in which our evidence has been taken; quite the contrary, I think it has been extremely open. I would be very disappointed if this was the end of the debate because the point you make about there needing to be a consensus as to how to enforce this regulation I think is absolutely vital. Q679 Chairman: Defra made the point at the beginning of our deliberations that there was more work to do on the prosecution aspects of the Bill. Mr Griffiths: I would endorse that. We have had full involvement with Defra officials and we consulted many times and I have attended many meetings, we made our points very clearly and many of the points we have made have been picked up and represented in the Bill. We fully endorse the line that the Department is taking, i.e. the need to bring together all this disparate legislation and to have a clear system in place to better protect animals, with a subtext of doing so and having more rather than less licensing. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. It has been an extremely useful session. I think we are a little better informed certainly about the practicalities of what this draft Bill represents. |