Dog Fighting

Caroline Spelman Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Cameron]

I do, and I echo the hon. Gentleman’s sentiments. Dogs are man’s best friend, not property. I will be calling for tougher sentencing throughout the UK.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. No doubt she will comment on the fact that within the UK there is variability in the sentencing regimes. In fact, Northern Ireland has increased the sentence capacity to between two and five years, compared with six months in our own nation.

[Dr Cameron]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention. That is something of which Northern Ireland should be extremely proud. I hope to see similar progress in the rest of the UK.

I pay tribute to the many organisations involved in the field, including the League Against Cruel Sports, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Dogs Trust, Middlesex University, the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, and Marc the vet, to name but a few. Without their vital work, we would have little awareness of the existence of the hidden, heinous crime of dog fighting. They also work tirelessly for the protection and rehabilitation of dogs. I thank them for their work and for the recent reports bringing dog fighting to the mind of the public, including, crucially, our first national report on the state of dog fighting in the UK, from Project Bloodline, which was launched last year by the League Against Cruel Sports.

I also thank two of my constituents, Lisa Glasham and Paul Meecham, who are present today. They know the importance of the issue and of the debate. Lisa is never seen without her dog, although I understand she could not bring him in today.

Peter Egan, a vice-president of the League Against Cruel Sports, said:

“Dog fighting is a crime committed against our best friends, by humanity’s worst enemies, the criminals making money from indescribable cruelty. Where are we as a society if we allow our dogs to be abused in this way?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I am grateful to be able to speak in this debate, Sir Roger, and I know how important this debate is to you personally. I recently toured Birmingham dogs home—a newly created facility in my constituency—which had 90 dogs brought in on the day I went round. I was in pursuit of finding a new companion, having taken advice from the police, following the tragic events that befell one of our colleagues, that a dog might actually keep me safer, but I was appalled to see just how many of those animals are victims of this terrible crime of dog fighting and being used, essentially, as weapons. It is clear to me, as a former Secretary of State, that the measures that have been on the statute book for 175 years are not addressing the cultural change that we need to achieve in our society.

Successive Governments have done a number of things; the Animal Welfare Act 2006 was reformed in 2008, and when I was Secretary of State we reviewed it again in 2010. However, an undertaking was given in autumn last year that the Government would try to find a legislative opportunity to toughen the sentences for these kinds of offences, and we would very much like to hear from the Minister that such an opportunity will present in this parliamentary year, however eventful it may ultimately turn out to be.

I am also very conscious of another aspect of this and I commend it to colleagues: as part of the cultural change, there was a significant programme of re-educating offenders. As Secretary of State, I somehow found new money to give to police constabularies and to Battersea dogs home to try and change the minds of people who perpetrate this hideous crime. I say to colleagues that one visit to the RSPCA hospital in Harmsworth to see the appalling injuries that those fighting dogs suffer—those that survive the fights—would be education enough to turn any human being off the idea that man’s best friend should be used as a weapon in a fight.