RSPCA (Prosecutions)

Iain McKenzie Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. There is political activity and party political activity. Party political activity is still outwith most charitable law. I suspect that there must be a degree of politics in every charity, but it cannot conflict, I suggest, with the prosecuting role of a charity, if that is the role it wants to pursue.

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hart]

I will take one more intervention. We are not making a lot of progress.

[Mr McKenzie]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned Scotland and the prosecution service there a few times now. Does he feel that that prosecution service is as successful as the RSPCA in England is, with its 98.2% success rate?

[Simon Hart]

I think the situation in Scotland is deemed to be perfectly satisfactory from the point of view of animal welfare charities. I do not think that they are particularly governed by statistics. I am intrigued by the 98% success rate, because nowhere in the RSPCA documentations could I find any reference to conditional or unconditional discharges, which I think make quite a difference to the overall figure. I believe—and I stand to be corrected on the point—that those are included in the 98% success rate. I suggest that the lawyers in the Chamber might consider that slightly misleading.

I want to press on somewhat, and discuss something that I think is a commercial disincentive, using the Freedom Food brand as an example. It is a wholly owned brand of the RSPCA, launched in 1994. The society claims that more than 75 million farm animals and salmon were reared to RSPCA welfare standards under the Freedom Food scheme in 2011. So far, so good—I have no problem with that. Yet in the 19 years since the scheme was introduced, the RSPCA has not brought a single prosecution against a Freedom Food member, despite several members of the programme having been prosecuted—not by the RSPCA—for seriously compromising animal welfare standards. It is odd that in that instance the CPS is deemed expert enough to prosecute under animal welfare legislation, whereas in other cases the RSPCA argues that it alone possesses the necessary skills and resources to do so. That raises the question—I put it no more strongly than that—whether in a case where there is a commercial risk to the RSPCA brand, it is dissuaded from bringing prosecutions, whereas it may be tempted in the direction of a tantalising, juicy case that it might want to get its teeth into because of its political or financial benefits. Those are unnecessary and unfortunate consequences of trying to mix prosecution with politics.