Dog Control Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Redesdale
Lord Redesdale
My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendments 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 15 and 16. The reason for these amendments is quite clear. A number of issues were raised at Second Reading. This is a complicated matter with many unforeseen circumstances, and it was during the Second Reading debate that I came to believe that it was important to try to address some of those real issues. It was put to me that we should retain the concept of an aggravated offence and set more severe penalties for it. It seems entirely reasonable that the penalty for allowing your dog to bite someone should be greater than allowing it to show unprovoked aggression. It also seems entirely reasonable that allowing your dog to cause severe injury to or occasionally the death of a person should be treated as a serious offence with serious consequences. That is what these amendments seek to achieve.
Amendments 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 make it a more serious offence if the dog causes actual injury to the person and, in effect, mirrors the current offence set out in Section 3 of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Amendments 15 and 16 deal with the penalties, and again mirror those in the existing legislation. They allow for someone accused of the aggravated offence to be tried in a Crown Court with the increase in penalty that that implies. I beg to move.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I declare an interest as a dog owner and I regret not having taken part in these proceedings before. As a dog owner I welcome the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, to remove the words “aggressive or” from line 13, but he has left in the words “dangerously out of control”. Who decides what “dangerously out of control” is? For instance, if a dog were to bark at a stranger on, shall we say, a public footpath in the country, the dog might only be saying hello in the way that some dogs do. But the person who has been barked at, especially if they have young children with them on an enjoyable stroll in the countryside, might regard that as a dog being dangerously out of control. My question to the noble Lord is this: is that an offence in the eye of the receiver? How is it to be decided? This seems to me to be very important because there really is enormous scope for confusion on the issue.
Lord Redesdale
This is one of the major problems of legislating in this area. However, the Bill provides that an authorised person brings the control notice and would be the person to whom the offence would be reported. This would probably be an official of the local council or a police officer, and it would be someone with knowledge of the issues.
The issues surrounding the phrase “dangerously out of control” are quite important. If a dog is on the street without a lead, or if it is a certain breed of dog without a muzzle on, which you would expect, or if it snarls at a person, then those are circumstances in which the dog is dangerously out of control. Obviously there are circumstances for which the phrase would not be appropriate, such as when a dog is barking. Indeed, a later amendment clarifies that if a dog is being kept under control in a garden with secure fences and a warning has been given, if it then barks, that is normal for a dog and therefore would not be taken into account here. The problem is that in our inner cities, in many instances, fear is generated by people walking dogs over which they have little control and it can be shown that the dog is causing a problem. That has to be taken up with the authorised person who will have training for these circumstances, and a degree of common sense will need to be used.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord says about dogs in cities, on leads and all the rest. Is he therefore saying that a dog that merely barks at a stranger on a public footpath in the countryside would not fall foul of this Bill?
Lord Redesdale
Yes, my Lords. However, I shall cite an occasion when I was in my own woodland and someone was trespassing with three Alsatians, which surrounded me. The person, who had not been there until that moment, walked up and found it amusing that these dogs were growling at me in a stand-off position. I did not know who the dogs belonged to or what their intentions were. I would count that as a situation in which the dogs were dangerously out of control. Subsequently I found out that one of them had bitten a postman on the drive and really should not have been off the lead in the first place.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord and I accept his assurance that the example I have given is very different from the one that he gave and that my example will not be caught by the Bill.
Lord Redesdale
My Lords, I am certainly not arrogant enough to assume that I could dictate to the magistrates how they should look at the provision. They will do it on the evidence that is placed before them. However, the magistrates might take the opinion that a dog out of control on one occasion could be stopped from being out of control by being put on a lead. They would therefore go with the minor but effective measure of making sure that the person keeps the dog on a lead. If the person does not do that, it is a secondary issue and the situation will therefore become far more serious on a second offence. This was looked at particularly because of the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, raised when I brought the Bill forward the first time round. I hope that he will take comfort from the fact that it was his intervention that first time which caused many hours of dispute on this subject. That is why many of the amendments have been drafted in the way that they have.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, I do not want to prolong the proceedings, but the noble Lord has already admitted that a dog on a lead that is barking at someone at close quarters could be regarded as being aggressive.
Lord Redesdale
Yes, my Lords, but a dog on a lead is not dangerously out of control. A dog off a lead would be dangerously out of control but a dog on a lead is under control.