Oral Answers to Questions

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I am not quite sure who the consumer is in this instance. Presumably, the right hon. Gentleman means the dog owner. Most of the microchipping will be done by charities and will be free to owners. A number of charities are happy to work with us on that, so I do not think that we are talking about prohibitive cost. We are working with the devolved Administrations so that, as far as possible, we have consistency across national boundaries.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

One of the charities the Minister has been working with is Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, which is focusing particularly on encouraging more responsible attitudes in younger people. May I commend to the Minister the video “Bully Breed”, which it launched in Parliament recently and which could be a good educational tool for schools and youth groups?

[Mr Heath]

Indeed. Battersea Dogs and Cats Home does a lot of very good work to promote responsible dog ownership, not least because it sees the consequences when things go wrong, and I certainly commend its work. I hope we will be able to make people appreciate that, whether through ignorance, neglect or malice, it is simply unacceptable to have a dog that is a danger to other people under any circumstances.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

Is it not amazing how we started a new world two years ago, without any reference to the inaction of the previous 13 years? I fully understand the anger of people who have to face gangs of youths using dogs as weapons, which is already unlawful. The Home Office will bring forward its own proposals, separately from our announcement, as a result of the consultation that it has carried out on measures to deal with precisely the issues to which the hon. Lady refers.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home does very good work in educating young people, especially those in danger of being drawn into gangs and irresponsible dog ownership. Does the Minister agree that education is one of the ways forward in tackling this problem?

Oral Answers to Questions

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The issue of dangerous dogs on private land is very important and it is one of the issues we are discussing closely with the Home Office because, as he will know, it would require amendment to primary legislation.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

Further to that reply, one of the consequences of the dangerous dogs debate has been the stigmatisation of an entire breed, the Staffordshire bull terrier, which makes up a huge percentage of the abandoned dogs that Battersea Dogs and Cats Home takes in and a vast bulk of those that are hard to rehome. Yesterday, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home launched a campaign in Parliament to reclaim the good name of the Staffordshire bull terrier. May I invite the Minister to endorse that campaign?

[Mr Paice]

Yes, I am happy to endorse that campaign, having been brought up as a child with bull terriers, as my parents had them—[Interruption.] I said “with”, not “by”. I entirely accept my hon. Friend’s contention that the vast majority of that breed are perfectly harmless.

Fisheries

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Spencer]

I absolutely agree and I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for her work as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee. We need to ensure that future generations have access to fish as part of their diet. Fish make up an important part of the diet. Omega 3 is important and people need it as part of a healthy diet. Unless we get this right at this moment, fish stocks will not be available for future generations. That will be a sad indictment of us as politicians and of the decisions that we make.

My final comments are to the general public. Consumers are powerful and retailers listen to consumers. I encourage members of the public to challenge their retailers—supermarkets and fishmongers—to tell them how their fish is caught and harvested and how many discards there are. Several retailers, including Sainsbury’s and Marks and Spencer, have done some work on making good progress on this front. I hope that we can find a solution.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I would add Waitrose to that list of supermarkets, and I declare an interest because I used to work for it. It sponsored a very good film called “The End of the Line”, and I would like to note the brilliant work done by the person who put that film together in kicking off this discussion, ahead of the Fish Fight campaign, several years ago. Will my hon. Friend join me, and other hon. Members I am sure, in encouraging consumers who feel strongly about this issue, many of whom have written to us, to be part of the solution, albeit a small part? If everyone who has sent us an e-mail about this also changes their fish-buying behaviour and attempts to influence their friends and family to change theirs, they can become a small part of the solution just as much as by urging us to be part of it.

[Mr Spencer]

I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. The Countryside Agency ran a campaign some time ago with the strapline “Eat the View”, which encouraged consumers to think about where their food came from because its production directly affects the world around us. What we look at, what we see and how the world produces food is directly affected by how and where we purchase food. I encourage consumers to hold retailers to account—to challenge them and make sure that they are doing the right thing not only for us but for future generations and future food production in general.

Sustainable Livestock Bill

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

I do not think I have actually seen that figure, but if it is to be taken as the correct figure, that is half our arable land. So the increase in imports of all the crops that would be displaced by that crop would obviously be dramatic and would have other implications; we would probably have another Bill trying to stop that.

On top of the research that I referred to, we are committed to tackling the deforestation that the Bill rightly aims to reduce, and which has accompanied some soya production. But we must recognise that soya consumption is not all about livestock. DEFRA is leading a programme of work, with businesses and non-governmental organisations, on another major food ingredient that has not been debated this morning—palm oil. We want to support production without the forest footprint of replacing rain forest with palm oil production.

We are also working closely with our European and other international partners. Much has been made of Brazil; in particular we are working with that country to tackle the drivers of deforestation. We are also working with EU partners to tackle illegal logging, which destroys forests and biodiversity and contributes, as we know, to CO₂ emissions.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I have attended this morning’s debate with a genuinely open mind, in accordance with the commitment that I gave to my constituents—we are very interested in the Bill. I suspect that what drives much of the sense of urgency of the Members who spoke in favour of the Bill, is a sense that we are hearing merely warm words and promises, and among working people everyone is a little concerned that those timelines will slip. The Minister has conceded that he agrees with a great deal of the sentiment behind the Bill. What reassurance can the people who support the sentiment behind the Bill have that progress will be made in a reasonably rapid time frame?

[Mr Paice]

I am grateful for that question, part of which I will come to in a few moments. First, let me say that the issue is not about the principle of ensuring that our livestock sector is more sustainable; the debate is about how we go about it—whether to adopt the highly regulatory approach proposed by the Bill, or to continue with the approach that, as has been said in all fairness, was begun under the previous Government—and continued and emphasised by the present Government—to achieve the aim with partnership working throughout the sector. A lot of progress is being made, and in a few moments I shall outline how I think the Bill could be counter-productive in achieving that.

I was saying that we are working closely with the EU, Brazil and others. In particular, bringing us right up to date, we made great strides forward at the recent conference in Nagoya, not only in agreeing targets for reducing the loss of habitats including forests, and for tackling forest degradation, but in making real progress on the links between climate change and biodiversity. The Government announced as part of the spending review that we will provide £2.9 billion towards tackling international climate change. A significant proportion of that will be used to address forestry issues, and that meets and goes beyond the commitments made at Copenhagen by the previous Government.

Dangerous Dogs

Jane Ellison Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity finally to raise this difficult issue, which is not just a continuing problem for many of my constituents who find their visits to local parks and their movements on the streets and even on local buses blighted by intimidating dogs and their owners. This is a growing problem, and I am certain that it affects countless others in urban and suburban areas. I have been talking to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and I have discovered that Ealing is the ninth-worst borough for this problem. According to some of the statistics, it seems to be the fifth-worst, so it is little wonder that so many of my constituents have wanted to raise their anxieties with me. I know that Ealing council takes the problem extremely seriously and that it is in discussions with a number of organisations to plan a way forward.

We need to be very clear about this issue because there are different aspects to what is quite a complex matter. One aspect is the dogs that are simply out of control. Not long ago, on Acton green, almost outside my house, a Rottweiler attacked a pet that was being walked there and injured it quite seriously. The Rottweiler had been rescued by a lady who had no intention of setting it on anything, but she clearly had not learned how to manage it properly. The RSPCA thinks that the best way forward in such instances is to give those owners some education in an early intervention to try to teach them how to be more responsible. I am sure that that is the right way forward. Getting the RSPCA lined up with specific cases may be a little difficult, but that is a discussion for another night.

I want to deal with an issue that is in many ways far more serious: dogs that are intentionally trained by their owners to be nasty and intimidating. That growing menace is always about young—almost always—men with large fierce dogs attached to a lead and usually fitted out with full studded collars. They are called status dogs, and that is all about machismo or certainly about displaying potential aggression. The dogs accompany those owners pretty much as a weapon, but, crucially, whereas carrying a weapon such as a knife involves a certain penalty, owning such dogs does not, which is exactly why they are the growing weapon of choice at the moment. Sometimes, drug dealers will use those dogs to protect themselves as they trade and perhaps to enforce their trade, particularly against rivals. Other people may train the dogs for fighting. Unfortunately, dog fighting is a lucrative sport, although rather a grotesque one. Other people are simply demonstrating who is boss on a piece of local territory.

Innocent members of the public who go into parks with their families and pets to enjoy a day out do not know whether those dogs will be let off their leads at any stage, and if they are, they do not know whether they will then run after them and attack them, their pets or, worst of all, their children. Frankly, it is absolutely unacceptable that, instead of being able to enjoy their day out, they must spend their time looking over their shoulders.

What can be done to tackle this menace? I am not expert in the field and it will be for others who are to find the right solutions. My purpose is to urge the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to get moving on the issue as quickly as possible.

I have received some ideas from the organisations that I have spoken to. First and foremost, I do not believe that going after dog breeds is the right way forward. I have my doubts about the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Pit bulls may look vicious, but they are not necessarily born vicious. Like any other dog, they are just born; what happens next can turn them into something altogether more unpleasant. The problem with pit bulls, of course, is their physical size and strength. If an owner sets out to turn them into something nasty, they turn into something quite lethal, but that is not how they start out. My contention is that we should be targeting not dangerous dogs, but dangerous owners.

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

I want to support that view. I represent Battersea, and Battersea dogs home is a great source of expertise. It says that those dogs come through its doors as the victims of irresponsible back-street breeding and irresponsible ownership. It is a tragic sight to go to the dogs home and see many dozens of abandoned dogs that have little chance of being re-homed because someone bred and treated them irresponsibly.

[Angie Bray]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know Battersea dogs home well. In fact, I got my first rescue dog from Battersea dogs home, so I know what fantastically good work it does. It is very much involved in the discussions about how we can get more responsibility into dog owning. I look forward to hearing more from it about what it has to say.

Obviously, we must find out how we can best get rid of the threat in our open spaces. Who can do that? Obviously, we have the police and safer neighbourhood teams. Councils employ park rangers and dog wardens. Of course, the problem is one of resources. The Metropolitan police have also set up a status dog unit, which has been fully supported by the deputy Mayor of London, Kit Malthouse, who is doing a lot of work in this respect. The new unit is operating effectively throughout London, but it is still relatively small, so we need to think about how we get resources into addressing the problem. My local police are frank in telling me that if someone says that their dog has been attacked by another dog, the police will not intervene—they say that dogs fight each other—because they do not have the necessary resources. However, as I have pointed out, the problem is that if a dog is attacked today, that might be a child tomorrow.

Given the question of resources, I am wary about bringing back the old licensing system, which probably cost more than it raised. An annual round of licensing would impose an additional tier of bureaucracy on owners, and the trouble would be that the good guys would get the licences while the bad guys would ignore them. I am also aware that we must look after our pensioners, who often depend on animals for company more than anyone else, so I do not particularly want to impose anything on them. However, I might be persuaded of the case for a one-off dog licence—a life licence—that would involve making a payment when the ownership of a dog was taken up, provided that the revenue was properly ring-fenced for policing dangerous dogs.