Dangerous Dogs Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Angela Smith
Main Page: Angela Smith (Liberal Democrat - Penistone and Stocksbridge)Department Debates - View all Angela Smith's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Albert Owen (in the Chair)
Order. Two Members are indicating that they want to speak. I will call the Minister at 11.20 am, so they can share the four minutes between them. They can do the maths.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Just briefly, I support and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) on his call for the consolidation of existing laws into a new statute. I will not repeat everything that he has said and instead make two further points.
First, I found out today from a written parliamentary question that 892 people were admitted to hospital last year in Yorkshire and the Humber alone as a result of dog attacks. If we can establish the average cost for those admissions as opposed to accident and emergency attendances, I am sure we will find that, overall, there is a significant multi-million pound cost in England to the Exchequer. That underlines the argument that I have always made, which is that the improvement of existing legislation and an addition to available resources, particularly to local authorities to enable them to enforce legislation and engage in education and prevention activities with dog owners, will be an investment that will actually result in a reduction in public spending. At the moment, we spend a great deal of money on treating people who have suffered in the way mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West.
The consultation finished in June 2010. It is now October 2011. The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice) pointed out in July in this Chamber that action must be taken, yet we still have no response from the Department. We must have an answer to the consultation soon. I hope that the Minister will today give us a date for a response to the consultation.