Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill (Second sitting)

Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

Q I have a question about the list of exempted dogs in clause 39(2)(b). Do you have a view on whether that list of dogs might be too broad given that it includes

“a working gun dog or a pack of hounds”,

and given their use in the countryside? Rob or Minette?

Minette Batters: I am simply not close enough to the detail. I think it would be an extraordinary situation for a pack of hounds that are hunting by trail anyway to end up in this position, so I cannot see either scenario happening in my opinion.

Rob Taylor: I think that was previously included in the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) Act 1953, and it was just left in as it stands. I agree with Minette. I do not think it is contentious and it is quite limited if it were to occur. That is the reason it is in there.

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

Q Welcome, everyone. Following on, the working gun dog definition might be interesting to look at because we have working gun dogs, but they do not work—although they might go on the checkout in Asda occasionally on a Saturday morning. I wonder whether we need to look at that definition, because if somebody is walking their dog, it goes after a sheep, and the dog happens to be one of those breeds but not a working dog, there is a grey area there. Do you have an opinion on that?

Rob Taylor: I think the word “working” means actually in the process of working, for example, retrieving a pheasant.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Q They do that even if they are not supposed to. This morning, the Dogs Trust said the majority of livestock worrying is from dogs that have escaped from a garden. We are talking a lot about on lead/off lead. That is very important, and we must get it right. In your experience, are you seeing that the vast majority of attacks come from dogs that have escaped from properties? Minette, is that what your members are seeing as well?

Rob Taylor: We did a survey of the five police forces, as I said, between 2013 and 2017. We recorded the best stats we could. Luckily, North Wales had incredibly good stats because we would voluntarily record them every 24 hours, so we were very accurate. In North Wales, in excess of 70% of attacks were where the owner was not present, so that is a big one. The other four forces were Devon and Cornwall, North Yorkshire, Hertfordshire and Sussex. They came in with figures that were slightly less than that.

My frustration over the year is that everybody comes out with dogs on leads campaigns, whether it is a local council, the RSPCA or farming unions, whereas most of the time the problem is not that the owner is not present, but that the dog may have escaped, gone off or is some distance from the owner.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Q Thank you. Minette, is that what you are hearing from your members as well?

Minette Batters: I think the evidence speaks for itself. As Rob has just said, in 70% of attacks nobody was present, but ultimately the dog has not been constrained within the garden or on a lead. The bulk of these attacks happen with dogs out on their own with nobody in the vicinity at all.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Q There is a slight grey area because it is either that an animal has escaped from a property where the owner probably does not even know it has gone, or someone is walking in the countryside, the dog bolts and they have not got it under control. Those are two very different scenarios.

Rob Taylor: There is also a third one. I have been to many livestock attacks in my years; I was a warranted Sergeant until 2016, when I retired and became a manager as a civilian, so I have been to these attacks with my team myself. The third scenario is that the dog jumps out when the car boot is opened. That is quite a common one; we see that a lot, or people just take their dog out for a walk and think it would never do it. A common thing that people say to us is, “My dog would never attack,” and lo and behold it has just killed three sheep. Those are the common ones. I would like to think it lessened when more people were home due to lockdown, and I would be interested to see those statistics.

However, as we know, more people at home bought more dogs, so that emphasises the problem itself. The main problem would be that somebody would buy a dog. Predominantly, about four years ago, everybody went husky-crazy and bought huskies. I am not sure if it was from a TV programme that featured huskies as quite a part of it, but something like 70% to 80% of the attacks we had that year were huskies. People just went crazy for huskies, and of course, after they stopped being puppies, they left them in their insecure gardens and went to work. Quite commonly, we would have an attack, go around to the house, and the owner would not even know the attack had happened until we followed a trail of blood to their back door and saw that the dog had blood on its fur.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Q That is an interesting point. A few years ago it was huskies; what seems to be the dominant breed at the moment? Is there a dominant breed?

Rob Taylor: There is a real mix. I started looking at full moons and all sorts, because I really thought there was some theory in it. I believe it was similar when Harry Potter was very pro on the TV and in films, and everybody was buying barn owls. I will not name the programme, but there was a similar thing with a very famous programme, which I think has finished now, and people started buying huskies left, right and centre, and that was the problem. Those who know dogs know that huskies are a very difficult breed to keep because they can run all day, sleep for one hour, and eat some blubber on ice. Having them in a garden backing on to a field full of sheep is probably the worst-case scenario.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

They are all coming in! Let us start with Cherilyn Mackrory.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Q We heard evidence this morning about the most recent Scottish animal welfare Act—I do not know which one it was. There was criticism of it; I think the RSPCA said that it was not helpful as some of the language was ambiguous. Could you comment on that? Have you seen the same? Are there any examples that you feel we could learn from, to avoid falling into the same traps?

Mike Flynn: I think what David Bowles of the RSPCA was referring to was in the protection of livestock and dogs attacking and worrying sheep, the definition of on the lead or under close control. We argued at the time that if a dog is not on a lead in an area where there is livestock, it is not under close control. Your Bill states they must be on a lead less than 1.9 metres long. I have been in this job for 34 years, and I have never known an occasion when a dog has attacked a sheep when on a lead, because you have physical control. Some say a dog always comes back and if they whistle it will do that, but that is not the case. Some dogs will just run blind. They may have walked past the same sheep day after day for years, and then one day it could just go. The devastation is horrendous for the farmers and the animals involved.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Thank you. I think we have answered the “lead or no lead” question.

[James Daly]

Q In Scottish law, is there an offence similar to what we are talking about where a dog attacks or worries livestock?

Mike Flynn: Yes. It was in the original 1953 Act. The Member’s Bill that Emma Harper put through last year updated it to include a wider definition of livestock—ostriches, llamas and all that kind of stuff—and to increase the penalties up to 12 months’ imprisonment and a £40,000 fine.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Daly]

Thank you, Dr Wright; that is very helpful indeed.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Q Thank you, Dr Wright. Nice to see you. I just want to play devil’s advocate on a quick question. We have heard a lot about animals that escape and they tend to carry out the vast majority of the attacks. Is there any leverage—again, this is me definitely playing devil’s advocate—in farmers and landowners constantly updating the signage on their gates and fences? If you live in the same area and there is always a livestock grazing sign on the same field and you know that three quarters of the year there is not anything in there at all, people become complacent about walking their dogs and will let them off, not necessarily knowing that the livestock might be over the brow of the hill. Would your members be open to doing something like that if you think it might help? Is that something you think we should be writing into the Bill, or that just gets out because it is good practice?

Dr Wright: It is interesting, because we provide signs for members but we have been constrained by what we can and cannot say legally, because we cannot say that dogs must be kept on a lead near livestock. What we say is, “Please keep your dog on a lead” near livestock at the moment. I am hoping, with the Bill, assuming that I get the change that I would like to see, which is that they must be on a lead and not just with this arbitrary “proper control” definition, that members can put more enforcing signs up that are a bit more important than the ones they put up before. When a dog walker sees a sign that says, “Please keep your dog on a lead”, it is quite gentle, is it not? If the sign says, “It is a legal requirement for your dog to be on a lead in this field”, it is a different conversation. I would like a farmer to be able to do that. Without the Bill allowing them to do that, you put them in a position where they are still having to just be polite, and I would like them to be backed up by legislation to do that.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

Q So you think your members would do that? The reason I ask is that if somebody sees a sign that says there is a bull in the field, they will avoid that field because they know they could potentially get hurt, but at the moment, the same conversation is not being had about the animal being hurt or an animal getting into trouble for hurting another animal. We need to change the conversation slightly and I think that is potentially something we could cover in this Bill—maybe. However, it is no good if landowners and farmers are not receptive to keeping the signage updated and changing it as and when it is necessary—and taking it down when there are no livestock in the field.

Dr Wright: That is a really important point and I am 100% certain that members are receptive to that. It is just that they have felt at the moment that they have not had the power to say the things they have wanted to say. Of course, members who have approached members of the public in a field with a dog off a lead have sometimes been victims of verbal abuse, and many of my members have said they are just not prepared to engage with dog walkers under those circumstances, because they have not been able to say, “You must do this.” I feel that is what we have been missing before.

[Cherilyn Mackrory]

That is great. Thanks so much.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, on behalf of us all, I thank Dr Hazel Wright, senior policy officer at the Farmers Union of Wales.