Animals (Penalty Notices) Bill

Ben Spencer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Ben Spencer (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the very powerful and amusing speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt). I will not be able to do anything near as good in the brief moments I will speak for in this debate.

I just want to start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) for bringing forward the Bill, which is very important. We are a nation of animal lovers. Those are not just words. We are not just talking the talk; we are walking the walk in terms of the legislation we have been bringing forward on animal welfare protections. The Bill forms a part of a whole suite of measures that we have been bringing in. I am also an animal lover. We have two cats at home, Ragnar and Frazzle, both of whom are rescue cats. I suspect that if Frazzle is watching today—I would be amazed if he is—he might have some concerns about the measures being proposed, because he is certainly not an animal lover when it comes to the amount of mice he brings home on a regular basis, so I hope there will be exclusions for cat violence in the legislation.

It is completely right that we have a range of approaches to enforcement and not the very binary approach pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Romford. A variety of different measures will help people to do the right thing and support for improved animal welfare will be absolutely superb.

I just want to finish by doing a big shout out to two organisations I have a huge amount of time for. First, the work of Cats Protection in supporting cats and re-homing rescue cats is absolutely brilliant. Secondly, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, rather confusingly given the name, also has a site in my constituency. I thank it for its work on supporting the welfare of animals.