Control of Horses Bill

Baroness Mallalieu Excerpts

Friday 27th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Mallalieu]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

I declare a number of relevant interests as president of the Horse Trust, president of the Countryside Alliance, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Horse and a member of the RSPCA.

I am very pleased to introduce this simple but important Bill, which has come to us from the other place. I am grateful to the honourable Member for York Outer, Mr Julian Sturdy, for inviting me to take this Private Member’s Bill through this House and congratulate him on obtaining solid cross-party support for it.

In essence, the Control of Horses Bill proposes several small amendments to the Animals Act 1971, which are intended to help people to deal more promptly and effectively with horses that are unlawfully on their land. During the Bill’s passage through the other place, it received strong support from the Minister, Mr George Eustice, and from the Opposition in the form of the Member of Parliament for Penistone and Stocksbridge, Mrs Angela Smith. Indeed, the Minister, together with Mr Sturdy, made some amendments to the Bill to extend its scope to cover both private and public land. The Bill before us reflects these changes, having been amended in the Commons, and is now extended to apply the same remedy for fly-grazing to all land in England. It does not apply to Scotland or Wales. Indeed, Wales has its own Act covering this devolved matter. It is not perhaps common for a Private Member’s Bill that has come way down the list in the draw to get this far, especially within this rather condensed legislative period before the general election, but this perhaps underlines the urgent nature of a Bill to tackle this problem, fly-grazing.

In England alone, more than 3,000, probably nearer 4,000, horses are being fly-grazed, many in poor condition. Fly-grazing is defined as the practice of deliberately placing or abandoning equines on someone’s land without their consent. This includes not just horses and ponies but donkeys, mules and hinnies. The welfare organisations have obtained evidence that this practice has become increasingly significant in recent years and has become a widespread problem. In some places, it has never been heard of. In others, there are real hotspots, but by and large it extends the length and breath of the country and is not confined to rural, urban or suburban areas—it is everywhere. It has unfortunate problems not just for animal welfare but for public safety and the well-being of the communities that are blighted by it.

There are many cases of horses being abandoned and neglected. They range from situations in which owners who have struggled to cope have given up because of the cost of keeping a horse, to irresponsible breeding or when people just look for opportunities to graze or easily dispose of horses they cannot sell. There is some evidence that the increase in fly-grazing is linked to the weakness in the price of lesser-quality animals and to the recession. Many horses are now effectively of no value whatever.

The Animals Act 1971 needs amending for that reason, and the existing provisions are no longer valid. They were based on a time when there was a value to the horse. The current problem does not, therefore, meet the current legislation. The person who detains a horse on his land and goes through the procedures under the 1971 Act must then put it up for sale. The expectation when the Act was passed—and the relevant section covers all sorts of other animals that still have a value—was that the person who detained and possibly suffered damage as a result of fly-grazing would be able to recoup some money by selling the animal. However, that is not now the case.

There is increasing evidence that some unscrupulous dealers allow the horses to be detained and do not claim them. The horses are then taken, given a passport, a microchip, which very few of them have, possibly some veterinary treatment, are put up for sale and then bought back at a knockdown price by the very people who have effectively dumped them. They have acquired back a horse of considerably greater value, because with a passport and a chip it is likely to have some sale value, albeit for meat. As Julian Sturdy said of the Bill at Third Reading in another place:

“Our ability to protect horses from a life of neglect on both private and public land will be greatly enhanced”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/1/15; col. 1158.]

The timing of the legislation is to some extent dictated by a crisis that goes wider than simply fly-grazing. Against the background of between 3,000 and 4,000 horses that are being fly-grazed, it is estimated by the equine charities that a further 3,000 horses that are in a very poor condition at this moment, but are kept lawfully on land that people are entitled to use.

I turn to the details of the legislation. It is short, has just five clauses and proposes some modest but none the less important changes to the Animals Act to carve out a specific regime to deal with horses put on land without lawful authority in England. It leaves the Animals Act unchanged as it applies to other livestock and all the Act unchanged as it applies in Wales, because the matter is devolved. The Welsh are ahead of us: they enacted not identical but similar legislation in 2014. Ireland is ahead of us still. Southern Ireland brought in legislation of this type as long ago as 1996. It has been an enormous success, with a very large number of horses being detained and dealt with under that Act. In the first year of the Welsh legislation’s operation, some 480 horses passed through this system that would otherwise still be fly-grazing, unless they had died of neglect, which is sadly all too common.

Focusing on the central clause, Clause 3, the Bill enables local authorities, and private owners and occupiers of land, to deal with fly-grazing horses much more quickly than at present. It permits the disposal of horses after four working days from detention, rather than the 14 days currently prescribed under the Act. In addition, in the event that a detained horse is not claimed by the owner, the Bill provides more flexible options for disposal of horses. Instead of having to go through a sale at market or public auction, the Bill allows disposal by any means—humanely, obviously—that the detainer thinks fit. He can give the horse away, whether to a charity or a suitable individual, offer it for private sale, rehome it, or, in some cases where there is no alternative—this is the case with quite a significant number of these horses—arrange for humane euthanasia.

The current detention time under the Animals Act has been said to be unnecessarily long because there are considerable expenses attached to it. I believe that the proposed reduction to four working days strikes a good balance. It allows time for a responsible horse owner to claim their missing horse, while it reduces the expenses imposed on the local authority or person who has detained the horse and has to care for it properly on his own land. The Defra code of practice for horse welfare says that a horse should be seen at least once a day. That is what a responsible owner would do, so he would be alerted to any horse missing in very good time.

Fly-grazing is an extremely expensive problem. For each day that a horse is detained, there are requirements that it be properly cared for, fed and watered, and given shelter. Sometimes transport, housing and veterinary attention are necessary. We know that at least one council spent more than £100,000 to address the problem over the course of the year. The new measures proposed in the Bill have the potential to provide swift resolution to cases of fly-grazing and to deter others. This would also help to reduce the significant demand on resources that are usually required to tackle fly-grazing incidents. The reality is that many of these horses have little or no monetary value.

I also draw noble Lords’ attention to the safeguards in the Bill for what I would call responsible horse owners. I think we all accept that no matter how well fenced, there are occasions when horses accidently stray, very often through no fault of the owner, through a gate being left open or something of that sort. The Bill includes procedural protections to ensure that responsible horse owners can track down and reclaim horses that have accidentally strayed and are wrongly presumed to be fly-grazing. Those procedural protections would be overseen by the local police, who, under the Bill’s provisions, have to be notified within 24 hours of any detention, or that detention may not carry on. On this basis, a horse owner who contacts the police about a missing horse will enable the police to reconcile that report with a notice given by a person detaining a fly-grazing horse. One hopes that they would be able to reunite the horse with its legitimate owner, once settlement is agreed over the costs of any care provided during the detention period. The police already operate a call and command computer system, which is often shared with the local authority and other police stations. Hopefully, once this measure is in place, that can be polished up and extended.

Unfortunately, the owners of fly-grazing horses are often quite impossible to trace, or they do not wish to be traced as they have abandoned the horse. I have seen the results of that for myself at the Horse Trust, where I saw one of three nice horses that had been abandoned in a ploughed field. One was dead by the time anyone was alerted, the second was unable to be moved and was put down on the spot, and the third had what I was told was a condition score of nought. It was in fact a skeleton with some skin on it. Astonishingly, with incredibly good care, that horse survived, but many do not and many are found starving or worse. They have very rarely been properly treated for parasites and some are injured. Many suffer from malnutrition and exposure, and very often they have been grazing in areas with poisonous plants and have suffered long-term damage, for example from ragwort. In 2014, the RSPCA received more than 2,000 calls about more than 1,300 horses and donkeys that appeared to have been, frankly, abandoned. Therefore, animal welfare is one problem which this Bill is aimed at dealing with.

There are problems of other sorts, not just what I call the problem of starving horses. In recent years there seem to have been a number of incidents, one as recently as last week in Essex, of unwanted, unweaned foals being left on verges, abandoned because the mare had some value but the foal did not. Fortunately, in that case the RSPCA was able to pick up the foal and it is hoped that it will enable it to survive. I have come across a number of incidents of that sort and have seen some myself.

There is a further problem, which is the danger of horses fly-grazing not just on playing fields and school playgrounds but on roads, some of them major, on to which they have strayed. There are also some areas where unscrupulous dealers—I suspect they are dealers but who knows who they are—repeatedly put horses. On 5 January the RSPCA rescued eight horses that were fly-grazing near Leighton Buzzard. They were all in very poor condition and five of them died as a result of malnutrition, parasites and severe neglect. About 10 days later, on 15 January, eight more horses were simply put back into the same field. On that occasion it took four hours for a combination of the police, Blue Cross, the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare to round up the horses, none of which appeared ever to have been handled in any way and so presented considerable difficulties.

The dangers are not just road accidents but unfortunately sometimes very nearly fatal rail accidents. Last year, in November, 12 horses were killed on a railway line near Cambridge, having been caught on the track between two trains. As short a time as two weeks ago, some horses that had been wandering on the roads and had been put by well meaning people into a field had direct access to the railway line near Darlington and were killed. In both those cases, although the trains were damaged, fortunately the people in them were not seriously hurt. However, there are major accidents waiting to happen.

This is a case of not just health and safety but expense. The people concerned with this practice are going to have little or no concern for the inconvenience and expense that they impose on others through their actions. Indeed, the countryside and welfare groups estimate that this illegal practice costs millions of pounds each year, not just to farmers or landowners but to the police, charities and councils, and hence to taxpayers. Sadly, the major horse welfare charities are reporting that their rehoming centres are full to capacity of unwanted horses, and some of them have had to take on extra space to try to deal with at least part of the burden placed on them. This lack of resources is clearly unsustainable.

There is, I am glad to say, not only cross-party support for this measure but support from all those involved with the problem. The profile of what has been going on has been raised greatly in the last year by the campaigning organisations, which have made people aware of what has been going on. For many people, in this House and elsewhere, there is no conception of what is happening outside.

The bodies that have worked particularly hard include the RSPCA, Blue Cross, World Horse Welfare, HorseWorld, the British Horse Society and Redwings. They have joined forces with the Countryside Alliance, the CLA and the National Farmers’ Union. Together, that group produced a report on fly-grazing called Stop the Scourge. The strong consensus between groups that do not always agree on every aspect is an indication of just how important and how urgent this measure is. I am also aware that the Local Government Association is strongly in favour of the Bill, as are the police.

This Bill, short though it is, is good for animal welfare and public safety. It will ease the serious financial impact, not just on the police, charities and councils but on all of us through the taxes we pay. Above all, we have an opportunity to greatly enhance our ability to protect horses from the consequences of irresponsible ownership. In amending the Animals Act, this Bill will allow us to create a more practical and less burdensome solution to fly-grazing. It is not a total solution because that involves educating owners, but it would, I hope, ensure that local authorities and those who own land are in a better position to intervene when fly-grazing occurs and they are faced with the difficulties.

I should like to underline my debt to Julian Sturdy, who has campaigned on this issue for a very long time, for his commitment to this pressing issue. I would also like to add that the commitment from the Minister is also to be commended. I think he was determined to see that this Bill reached this House. He has assisted greatly with the passage of this Bill so far, as have his officials, to whom I also pay tribute. I strongly commend this Bill to your Lordships’ House. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Mallalieu]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister and to all those who have spoken. Each of the speeches has come from a position of knowledge and added to the strength of the arguments for the Bill, whether that was from a local government perspective, a charity perspective or from someone who runs riding stables or breeds horses. Those were all valuable contributions. A number of questions were asked, which I believe the Minister has answered fully. Perhaps I may underline the request made by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, that if it can be done—as I hope it will, as soon as possible—retrospective chipping should become the policy. That is the key to the equine database being effective in 2016.

I will pick up just one matter which was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, when she asked about Gypsies and Travellers. I make it absolutely clear that the Bill is aimed at irresponsible owners, not the Travelling community. The Gypsy Council has made it clear that it has no objections to the Bill. Nobody should be using somebody else’s land to graze their horses without permission. That is the underlying basis on which it is proposed to make these changes.

As the Minister noted, we all hope that we can fit within the timetable by taking the Bill forward as quickly as possible and see it on the statute book within this Parliament. It is the case, as I am sure noble Lords will appreciate, that it would be a pity to lose the opportunity provided by the Bill. If it were to be amended in this House then, sadly, it would not have time to gain Royal Assent, which would be a huge shame. I very much hope that noble Lords will support the Bill in its present form and allow it swift passage through this House. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.