Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-92)
MS JACKIE
BALLARD, DR
ARTHUR LINDLEY
AND MR
MICHAEL FLOWER
7 SEPTEMBER 2004
Q80 Paddy Tipping: You have been having
discussions with the Minister about devolution under clause 6
and you are an organisation that covers England and Wales. It
is possible that in the Bill there would be different regulations
in Wales than in England. What are your thoughts on that?
Ms Ballard: We do operate in both
England and Wales and only in England and Wales. As a charity
we do not have a political position on the issue of devolution
and you would not expect us to, but as a matter of practice we
have a Parliamentary Officer in Wales who works with the Welsh
Assembly and we have a regional structure which gives us an animal
welfare manager, for example, for Wales and inspectorate groups
who are contained in their working lives within Wales. If the
legislation was different or the codes of practice were different
in Wales as opposed to England, it would just be a matter of different
training for those people who are working in Wales and that would
not give us any particular difficulties.
Q81 Paddy Tipping: It may be the case
that something goes against animal welfare in England and not
in Wales. As a national organisation that must have raised a question
or two for you.
Ms Ballard: Yes. As an animal
welfare organisation we would like to see the same protection
given to animals across the world. You are right in principle,
cruelty is cruelty and suffering is suffering, it does not matter
whether it is English, Welsh or Belgian animals that are suffering,
but we have to live within the political realities and Parliament's
decisions about which is the appropriate body to make decisions
on certain issues. Can I come back to your earlier question about
the contact we have had with Defra about the Bill? It is fair
to add that as well as the civil servant level of contact on the
detail of the Bill we have been lobbying politicians and Government
about the necessity for such a Bill and trying to ensure that
it is in each party's manifesto and at the top of a list of priorities
for any government.
Q82 Mr Mitchell: Would you not prefer
tail docking to be on the face of the Bill rather than subject
to a separate decision in Scotland?
Ms Ballard: Sorry, a separate
decision?
Q83 Mr Mitchell: For tail docking to
be prescribed in the Bill rather than subject to a separate decision
in Wales.
Ms Ballard: Yes. In terms of animal
welfare, we would prefer legislation to apply to all animals everywhere,
but we accept political realities and we can work within that
system.
Q84 Mr Mitchell: So you are hoping to
get the same in Wales?
Ms Ballard: We will be lobbying
for the same protection for animals in Wales as there is in England.
Q85 Ms Atherton: You gave us a very helpful
presentation at the start and you came up with three priorities.
Given we are coming to the end of this particular session, what
key message would you like the Committee to go away with and to
remember when we come to writing our report? What is the issue
about which you would go to the barricade?
Ms Ballard: It is that in order
to give better protection to animals people who keep animals should
have a duty of care to them and the welfare offence is crucial.
We strongly support the principle of this Bill. We would like
it to go through broadly as it is, but in terms of workability,
it is essential to us that the enforcement section is changed
because of the detail I gave you about the eight days just not
being workable as far as we are concerned. I would like the Committee
to go away and write a report that says we welcome this Bill,
we hope it is in the Queen's Speech in November and it needs some
tidying up and some amendments to make it more workable and fair.
Q86 Chairman: Can I just conclude and
perhaps ask you to expand a little bit about the question of animals
that are retained during periods of prosecution and to raise within
that context a point which Candy raised with our last group of
witnesses which was about the resources that are available for
different groups, particularly in the context of local authorities
to carry out the enhanced powers under this Bill. Do you feel,
from what you have heard so far, that there are adequate resources
available for what offers new opportunities for enforcement obviously
over and above in volume terms the activity which is currently
there?
Ms Ballard: I am sure local authorities
will argue on their own behalf that they will want specific resources
from Government to enable them to carry out any new powers they
are given and we would wish that local authorities in general
took animal welfare more seriously and made it a higher priority
for spending, but I can only answer in terms of our own resources.
In terms of our own resources, we anticipate that initially there
might be in the order of 100 extra prosecutions a year if this
Bill goes through and because the prevention of cruelty is the
core of our business we will ensure that we have the resources
to carry it out adequately. Ideally that will mean an enhanced
ability to get income from the public, but if that does not work
then it will mean cutting back in other areas of our work because
this is the core of our work. We have been arguing for this for
such a long time that it would not make sense for us not to find
the resources to implement it properly.
Q87 Chairman: I just want to raise a
small but nonetheless important point under section 3 of your
evidence on the subject of welfare. You say that you believe that
paragraph 3(4) should also refer to the need for adequate
exercise, appropriate environmental enrichment, appropriate freedom
to move and the need to provide, whenever reasonably possible,
conditions which avoid mental suffering including protection from
fear and distress. Now, that is a pretty big wish-list to see
put into a piece of legislation where you can define all of those
terms. For example, if you had an animal and it spent part of
its time inside and on November 5th there is a colossal amount
of noise outside, how are you going to define the terms under
which the animal might receive appropriate protection from fear
and distress from fireworks because our cat hates big bangs and
you do your best to comfort and provide for the animal, but there
is a limit to what you can do as the owner because you cannot
go out and ban bonfire night and big noises. That effectively
in lay words is what paragraph 26 of your evidence seems to be
asking, the idea of defining for the pet owner what adequate exercise
is or appropriate environmental enrichment. Can you just explain
what all this means?
Ms Ballard: I will ask Arthur
to explain it in a bit more detail perhaps. You said the key words
there which are to take reasonable steps. Taking the example which
you have just given, if you keep the cat indoors on fireworks
night you are taking reasonable steps to protect it insofar as
you are able. On the other hand, if you take the cat to a fireworks
party and sit it in the front row, you are obviously not taking
reasonable steps and you are exposing it to fear and distress.
This is not about wanting to go and prosecute or intimidate people
who are actually giving any animal exercise or a proper environment,
this is about making sure that people know what is expected of
them under a duty of care to that animal. If you want more detail
about what we mean by an enriched environment, for example, perhaps
Arthur can give you that.
Q88 Chairman: Yes.
Dr Lindley: Before we move to
that, Chairman, if I could go back to what the Minister said this
morning. He referred to the five freedoms in the context of this
paragraph, section 3(4). The five freedoms were established by
the Farm Animal Welfare Council for farm animals 20 something
years ago. The words that are currently in the draft do not fully
reflect those five freedoms, they are a reworking of them and
they do seem to have lost the concept of fear and distress which
were in the five freedoms. Those five freedoms were the basis
of the development of the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations
and codes of practice that apply to farm animals. There has been,
I think, no problem in creating and developing detailed codes
of practice for individual species and individual husbandry circumstances
that reflect those broad provisions. That is really all we are
suggesting in this paragraph of our evidence, that, as Jackie
has said, in reasonable terms there should be provision for all
those animals' needs, such as environmental enrichment, avoiding
totally barren and boring spaces, depending on the nature of the
animal. A goldfish in a goldfish bowl perhaps is a classic case
with some water and a glass bowl and nothing else, whereas a goldfish
in a properly constructed fish-tank with weed and places to hide,
structures, has a better environment in which to live.
Q89 Ms Atherton: What would your view
be about a puppy in a four-storey high flat in an inner city?
Is that an appropriate environment and do we then get into the
realms of this issue?
Dr Lindley: It is very difficult
to answer what it should be for a specific case and individual
circumstances with a generality.
Mr Flower: I would just say that
these issues really are questions of what is reasonable. I think
many people are perfectly capable of keeping dogs in flats, and
I have done so myself when I have lived in London. I do not see
anything wrong with that, provided you provide all of the other
factors that the animal needs to enhance its welfare, take it
for a walk regularly, feed it properly and so on and so forth.
It can be difficult, I think, at times to consider these issues
when we are all reasonable people and we keep animals in a proper
way, but if you look back to our paragraph 26 that the Chairman
referred to earlier, the sort of cases that the RSPCA sees are
not just people who keep dogs in flats, but they are people who
keep dogs locked away in a garden shed for 23, 24 hours a day,
they are never let out, they are never cleaned out, they are living
on six to 12 inches of excrement. They may be fed and they may
have water, but they are kept in the dark and they never receive
fresh air. Those are the practical cases that we discover on a
regular basis and it is that type of extreme welfare issue that
we are trying to address which is why the welfare offence is so
important. In some ways it does not matter how you dress up the
wording of the clause, but it is what we are trying to achieve,
I think, which is very important and that is to raise people's
perceptions of what standards of care animals need. At the moment
the law is inadequate because it does not address the problems
of people who keep animals in that way. What we are anxious to
do is to get into a situation where we can prevent unnecessary
suffering by being able to apply these welfare provisions.
Q90 Mr Wiggin: I have just a very quick
question about birds. Why have you not in your list of exemptions
on the tail docking concept included clipping wings for poultry?
Why did you choose to ignore that?
Dr Lindley: We have not ignored
it in that we suggested that mutilation should be defined as interference
with sensitive tissues.
Q91 Mr Wiggin: Rather than just the end
of a feather?
Dr Lindley: Clipping feathers,
as with trimming your cat's claws, the dead tissue to us is not
an issue.
Q92 Mr Wiggin: And on the training of
various inspectors certainly for certain types of chickens, and
the Asian Hard Feather Club have given evidence, how will you
reassure the Committee that people who do go in to inspect are
properly trained and actually know what they are looking at because
certain animals do not necessarily appear, or may appear to look
neglected, but actually that is what they are meant to look like?
In the case of certain types of fighting birds, fighting cockerels,
the Asian Hard Feather Club are very worried that you might misinterpret
what their species are meant to look like.
Mr Flower: Yes, we do try to train
our inspectors to a very high standard, but of course I think
we recognise that not all of our inspectors can know everything
about every species, which is why in relation to the welfare offence
we do recommend that safeguards be built in so that one cannot
suggest that there is a welfare offence being committed unless
that view is supported by the opinion of an expert in a particular
field.
Ms Ballard: Chairman, could I
just add a postscript to the earlier discussion about dogs living
in flats and so on to say that the RSPCA strongly believe that
there is a positive benefit in people having pets and a pet can
be ill-treated in a five-bedroom mansion if it is not given its
proper welfare needs and looked after perfectly well in a flat.
We do not take frivolous prosecutions and, as evidence for that,
I would ask you to look at our success rate in prosecutions which
last year was 96.6%, so we only take prosecutions when we believe
it is in the public interest and there is a strong case to answer.
Chairman: Well, can I thank you all for
helping us at this early stage in our inquiry to give us a very
useful overview as well as responding to a number of particular
points. It may well be that, as we proceed, there will be other
items that we will wish to raise with you probably by correspondence,
but may I thank you most sincerely for the evidence you have given
and particularly the very helpful presentation at the beginning.
Thank you very much.
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