Dog Control Bill [HL]

Earl of Shrewsbury Excerpts

Friday 9th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Shrewsbury]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Redesdale on bringing this Bill to the House. I should declare an interest as an owner and keeper of working dogs, and I am a member of the Countryside Alliance, BASC and a number of other bodies which support field sports.

On 26 June, an article appeared in the Daily Mail. It referred to my noble friend Lord Redesdale and this Bill. I quote part of the article as follows:

“One evening this week he”—

that is, my noble friend—

“was walking home in Tufnell Park … when a Staffordshire bull terrier”—

hold on, I come from Staffordshire—

“leapt from the shadows and made to bite him on the bottom. The dog's owner looked on blithely, while the noble Lord hopped about the place like a cider-fuelled Morris dancer”.

What a wonderful sight that must have been. Since reading that article, I now view my noble friend in a completely different light and I understand fully why he wishes to promote his Bill.

The last time I made a speech, I missed out page 3 and nobody noticed. I shall try not to make that error today.

While broadly welcoming my noble friend’s Bill, I have a number of concerns about how, if enacted, it would work. I recognise that there exists a problem with dangerous dogs—we all know that—and especially status dogs, particularly, but not exclusively, in urban areas. Current legislation is adequate in general to deal with the problem—I agree with my noble friend Lord Mancroft that something must be done about preventing those accidents and attacks. I acknowledge that the real difficulty is in the enforcement of the legislation, a view which I believe is accepted by the police.

The Bill as currently drafted could well have unintended consequences for ordinary, responsible dog owners. For instance, Clause 13 states:

“For the purposes of this Act, a dog shall be regarded as having been involved in an attack if it has bitten, mauled or injured a person or another protected animal”.

What about a sheepdog, which as part of its work nips a sheep on the hock? That sheep is quite difficult to get into a pen, but it is also a protected animal, and under this Bill it will be judged to have been in an attack. What about a Lancashire Heeler, whose method of herding cattle is to nip its heels? Under this Bill, it will be judged to have been in an attack—and so the list widens. For instance, if I am walking my dog along the River Dove in Derbyshire, where I fish, and my dog, Missed, usually impeccably behaved, chases a rabbit, will I be guilty under this Bill of having allowed my dog to be aggressive in a public or private place, as stated in the wording of the offences in Clause 2?

I am certain that my noble friend’s intention was not to incorporate legitimate and lawful activities into the scope of this Bill, but, as drafted, the Bill is far too widely drawn and is in need of very substantial amendment, which your Lordships will no doubt address in Committee, if this Bill receives its Second Reading. Furthermore, this Bill removes all responsibility from the police and places the duty of enforcement on local authorities, while making no provision to allow either the police or other bodies to enforce the law and providing no additional financial support for local authorities. In these days of massive financial constraints, how on earth will local authorities be able to cope with that extra financial burden? Their animal welfare and dog warden services will already be hit hard by cutbacks, even before the consequences of this Bill land on them. The police are the acknowledged experts in this type of enforcement, so I was delighted by what my noble friend said about this in his opening remarks. Under this Bill, too, the courts will be clogged up when they are already under very severe pressure, and with even more financial consequences for the public purse.

I could go on, but it is late, it is a Friday, and I want to get home to my wife and my dogs, absolutely in that order. I finish with a quote from Bertie Wooster, when he recalls Stiffy Byng’s Scotch terrier, Bartholomew. He says:

“Stop me if I've told you this before, but once when I was up at Oxford and chatting on the river bank with a girl called something that's slipped my mind there was a sound of barking and a great hefty dog of the Hound of the Baskervilles type came galloping at me, obviously intent on mayhem, its whole aspect that of a dog that has no use for Woosters. And I was just commending my soul to God and thinking that this was where my new flannel trousers got about thirty bobs' worth of value bitten out of them, when the girl, waiting till she saw the whites of its eyes, with extraordinary presence of mind opened a coloured Japanese umbrella in the animal's face. Upon which, with a startled exclamation it did three back somersaults and retired into private life”.

This Bill needs such an enormous amount of improvement that maybe it should be retired into private life.