Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill (First sitting)

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Tuesday 9th November 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Victoria Prentis]

Q Are there differences of opinion within the Dogs Trust on the lead issue?

Paula Boyden: Not within a specific enclosure. Obviously, we have things like common land, and that is a different element; that is where we do have to rely on dog owners to be vigilant and to ensure, as best they can, that there are no livestock there before they let their dog off the lead. However, if I was in a field of sheep, why would I have my dog off the lead? Even with the best-trained dog in the world, can you 100% say that that dog will not go if a lamb runs away?

It must be proportionate. We do not want to be the fun police; we do not want to stop dogs having off-lead exercise because it is really important for their enrichment, but it must be proportionate. Aside from the financial impact, a dog worrying livestock is traumatic for the farmer. No farmer will want to shoot a dog, but that is the sort of resolution that will happen in those sorts of situations. We want to avoid that, both for the farming community and for our dog owners too.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Q It is a pleasure to be on this Committee. I am really looking forward to it. I think is an interesting and important Bill. Thank you both for giving evidence this morning.

Going to the RSPCA first, this is a slightly odd Bill, in the sense that it is a collection of bits and pieces. While being careful to remain within the scope of the Bill, it is perfectly possible to imagine that there are other things that could have been included. Could you reflect on that first? What would your priorities be if you were drawing up this Bill from scratch?

David Bowles: Yes, it is a bit of a potpourri, you are right, but the RSPCA is not against that, so long as we can get improvements to animal welfare. The Government came in with something like nine or 10 animal welfare commitments, and we are delighted that they are moving on those commitments, whether it is the sentience Bill, this Bill, or the Animals Abroad Bill.

The RSPCA are glad to see the issues that are in there, and the main issue for us is ensuring that it is done properly; you only get one chance at this. I have mentioned primates, and I totally agree with Paula on the livestock worrying side of things. We need to make it as easy as possible for enforcement people. Having statements like “at large” is not an easy thing for an enforcement person to go out with and then work out.

The Scottish Government also passed legislation on this only this year. Unfortunately, their Act is not that helpful for us, because it also does not define “at large”. I think that will be a problem for enforcement agents. We should always look to write legislation that will be easy to enforce. Unfortunately, this Parliament—not this particular Parliament, but Parliament in general—has a track record of passing legislation that maybe has not done what it was supposed to do.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q That is a very fair point. Turning to primates, I think lots of us are slightly puzzled as to who is keeping primates at the moment. It seems we do not really know how many there are. What is the RSPCA’s view? If I wander around my constituency in Cambridge, am I likely to stumble on someone keeping a primate in their house?

David Bowles: It is very likely. Let us say that 3,000 to 5,000 primates are being kept. Some people keep them because they are exotic and very easy to get—all you need to do is go on the internet, google “buy me a tamarin” and hand over between £1,500 and £2,000, and you can get one. They do not come with any instructions. If you wanted to buy a washing machine, the person selling it would tell you, “You need to put it on this cycle”, but tamarins do not come with instructions. Is it any wonder that people do not know that they need UV lighting and a specific diet, or that they are social primates and therefore need company? Putting one in a birdcage on its own will obviously not meet its welfare needs.

A variety of people buy primates. Although some people get them because they know how to keep them, I fear the vast majority do not know how to do that, and therefore we run into welfare problems. Unfortunately, because the RSPCA is only tipped off by the public, we see only the tip of the iceberg—we know only what the public tell us. As I said, we have unfortunately seen an increase in the number of complaints on primates being kept. In many instances, when we look into those people, the primates are not being kept properly and have welfare problems, and sometimes the person will have to be prosecuted for not keeping them according to their welfare needs.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q I think it was fairly clear on Second Reading that there is a strong feeling across the House that people would like to see this practice banned; the question is how we do it. One question that troubles me is what happens to those animals if we implement a ban in that transition period. What is the RSPCA’s view on how to do that?

David Bowles: Let us be realistic. There is only a finite number of places where we could put primates that have been confiscated—whether it is Wild Futures or Monkey World, who you are hearing evidence from after me—and they are full. We have to try and manage that problem, which is why, as I said to the Minister earlier, we need a soft landing.

The RSPCA is really worried that if there are licence requirements coming in after two years, there will be a cliff edge: people will keep their primates until the end of the two-year period and then abandon them, whether by turning up to an RSPCA centre or letting them loose—who knows. That really worries us, and that is why we have recommended a ban on the use of primates, rather than a licensing system, but with grandfather rights and a soft landing; as those primates die, they are taken out of the system.

Unfortunately, the primate legislation as written means that if you get licensed, you are still allowed to trade and breed those primates, so you are not going to reduce the primate population. If we want to improve the population of primates kept by private owners, we need to reduce it. Unfortunately, the Bill does not do that. I go back to the issue that the person inspecting and licensing is not an expert; they will not know what they are looking at. If you get licensed by the local authority and your licence lasts for six years, you can then breed your primate and make money from it. Those animals can be sold for a couple of thousand pounds, which is not an insubstantial amount of money. That is the worry for us.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I will try not to hog the witnesses, but may I ask two more questions?

[The Chair]

Absolutely.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Moving on to dogs, I want to return to a point that David touched on around enforcement and, I would say, unintended consequences. There are a number of elements in the Bill where I worry the unintended consequences could mean dogs are possibly kept for long periods of time while legal investigations are going on. We have discussed that in other fora before, around the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. What would the Dogs Trust recommend that we do to tackle that in general across the Bill?

Paula Boyden: I completely agree. It is a huge worry to think that a dog could potentially be held indefinitely while proceedings go forward. There has to be a means of either expediting those investigations—I appreciate that that is easier said than done; we know that there is huge pressure on the judicial service and police forces—or, if it is appropriate, doing what the Scottish Government have just done, which is introduce a means to be able to move case animals on and rehome them. We see that with livestock worrying; as you rightly mentioned, we see it with section 1 dogs as well. We really need to address it so that we do not have dogs languishing in kennels, because that is not welfare-friendly either.

The whole reason the Scottish Government have introduced this measure is because of delays with animal welfare prosecutions. There was a case I am aware of in Scotland where the dog was kept in kennels for four years, because the defendant would not sign the dog over. We are compromising their welfare. The risk is that, with cases potentially going up to Crown court, they could take even longer. We need to look at that and work out how we can manage it so that we are not keeping dogs incarcerated for great lengths of time.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q I have one final question for David. There is lots in the Bill about dogs. We have had representations from those who speak for cats. In a lot of cases the nasty stuff we are going to clamp down on is about money, and there is a worry that, if it works on dogs, people will then switch to cats, and there is not sufficient strength in the Bill to stop that happening. What is the RSPCA’s view on that?

David Bowles: The “A” in RSPCA is animals. I do not differentiate between dogs and cats—they are as good as each other, and have as many welfare needs as each other. We have to recognise that there are different markets for dogs and cats. The market for dogs tends to be much more breed-specific; cats tend to be moggies. The way they are brought to market is very different. There is no big trade in cats. There is some evidence that there may be a trade that is starting to rise in breed-specific cats, and that could be mimicking what is happening to dogs, but because the market is very different, I do not think that if we crack down on dogs, people will go on to cats to make money. Frankly, it is a different market and there is a completely different system for how people get their cats. It is also a different system in terms of what breeds they are looking for compared with what dog breeds they are looking for.

[Daniel Zeichner]

That is very helpful. Thank you.

[Dr Hudson]

Q Paula, you talked about clarity on the age of animals being brought in. There are many welcome suggestions in the Bill. Many people have said, and I share the concerns, that we need more clarity and detail in the Bill, on issues such as increasing the age to six months, and you talked about reintroducing the rabies titre test. Also, the Bill talks about mutilations, but does not specify the mutilations; there is a similar point about the number of days pregnant. Currently, importation is illegal in the last 10% of gestation, but it is actually very difficult to ascertain how heavily pregnant an animal is.

Can you give us some evidence to help us in terms of tightening up the Bill through putting in numbers, such as six months of age; reintroducing health checks; the rabies titre test; and specifying mutilations such as cropped ears? The hon. Member for Cambridge talked about declawed cats as well. Can you give us specific asks? For example, how heavily pregnant should it be—is it in the last 30% to 50% of gestation? What can we do to tighten up the Bill to make the provisions clearer to the outside world?

Paula Boyden: You mentioned the minimum age of entry. The proposal is six months. We would really like to see that science, as there is a potential to start looking at older dogs. The reason I say that is because of the disease risk from those dogs, which I appreciate is not part of the scope today. We have 12 years of serology data on the rabies vaccination and the rabies titre test from the 12 years prior to the change in 2012. We know that the animals that are least likely to respond to the rabies vaccination are young dogs—young, naive animals—those under a year of age, I would say, particularly with large breeds. The wait period would bring the time period in line with the incubation of the disease—most cases of rabies will present between three and 12 weeks post infection. That measure starts to give us a good framework, should we want to expand that at a later date.

On pregnancy, David mentioned third-party sales. It is not a bad piece of legislation, but I go back to a previous comment—we need to take a holistic view. This is all about the supply of and demand for dogs. Illegal importation is one side, but the domestic legislation around breeding and sale is also important. We have to tie them together. Since that legislation on third-party sales came in, we have seen a significant increase in pregnant mums coming in. This time of year, we are seeing a surge because they are all coming in for the Christmas market, because it completely circumvents the ban on third-party sales.

As a minimum, we ought to be reducing the gestation period to a maximum of 30% —a maximum of one half to two-thirds pregnant. We had originally said 50% of pregnancy, and the reason for that was that the New Zealand Animal Welfare Act 1999 protects unborn offspring at 50%, but having spoken to colleagues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I understand that you can use ultrasound and the kidneys appear at about 42 days, so that could be quite a good indicator. The challenge with ageing at the moment is that it is very subjective. You are looking at the body weight, the size, of the puppy, but you are also looking at the eruption of the teeth—the adult teeth—which again is going to be variable. So having something that is a little bit more specific would be great, and if it were reduced to 42 days, it would mean that—well, certainly looking at the figures that we have, over 70% of the pregnant mums that were seized would have been illegally imported, compared with a smaller proportion. It is very, very difficult to say that a bitch is 50 days’ pregnant versus 54 days’ pregnant or whatever. The issue is having that specificity.

The journeys that these mums undertake are horrific—that is the only way I can describe them. They do not have enough room. There is no temperature regulation. Quite often, they are not fed, because if they are not fed, there is very little coming out the other end. They are given very little water. They have no breaks. That is not a way to treat a heavily pregnant animal of whatever species we are talking about. So the aim should be to reduce that and, as I mentioned, to absolutely ban the commercial importation of pregnant mums as well.

Sitting alongside that is the issue of mutilations. We very much support the ban on importing dogs that are mutilated—docked and cropped, and you mentioned cats that have been declawed. The one thing that does not happen at the moment is visual checks on importation. The checks are undertaken by the carriers, which we feel is wrong. That should actually be done by either an independent or a Government agency, so that there is no conflict there. But it should at least involve a visual check. We have demonstrated that on a number of occasions when we have actually imported a toy dog and nobody looked in the crate to see that it was a toy dog. We need that to see what the position is: “Does this actually match up? Does this animal actually need a physical examination?” We are not saying that we need to be hands on with every animal, but having a physical check is really quite critical in this respect.

In terms of mutilations, as I have mentioned, it is really important that we ban not only the importation but the sale of those dogs and cats so that they cannot be passed on, but we would very much welcome a very tight exemption so that, as a rehoming organisation, we could rehome them rather than the dogs being confined to our care for the rest of their lives. That is exactly what we have with section 1 dogs at the moment, because we cannot rehome them.

There is another thing sitting alongside this. We have spoken about the checks at the ports. I have two comments. One is that the risk with raising the minimum age of entry to six months is that we may see a shift from what we have at the moment, which is illegal importation, whereby the puppies are declared and have a passport but the information is wrong, to true smuggling, whereby they are hidden. We need to be mindful of that and look at how we can address it.

The other thing that we need alongside this, aside from the enforcement, is penalties, because the penalties just are not there. We have had approximately 2,000 puppies come into our care since we have been working with Animal and Plant Health Agency colleagues at Dover. Out of those, there have been three prosecutions and not one custodial sentence. If I use the analogy of cigarette smuggling, the maximum sentence there is seven years, whereas the maximum sentence for this is a year. I find it quite strange that if I were caught smuggling cigarettes, the last thing that would happen is that I would be given my cigarettes back, yet that is what has happened to the importers—they can claim their puppies back. One thing that we have seen through lockdown, because of the increased demand and increased prices, is more and more puppies being reclaimed through quarantine, because there is still a profit to be made. That is fundamentally wrong. At the moment, there is no deterrent to trying to circumvent whatever rules we put in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Prentis]

Q For what it is worth, I can give you the assurance that there will certainly be a consultation starting shortly. I believe you have been involved in some of the discussions about that.

Dr Judge: Yes, we have, but it would be great to have a requirement set down somewhere that that will always happen when they are being developed rather than when they go out for wider consultation.

ZEC gives advice to the Government, and that advice is great, but there is no transparency about that at the moment. There is no requirement for it to publish its advice. We would like to see the advice around the standards brought into line with the new animal sentience committee, and it being given the ability to publish its advice, so there would be greater transparency, which would make the standards process more robust.

On moving conservation into the standards, we very much support the highest conservation requirements for zoos and aquariums. We believe that all modern zoos should provide impactful conservation, so we support that, but we would like assurances around consultation, transparency and accountability of the standards as they are reviewed.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q Thank you for coming to give evidence to us today. I am still slightly confused about the group of people we are dealing with. I think we are all agreed that there is a group—of how many, we are not sure—who are keeping primates in entirely inappropriate conditions, and we want to clamp down on that.

However, I listened very closely to your evidence, and you both said, “a number of”. A number can be anything from one to quite a few. I am not at all clear how many people we are talking about who are, in your words, in a position to keep primates to zoo standards. I would really welcome a stab from both of you at how many people we are actually talking about. That goes back to my question to the RSPCA: who are they? They are clearly not the kind of people we are trying to clamp down on, who are keeping primates in totally inappropriate conditions. How many can do it properly?

Dr Cronin: In our experience over the years, I can only comment on the numbers and proportions I have seen. Specialist keepers who have reached out to us or that I am aware of are probably one in 30. It is a very small fraternity of people—the personal hobbyists, if you will—who are prepared to spend the amount of money, time and effort needed to keep these animals properly. It is not straightforward; you have to invest a lot of time and effort into it and have back-up resources for going on holiday, or anything like that. So the number of specialist keepers is very small.

What has happened in the last decade is that social media has driven the trade in keeping exotic pets—primates in particular—in households to increase someone’s social media standing and the like. It has got out of control, and I think everybody agrees that that is the frontline that needs to be tackled first. Then, perhaps, additional legislation to deal with any outstanding issues surrounding those specialist keepers might be a follow-on. However, I think we all agree that the frontline triage is to stop the over-the-counter trade of primates being sold in birdcages to be kept in sitting rooms in solitary confinement. I do not think anybody has a problem with that being the primary focus.

Dr Judge: It is very difficult to put a number on it. We only have a handful of what we call our accredited associates, who are people who keep primates to that zoo standard in a private setting. There are also a number of sanctuaries that do not have a zoo licence because they do not allow visitors, which is what would tip them over into needing a zoo licence. At the moment, it is unclear how those sanctuaries would be affected by a ban. Presumably, with the licensing procedure, they would be able to carry on.

Those people are genuinely very passionate about their primates. The ones we deal with are very keen to be involved in conservation and breeding programmes; they are also people who will take animals that other people cannot properly house, and so on. They form a vital part of the safekeeping of primates in the UK. We do not know how many there are at the moment, but it is unlikely to be a massive number.

Dr Cronin: May I add one short comment? There is also an issue with pet shops and people taking advantage of loopholes in legislation by keeping primates in the pet shop, but not offering them for sale. Do those animals fall under the pet shop licence, or are they now in need of a dangerous wild animals licence, or the specialist keepers’ licence we are talking about? The whole issue surrounding pet shops needs to be tightened up. Also, as was mentioned earlier, there are all the farm parks that currently fall in between legislation. Are they zoos or not if they have a parrot and a marmoset? It is in those situations that animals are being neglected and falling short of legislation.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I was going to come on to that.

Dr Cronin: Sorry.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q No, it is fine. I think we are basically agreeing that the number is very small, which means that the other group, those who are not appropriate, is massively larger. The question then becomes: what happens to all those primates in this situation? Again, it is the transition question. What would your view be on that?

Dr Judge: There has to be a reasonable period over which this is going to be implemented. If there are welfare issues, obviously, that should be paramount and there should be rehoming and the ability for that. The difficulty will be the capacity for rehoming. I know that Monkey World, for example, is at capacity—if not possibly over capacity—a lot of the time because of the rehoming that it does. While zoos will assist wherever they can, the actual capacity within zoos is restricted because it is not easy to take a pet monkey and put it into an established social group of primates kept in a zoo situation. Zoos have long-term management plans for all those animals, and they have a carrying capacity. The worst examples need to be rehomed as quickly as possible, but having a system whereby people are checked and then there is a longer period—I think it is two years at the moment—to get those into better premises could be useful. However, it all has to come down to the welfare issue.

Dr Cronin: There is a further twist in the tail there too and it falls back to the ZEC committee and the zoo’s licensing. A lot of the animals have come via captive-bred animals from zoos. When we are talking about breeding primates for so-called conservation purposes—and sometimes it is not actually so—so-called surplus animals are created that are then rehomed at various rescue centres or sanctuaries that may or may not be licensed, or they find themselves into the pet trade. That is where I suppose my worlds are colliding. There needs to be tighter legislation in the ZEC committee, in my opinion, to limit and control the breeding of species that are not conservation priorities and to ensure that those animals—that the zoos are obligated to care for what they breed. That is just a moral principle that we live by at Monkey World: anything that is born at the park I am obligated to care for for its lifetime, unless I can find a home of better quality than we provide already. That is something that needs to be fully embraced throughout the zoos up and down the country.

Dr Judge: In good, modern zoos, sending animals into the pet trade would never happen. It is against our sanctions. However, not all zoos are BIAZA zoos and the ones that do not adhere to those higher standards are the problem. It is those lower levels that we need to bring up to match the other standards. Within good zoos and aquariums, and the whole of BIAZA zoos and aquariums, breeding is very carefully planned and it can be done at a European level for conservation breeding, but they have to know what they are going to do with those animals when they breed them.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q I think there is evidence of some danger of unintended consequences here in some of this. If I can just move on and include Simon. I am slightly troubled by this spectrum of sanctuaries, small zoos and farm parks, exactly as you have just been saying. Will the measures in the Bill result in a lifting of animal welfare standards in general, taking into account that spectrum that may or may not be covered by the legislation?

Dr Girling: I genuinely believe that they will for a number of different reasons. The standards, as I am sure the Committee knows, have been altered to ensure that grey areas—ideas of best practice, so-called “shoulds” or “coulds”, suggestions that this is the best way to manage an animal—have been pretty much removed wholesale from the standards and replaced with “musts”. Consequently, it has inevitably resulted in an increase in standards throughout this document. I am confident that this new set of standards will improve the welfare of captive animals, including primates, and I certainly welcome the extension of welfare standards for primates from the zoo standards to all primates kept in captivity, just to echo what both Alison and Jo have said. Yes, I believe these standards will result in that and that may well result in some issues for some current zoo-licensed premises. They will have to improve their game or there may be the ultimate sanction of the local authority removing their licence if they do not come up to the new welfare standards.

[Daniel Zeichner]

Q What happens to those animals then?

Dr Girling: It depends on the individual collection. They become the responsibility of the local authority in the first instance, because when the local authority removes the licence, it becomes responsible for the welfare and care of the animals. It then absolutely becomes a potential issue to rehome those animals to other zoological collections. As Alison has already acknowledged, many collections—zoos, sanctuaries and so on—are already at capacity.

We would expect that the standards will take some time to implement once they have been agreed, so there will be a lead-in period in which it would be plainly obvious to collections that the standards are improving. We sincerely hope that this will give everybody time to improve their game and to improve the welfare for their animals should it have fallen short of the new standards. Inevitably, yes, it may well result in animals needing to be rehomed, as Alison indicated.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am not sure whether I feel more sorry for the animals or the local authorities. I will leave it at that.

[The Chair]

We have just under 25 minutes. I will tell the Committee which Members have caught my eye so that we make the best use of time: I have Luke Evans first, then Olivia Blake, James Grundy and Dr Neil Hudson.