Harvey’s Law

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Derek Twigg]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, and I think everybody would agree with it.

Let me return to Harvey’s case. By chance, an employee of the contractor used by the Highways Agency saw one of the fliers that had been distributed about Harvey. She contacted the owners via a message on Facebook and said that she had collected Harvey’s body on the M62. It was only by chance that the owners were given that information.

In 2010, the Highways Agency took the decision to withdraw the routine scanning of domestic pets from highways so that their owner could be identified and notified. Area management memo 67/05, which is being phased out—this is what we have been talking about—states that highways contractors are supposed to scan a domestic pet for a chip, check for other details and contact the owner if possible. They should complete a log with all the details and notify the relevant authorities. The animal should also be kept in cold storage for a period of seven days or until the freezer is emptied, whichever comes first.

There is an odd situation, therefore, in that the Highways Agency is changing that practice, whereas the Government—rightly so—are implementing a policy of compulsory microchipping for dogs from April 2016. One Department is rightly ensuring that there is a legal requirement to have a dog microchipped, whereas the Department for Transport is taking a different view that does not really sit with that policy. It is quite bizarre.

As we have heard in various interventions and seen in the information that we have all received, the death of a pet is traumatic and deeply upsetting for an owner in any case, but when an owner does not know its fate—when the pet has gone missing—the situation is made much worse by not knowing whether their pet is alive or dead. They spend time looking, which, as we have heard from case studies today, can turn out to be wasted. That is obviously very costly, and it also makes the situation all the more unbearable for the families and owners concerned.

Hundreds of pets—probably thousands—are killed on our roads each year. Apparently, the figure is more than 300 for Highways Agency-managed roads, although I think that is an underestimate. As a result of my discussion with Pauline Krause, I wrote to the Minister to raise concerns about the Highways Agency’s stance on notifying owners about the change in policy. The Minister wrote back, saying:

“The Agency is currently phasing out contracts which include the Area Management Memo 67/05 to which your constituent Ms Krause refers. More recent contracts no longer mandate Agency contractors to scan or record pet identification details, or to contact the owners and the pet identification organisations. I know this current position will be hugely disappointing for all those involved with Harvey’s Law e-petition.

Increased investment in the Strategic Road Network brings the opportunity to focus more on the service we deliver for our customers. This could include a review of our current policy around this issue so potentially there may be an opportunity to change contractual arrangements in the future.”

I will come back to this point, but I hope that the Minister will change those arrangements now. When he talks about “delivering for our customers”, I think pet owners can be put in that category.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very powerful case. Does he not agree that it seems contradictory for the Government to be mandating that pets should be microchipped—something that I very much support—but also instructing the Highways Agency that it is no longer a requirement for its contractors to notify the responsible authorities? If the Highways Agency does not have the scanners needed, it is easy to contact the local authority’s local dog warden service, which almost certainly will.

[Derek Twigg]

Again, I cannot disagree, but as I will come on to point out, the Highways Agency does actually have a lot of equipment. However, my hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I know that he takes a particular interest in this issue.

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[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on securing this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that time was found to debate this important issue. From talking to him in our usual place on the back row of the Opposition Benches—the noisy row—I knew that he intended to apply for a debate on Harvey’s law, and I was delighted when he told me that his request had been successful. He is not a pet owner, but he set out the case for Harvey’s law with real understanding. I am grateful for the considered way in which he put to the Minister the case for a change of heart.

The strength of feeling on this issue is clear from the sheer tide of people who signed the e-petition and the many people who contacted right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. Today’s contributions make it clear that there is great cross-party consensus on this issue. Many of my colleagues back the measure, and many Government Members back it, too.

Harvey’s law means a lot to all of us, and to our constituents. I will expand on that point shortly, but I will first declare an interest, albeit in a rather more benign way than many hon. Members did in the recent debate on second jobs. My wife, Allison, is a regular volunteer at the new Dogs Trust rehoming centre for Greater Manchester, which is in Denton in my constituency. The centre has been open for some four months, and I congratulate the Dogs Trust, its dedicated staff and volunteers on making such a success of it. Remarkably, the centre rehomed its 100th dog within a month of opening. The centre received 3,500 visitors in the same time frame, which shows that we cannot stand between Mancunians and their dogs, and I should know because I am a keen animal lover and pet owner. I currently have one Chihuahua, two cats—we had three, and I will come on to that shortly—and several chickens, but I blame my wife for those; they have completely trashed my back garden.

I am not a newcomer to the sorts of issues we are debating today, and I am therefore fully aware that the onus is not simply on those who look after motorways and roads. We dog owners must ensure that our animals are chipped and that the details on the database are up to date, which is not difficult. The Dogs Trust offers to update the database as a free service, by appointment, at all its rehoming centres, including the one in Denton. Across the UK, the trust chipped a remarkable 270,000 dogs in 2014 alone, which demonstrates that dog owners are doing their bit. We are upholding our side of the bargain, so we are now well within our rights to demand that local authorities and the Highways Agency does its bit when animals are killed on the nation’s roads.

Scanning microchips does not take a lot of time or effort, so for the sake of the peace of mind of worried dog owners, or owners of any other animals, particularly cats, which are also at risk on the roads, it is difficult to see how any reasonable opposition to Harvey’s law could be invented. Indeed, as we have heard in many contributions, it would be a little contradictory for the Government to force all dog owners to microchip their animals but not to introduce all reasonable measures to derive benefits directly from such a vast microchipping campaign. The only possible reason not to introduce the measure, as far as I can see, would be the cost to local authorities and the Highways Agency. Personally, I can think of few better uses for the fines that are to be levied on dog owners who do not microchip their dogs—I think the fine will be £500 a pop—so it should not be too long before the Highways Agency is able to buy a few scanners, if it needs them. My hon. Friend the Member for Halton said that the Highways Agency already has the scanners, which suggests that purchasing further scanners should not be necessary.

I have seen the freedom of information request from the Harvey’s law campaign, which suggests that each area covered by the Highways Agency, as my hon. Friend said, already has the necessary scanners, so the marginal capital costs would be negligible. Even if that were a problem, as we have already discussed, why not have a joined-up, cross-Government, cross-local government resolution? All local authority dog warden services have the scanners, so it is within the wit of the good folk at the Highways Agency, when an animal is found, to ask the relevant local authority to scan on their behalf if they do not have the technology. That point is particularly stark when we consider that until a few years ago, as we have heard, the Highways Agency had to scan all deceased pets found on the nation’s strategic highway network.

On the other side of the issue, we should consider the many wasted thousands of pounds and hundreds of hours that owners can put into searching for missing pets, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) said so eloquently. The emotional and pecuniary cost of a missing pet can be huge.

At the start of my contribution, I mentioned that until recently, I had three cats, not two. Last year we lost a cat to the road. Delilah was a lovely, friendly, gorgeous animal. She was a bit like a shadow: wherever we were, she was not far behind. Sadly, a car clipped her on a local road. It was heartbreaking. She was missing for 24 hours. It happened on a Thursday, and my wife was distraught when I got home after the long train journey from Westminster. I sat up all night, and every time the cat flap went, I hoped it was Delilah, but it was the other two cats; Delilah was, unfortunately, dead.

Pets are part of a family. My children were distraught, my wife was distraught and, to be honest, I was distraught, which is why I stayed up all night in the hope that she would come home. We were reunited with our pet only thanks to a local resident who picked up Delilah, put her in a box and called the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which did a microchip test and contacted us to say that Delilah’s carcase was just around the corner from where we lived. That is important for closure, if nothing else. The same is true of the cases that my hon. Friend the Member for Halton described, which were tragic, particularly the one involving a dog that was stripped of its fur and used for all kinds of things that do not bear thinking about in relation to a missing pet.

It is still the responsibility of the Highways Agency to remove such animals from the nation’s roads. That, not the scanning, is the major cost incurred. We could save a lot of heartache for hundreds of families, arguably at negligible cost, if any cost, to the public purse. One avoidable cost that I do not think has been mentioned is that of removing from street furniture the posters alerting the local community to a missing pet. I do not condone fly-posting, but in that situation I can understand why many of my constituents, and no doubt many constituents of right hon. and hon. Members here, do it. However, it costs local authorities to remove those posters from lamp posts and trees.

Ministers have failed to manage the Highways Agency on this issue with any real effectiveness. I do not speak from a position of neutrality; I have had my fair share of local run-ins with the Highways Agency as Member of Parliament for Denton and Reddish, not least over its complete failure to keep the central reservations, hard shoulders and embankments of the M60 and M67 motorways free from litter. I perpetually table questions to the Minister on that issue. Sometimes the Highways Agency stretches my patience, and this is one area in which it could do better and should be expected to do so. I am perfectly happy to give credit where the Highways Agency deserves it. If it reintroduces routine scanning of every dog, I am prepared to stand up in the House of Commons and thank the Highways Agency for it, but the fact that it is even considering removing a fairly simple obligation is scandalous.

I note the consequences of the fire at Manchester dogs home, which is about 6 miles away from my constituency. The fire resulted in the death of more than 60 animals, one fifth of the number of dogs killed on our roads each year. Those dogs had no owners, but a campaign to rebuild the centre raised a remarkable £1.5 million through an online page. A cynic need only read some of the comments that people left with their donations to see the strength of feeling there. I would go so far as to say that the relationship between Brits and their dogs is almost unique in the world. That is no bad thing at all.

I am proud to be one of those dog owners, as well as a cat owner. I note that the Minister, a pet owner and the Minister responsible for the Highways Agency, has said that he would like the agency to start scanning again. Let us have some Government support for Harvey’s law. It is plain common sense. I urge him to go back to his Department and bash heads together at the Highways Agency. Let us get this done once and for all.

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[Mr Hayes]

I have said that the process will begin straight away, but it is helpful that the hon. Gentleman posed that question, because I am more than happy, following this debate, to write to all the Members who have contributed—I should perhaps put a copy of the letter in the Library of the House—setting out a timetable for the implementation of the commitment I have made today. That would be a fair and reasonable thing to do in response to the debate, to assure those who have been waging this campaign of the absolute certainty of the commitments I have offered. Notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman’s integrity, of which I have no doubt, it is important that I do that before the general election, because I am currently the Minister responsible for this area, and elections are funny old things. We will ensure that the measure is set in stone.

The even better news for those of us who are cat owners is that I want to ensure that where cats are involved in accidents, owners can be confident that we will endeavour to ensure that they are identified. Cats often have means of identification, so where a cat can reasonably be identified, its owner should be contacted in the same way. That is made more complicated—I do not want to be insensitive—by the fact that cats sometimes suffer in high-speed accidents the kind of injury that makes it difficult to identify them, but that will not stop us. We will use every possible endeavour and every practical means to identify cat owners.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Having lost one to the road, I thank the Minister for extending the commitment beyond dogs to cats. Will he recognise that although it is not compulsory—nor will it be compulsory—many responsible cat owners microchip their pets?

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, that is true, and it should make the commitment I have given easier to deliver. We will ensure that facilities are in place across the country to scan animals that are unhappily in the circumstances I have set out.

The Government take this matter extremely seriously. As soon as I heard about the case, I realised that the circumstance in which Harvey died was just not acceptable, for the reasons I gave at the outset. If we are made more human by the love of a pet, we need to understand that when a pet is lost and its fate is uncertain—my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) made this point wonderfully—that eats at the hearts of all those involved. To paraphrase Dickens, what greater gift can there be than the love of a cat or dog?