Dangerous Dogs

Caroline Nokes Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I am immensely grateful to Mr Speaker for allowing this debate. We can see from the number of Members present in the Chamber what an important subject this is and how much concern it has caused.

I should declare an interest at the outset as the owner of two adorable cocker spaniels. However, although they are both quite mad, exhibiting all the natural exuberance of the breed, neither has an aggressive bone in its body, and they are dangerous only in their capacity to leap around.

The issue of dangerous dogs affects many rural and urban constituencies and has been raised with me on numerous occasions since last year’s general election. Experiences differ: in one constituency, I have been faced with complaints about dogs being used as weapons and with the problem of dogs exhibiting pack behaviour and attacking farm animals and domestic pets. I will never forget the day when I received in the post a package containing photographs of a Jack Russell terrier that had been ripped to shreds by a larger dog.

Legislation is outdated and ineffective in addressing a problem that evidence indicates is growing. The Dogs Act 1871 is still in force, but it was significantly updated by the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and the Dangerous Dogs (Amendment) Act 1997, which made owning certain types of dogs a criminal offence. Until then, to be responsible for a dangerous dog was only a civil offence. The 1991 Act was a legislative reaction to a series of high-profile attacks by pit bull terriers.

I am not saying that that legislation was wrong, but it has caused heartache for the owners of dogs that have done nothing wrong other than appearing to be of the wrong breed or type. It has certainly not prevented further tragedies—indeed, they have increased—and it has caused police forces and local authorities enormous sums in court cases and kennelling fees. It has been in desperate need of updating for a long time.

Why do I believe that now is an appropriate time to update the legislation? At long last, there is widespread agreement among different organisations about the way forward. Some 20 different bodies, including the National Dog Warden Association, the Police Federation, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Communication Workers Union and Battersea Dogs and Cats Home have now reached a level of agreement about what might be effective.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I agree that it is not the dogs but the owners who are dangerous in many respects, especially people with status dogs who train them to be vicious. Such dogs are known to be vicious, and postal workers and midwives go into homes where such dogs have been trained to be vicious and are attacked. We must do something about that.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which I will certainly address later. The crucial point is that in many cases it is the owners who are dangerous, not the dogs.

Any proposed solution must be practical and in the best interests of both dogs and their owners. Not only dog welfare organisations but professional bodies, trade unions and charities covering wide interest areas have all concluded that the current law on irresponsible dog ownership is simply inadequate. New legislation has been passed in both Scotland and Northern Ireland, and consistency across the whole United Kingdom would be helpful. Finally, in an era of austerity, the current legislation places an immense financial burden on hard-pressed bodies, such as local authorities, our police, national health and ambulance services and not to mention animal welfare organisations, which all too often end up picking up the pieces.

Under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, it is a criminal offence for a dog owner or the person in charge of a dog to allow it to be dangerously out of control in a public place. Such a dog is defined as one that has injured someone or that a person has reasonable grounds to believe might do so. The most contentious part of the 1991 Act is section 1, which details the breeds of dog that it is an offence to own or keep. Four types of dog are referred to specifically, including the notorious pit bull terrier, Japanese fighting dogs and Brazilian mastiffs.

The original intention of the 1991 Act was that due to the restraints and conditions placed on owners, such dogs would simply die out, having been destroyed or compulsorily neutered, and that they would all have been eradicated by now. However, that clearly has not been the case. Evidence suggests that their popularity, and hence their number, has risen. The number of bull terriers taken in by Battersea Dogs Home has increased dramatically. I mention Staffordshire bull terriers in particular for reasons that I hope will become clear. In 1996, 380 bull terrier types were received at Battersea. Last year, there were nearly 2,500. Many of those dogs were not pit bulls but Staffies. I appreciate fully the clear difference between a Staffordshire bull terrier and an American pit bull. The Staffie is well known as a bold and fearless dog, but it is also affectionate, particularly with children. By contrast, the pit bull is a breed created by interbreeding terriers and bulldogs specifically for illegal dog fights.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady on securing this debate. Does she agree that the trick is to get the balance right so that the law takes action on irresponsible owners of any breed of dog? We need to enact legislation in respect of those owners without penalising responsible dog owners who are prepared to look after their dogs, keep them on a leash and ensure that they do not get out of control.

[Caroline Nokes]

That is exactly the problem. It is all very well to ban a particular breed, but any dog can be dangerous, whatever the breed. We must consider behaviour and responsible ownership. I am the first to concede that getting that balance right will be difficult. I am sure that that is part of the reason why—

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. On that point, before we all rush to enact more legislation and regulation, in many cases the current legislation is not always enforced properly. Before we introduce another Act, we must ensure that local agencies, the police and so on enforce current legislation. In many cases, they do not.

[Caroline Nokes]

That is valid. My hon. Friend makes a good point. Enforcement is certainly not consistent. However, I am seeking consolidation of the legislation to make it easier to enforce consistently across the country.

As I was saying, the problem is that Staffordshire bull terriers and pit bulls share many visual characteristics. Naturally affectionate Staffies are either mistaken for pit bulls by the authorities, resulting in seizure, kennelling and lengthy legal battles to prove that they are not one of the banned breeds, or—which is much worse, in my view—are deliberately selected for their status dog appearance and then trained to be aggressive, or not trained at all. As all of us who are dog owners know, any pet requires a reasonable level of training and discipline to become a pleasant, well-behaved member of the family.

I contend that much behaviour is learned rather than inherent, and that wrong handling or deliberate training to provoke aggression can turn any dog into a potential problem. The rise of so-called status dogs, which are often linked to antisocial behaviour, cannot necessarily be addressed by breed-specific legislation. The real cause of the problem is the owner’s actions rather than the breed of dog.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on obtaining this important debate. I pay tribute to Banbridge high school in my constituency, which has taken a great interest in the matter and made it into a project. She has mentioned Northern Ireland. One blight on Northern Ireland is illegal dog fights for gambling and so on. Does she agree that if illegal dog fights are found to be occurring—we need the general public to provide information about them—the full rigour of the law must be brought to bear on the people who hold such fights? Those people train dogs to be vicious, while people who look after their pets properly are penalised.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the problem of illegal dog fighting. He is correct to say there has been a rise in such cases not only in Northern Ireland, but here in the capital, London, in particular. He is right that the full rigour of the law must be brought to bear.

One problem is that, while some dogs may have certain characteristics, it does not mean that they are fighting or status dogs, either by temperament or by upbringing. There is a fundamental problem with the assumption that one breed or type is dangerous and others are not. That misses the point that it is owners, not dogs, who pose the risk, and that a dog’s behaviour will be largely dependent on its upbringing, socialisation and home environment. Ultimately, the law should be targeted at individuals taking responsibility for their dogs, not at dogs for simply being dogs.

There is, however, a significant problem with aggressive and out-of-control dogs. I emphasise that much of the problem stems from irresponsible ownership, but we cannot get away from the fact that eight people have been killed in dog attacks in the past four years. According to the Communication Workers Union, 6,000 postal workers are attacked by dogs every single year. Attacks on farm animals cost in the region of £2.8 million a year, and there have been 74 reported attacks on horses in the past three years. Other dogs are certainly not immune. According to the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, there are three attacks a month on guide dogs.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this incredibly popular debate. I have a constituent whose guide dog was attacked by another dog and, when the guide dog was retired, my constituent was refused a replacement on the grounds that there were too many dangerous dogs in the area. Does the hon. Lady agree that we should ask the Government to look at that specific issue?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady makes a valid point. Guide dogs are not simply pets or companions, because they enable the visually impaired to lead a normal life. It is critical that we look at that problem. It is unacceptable that a blind person should be penalised simply because there is a type of aggressive and unpleasant dog in the surrounding area. Statistics for the number of attacks on family pets in public places are not available, because those attacks are too numerous.

I represent a small corner of New Forest national park, which is extremely popular with dog walkers, and I am conscious from both my own experience and the comments of local residents that not all owners who utilise the area to walk their pets have their dogs adequately under control. I am not suggesting that Wellow common is rife with dog attacks—it is not—but incidents involving out-of-control, aggressive dogs do occur, and for every person or other dog involved, it is not only terrifying, but dangerous.

There is also a significant cost, both to individuals and to the public purse, as a consequence of the rising incidence of dog attacks. Every single strategic health authority has experienced an increase in accident and emergency admissions due to dog bites. It is hard to estimate the financial cost accurately, but attempts to do so indicate that, over the past few years, it has been more than £2.5 million a year. In Hampshire, the local police have experienced a clear rise in the number of incidents involving dangerous dogs, and there is increasing anecdotal evidence of status dogs being used in the county instead of firearms or knives. Among the criminally inclined, there is a growing awareness that the potential punishments for having a dangerous dog are far lower than for other weapons.

Tackling the issue is expensive for my local police force. Last year, it spent about £30,000 on kennelling fees, but that is tiny in comparison with the Metropolitan police, which spends £9,000 a day and has budgeted for £10 million to be available for the seizure and kennelling of dogs over the next three years. For every dog seized, there is a human cost. As owners struggle to prove that their family pet is innocent of any crime, families are deprived of its companionship, and the poor animal itself is deprived of its liberty and the chance to have a normal existence. The great irony is that the stress placed on a kennelled dog makes that pet more likely to develop behavioural issues.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

This is an important debate. Perhaps the Minister will address this later, but does the hon. Lady have any information about the tests that are available nowadays which show the DNA of a dog’s parents and their breed types in a matter of minutes? We can use technology to accelerate decisions and make sure that dogs that should not be kept in kennels are released back to their families.

[Caroline Nokes]

My hon. Friend is right. DNA testing to determine the type of dog is much easier now than it was when the legislation was introduced. It is interesting that, in the past week, the Government have acknowledged the dreadful stress placed on dogs in quarantine and have announced a relaxation of those time limits, yet some dogs whose breed type is under question end up kennelled for several years.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

In our previous jobs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and I were members of the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Northern Ireland Assembly and were involved in legislative change in relation to dangerous dogs in Northern Ireland. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would be helpful for the Minister and his Department to make direct contact with the Northern Ireland Assembly in order to gauge the lessons that we learned about important legislative changes?

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Progress towards legislative change has been made not only in Northern Ireland, but in Scotland. Such progress has, sadly, been lacking here.

Any legislation must be evidence based, proportionate and, importantly, best debated and drafted away from the perfectly understandable reaction that is always to the fore when there has been a dreadful attack. I do not seek to undermine the importance of and need for legislation to protect the public from dogs that are a danger, that have been trained and encouraged to be aggressive, and that, in increasing instances, are used as a weapon. That is why I welcome several of the components of Lord Redesdale’s Dog Control Bill, which was introduced in the other place and is currently on Third Reading. It aims to consolidate existing legislation, give greater flexibility and discretion to enforcers and the courts, include a genuine preventive effect, improve public safety and animal welfare and reduce the costs of enforcement.

At present, enforcers have to wait for an incident to occur before they can step in and deal with the animal. As we have heard, there is a lack of consistent enforcement, but if police have a dog of a banned type drawn to their attention, they must act, whether that dog has done anything aggressive or not.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I have agreed entirely with every word my hon. Friend has said until now, but she seems to have slipped back from her argument of a moment ago that it is the deed, not the breed, that matters. She now seems to be saying that it is the breed that matters and that, if the police are aware of a particular breed and that there is DNA evidence or a microchip to prove it, they should step in prior to an incident. Surely the process should be incident-driven, not breed-driven.

[Caroline Nokes]

With respect to my hon. Friend, that is my exact point. Under the current legislation, if a banned type or breed is drawn to the police’s attention, the police must act, regardless of its behaviour. There is currently no provision for an owner to be able to apply to a court for a seized dog to be returned, and the 1991 Act predicts a dog’s behaviour based on its physical conformation, which, I would contend, is simply wrong.

Indeed, to drift off into the anecdotal, the dog that made me run in the opposite direction fastest during last year’s general election campaign was a golden retriever. That breed is never going to appear on a list of dangerous dogs, but the one that I encountered seemed rather enamoured by the prospect of chewing my leg off. We need to establish in law the principle that it is the deed, not the breed, that determines whether a dog is dangerous or not. That view is widely held, even at the very highest levels of Government.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has indicated, I used to chair the Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which is a grand place. Whenever we dealt with the issue of legislation, the key point was that it was backed up by adequate resources, so that the police or whoever was responsible for enforcement—it could be another agency, such as a local authority—would be able to enforce it. The most important issue was that the local authority was adequately resourced by central Government. Whatever legislative change the hon. Lady goes for, I urge her to insist that the necessary resources be made available to allow it to take proper effect.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution and hope that the Minister will comment on it later.

I would appreciate the Minister’s comments on the range of possible measures to tackle the problem. The possible solutions include dog control notices, compulsory microchipping, muzzling in public places and, importantly, training for owners. Rather than generalising a type or a breed, those are practical suggestions that directly address the specific behaviour and the ways to ameliorate it.

Failure to comply with a dog control notice could lead to the responsible person becoming liable to a fine and potentially being disqualified from owning or keeping a dog for a prescribed period. This issue has been the subject of numerous written and oral questions, consultation and reviews of existing legislation. The issue is not confined to cities, but I highlight the work of the deputy Mayor of London, the Metropolitan police and many hon. and right hon. Members who represent constituencies in the capital, where there are certainly greater issues than in other parts of the country. Yet still we have unsatisfactory legislation that does not address the rise of the so-called status dog, which has impacted on the police and on their ability to carry out their role. The legislation desperately needs updating.

I urge the Minister to publish the Government’s response to the consultation on dangerous dogs, for which we have been waiting a considerable time. Will he also indicate whether he supports the measures in Lord Redesdale’s Bill, and whether he will consider introducing compulsory microchipping? I am the first to acknowledge that that is a measure of traceability rather than prevention, but it was simply not an option in 1991 when the Dangerous Dogs Act was introduced. Microchipping was first introduced in the UK in about 2000. The procedure is now commonplace and can be carried out by not only vets but registered practitioners, which has brought down the cost. I appreciate that microchipping will inevitably be most prevalent among the law-abiding majority, but it will indelibly link dog to owner and provide an important step forward.

Obviously there will need to be a register that is updated at every change of ownership, but dogs do not change hands that often. The vast majority of owners have dogs for life and, although I understand concerns that a register will be another imposition on responsible citizens, it will also be a way to steadily move towards a situation in which owners are accountable and dogs behaving in an antisocial way are identifiable. If there is no excuse for mistaken identity, enforcement officers will be able to judge the deed not the breed.

[Mr Gray]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend up to now. However, does she not remember the days when we had dog licences? They did not work. The bad guys did not have them; only the good guys had them. Surely what she is proposing is a bureaucratic, interventionist, centralised solution to the issue. If we want to deal with the problem of people who have criminal intent and behave badly, licensing dogs will not achieve that.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, but I disagree with him. This is not about licensing; this is about being able to scientifically identify a dog that has perpetrated some sort of unpleasant deed. Many other types of animals are microchipped and are identifiable from birth. We could easily have registers that trace any transfer of ownership. As I have said and as the Dogs Trust has taught us, a dog is for life, not just for Christmas. They rarely change hands, and we simply need to move to a situation whereby we can identify who is responsible for which dog.

As I said at the outset, we are 20 years on from the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Police forces, animal welfare organisations, vets and nurses all believe that that legislation failed to solve the problem. It is high time that that failure was addressed.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—