Business of the House

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I remind the hon. Lady that Ministers from the Department for Work and Pensions will be responding to questions on Monday. However, I am afraid that I do not agree with her description of what is happening with personal independence payments. It is tremendously important for us to move to a much better system of assessment—disability living allowance was never reviewed or properly assessed. Modest numbers are going through at the moment, but the plan is for large numbers of those requiring to be assessed to be assessed by 2018. In particular, one must bear in mind that those awaiting assessment are generally in receipt of support, including through the continuation of DLA or the employment and support allowance.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Around 3,000 horses are currently on land without consent in England and Wales, and there is still no low-cost legal remedy for landowners to address the problem. Can we have a debate on whether fly-grazing should be made a criminal offence, so that action can be taken swiftly and offenders brought to justice? In addition, we can draw on the experience of the Welsh Assembly, which has enacted the Control of Horses (Wales) Act 2014, which provides all Welsh local authorities with powers to seize and impound horses.

[Mr Lansley]

From my own constituency, I know of precisely the kind of circumstances to which my hon. Friend refers, which can be very distressing to a local community. We do not believe it is necessarily a solution to give local authorities powers to remove horses and kill them at public expense. We need to tackle the perpetrators directly. We need a co-ordinated and co-operative approach, using the available legislation. There is some legislation that was previously available, but there are also new measures to tackle antisocial behaviour that will soon become available, following the legislation passed in the last Session. I hope that will enable us to act more effectively in relation to those responsible for fly-grazing.