Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill

Caroline Ansell Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 23rd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). I echo the point that he made about the value that animals have on the wellbeing and the learning of children. In his constituency, in mine and across the country, animals play a hugely significant role in learning and development. In that light, I mention West Rise Junior School in my constituency, which, perhaps unusually, has a farm where children can learn about the lifecycle and welfare of animals. Perhaps more unusually, it also has, to its credit, a small herd of water buffalo that grazes the marshland and that inspires the children’s artwork, poetry and creative writing. Right across the curriculum, the herd’s presence and inspiration is felt.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) for bringing this Bill forward today. It is hugely important. He is absolutely right when he says that it means a great deal to very many people. My last email before I rose this morning came in at one minute past midnight and urged us to make this change.

The change would promote our ambition and aspiration to be a world leader in the care and protection of animals. My hon. Friend’s story about Poppy was distressing, then infinitely heart-warming. He is right when he calls on us to recognise our legal and moral responsibility, and this Bill will send a powerful message. I was pleased, too, that he signposted pet theft, animal slaughter and animal sentience, which are all hugely important.

I will pick up on two points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), one lighter and one darker. I echo the concern about the link between the abuse of animals and the later and longer abuse of people. The link is well established, so it is critical to take action on that front.

Perhaps as a point of information—I congratulate my hon. Friend on his success in Westminster dog of the year—I would like to raise in the name of cats everywhere whether there could not be an equal and opposite competition, or whether it was by dint of their aloof and disobliging nature that there was no such show. I have not always, I confess, been a cat lover.

[Neil Parish]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Caroline Ansell]

I better had. I think I am in trouble.

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for giving way. I will pass on her good regards to Cats Protection. I suspect we will be able to have a Westminster cat of the year. We will work on that.

[Caroline Ansell]

I thank my hon. Friend.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Lady has made some strong points. There of course is a cats competition ongoing at the moment, which Mr Speaker’s own cat is in, as is my cat, Charlotte, who is a rescue cat. On a serious note, she suffered significant abuse in the first few months of her life. I rescued her. She was extremely timid and extremely difficult and I have worked with her over the last few years to get her to a much better place. I really want to commend all the cats organisations, including Wood Green, Cats Protection, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, which is running the cat of the year competition, and many others.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Chair shows no partiality whatever, but the Speaker’s cat is a very fine cat.

[Caroline Ansell]

I will give way to the Minister.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

I, too, am very fond of the Purr Minister competition, which is run by Battersea, which I had the privilege of visiting several years ago, when Midnight, who I certainly do not own, but do have the privilege of looking after, was elected as Purr Minister. The competition is very fierce, and I know there are several cats available this year, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Caroline Ansell]

In this fast-moving situation, I am pleased that this seeming injustice and omission has been so roundly satisfied, and I wish the very best to Members’ cats everywhere and give a huge apology to my own for failing to put them forward.

I confess I have not always been a cat lover. In fact, quite the opposite. In times past they would seek me out, smelling the fear, but all that changed with one tiny rescue kitten from Cats Protection. It all started in a surgery recovery room not far from here, when my little boy, who was then five—he may not thank me for telling the story, but he did say it would be okay—had just come through brain surgery and was coming round. I sat by his bedside and he looked to all intents and purposes like a little marionette. He had leads and cannulas coming from every part and a brain drain. He could have asked me for anything and I would have moved the world for him. He asked for a little black boy kitten. Thus began my story. I duly took him to Cats Protection in Hailsham in the next-door constituency, where a little girl tortoiseshell kitten chose us, only for us to find that she came with a sister, and both came home.

I tell that story because every day that followed, this little kitten, just like Nana from “Peter Pan”, would pad up the stairs after my little boy, curl into a ball at the bottom of his bed, wait until he had fallen asleep and then pad back down. When people say animals are sentient, absolutely they are, but they are more than that. This little kitten, faithful and true, tirelessly devoted, hugely loyal to my boy and very protective, helped him to recover. My cat story changed.

It is not just in health terms that animals enrich our lives, but they do. Whether they are seizure alert dogs, whether they simply reduce stress, anxiety and depression, whether they provide people with a connection to their community and the natural world, or whether around security and safety, animals enrich our lives. Today’s Bill is an opportunity for us to recognise all of that and to step into that legal and moral responsibility, which my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset so eloquently described, to show how we care.