Oral Answers to Questions

John Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

T.S. Eliot said:

“When a Cat adopts you,”

you just have

“to put up with it and wait until the wind changes.”

A cruel wind may be blowing for the thousands of cat owners who put protective fencing in place to stop their much-loved pets joining the hundreds of thousands that are killed by cars on our roads each year. Will the Secretary of State, a noted cat owner, stand alongside those friends of felines, or will he send T. S. Eliot spinning in his grave and many cats to theirs, too?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising both cat welfare and invoking the spirit of T. S. Eliot. At the beginning of “The Waste Land”, T. S. Eliot wrote:

“April is the cruellest month”.

But this April will not be a month in which cruelty towards any living thing will be tolerated. We want to introduce legislation to ensure that the use of shock collars as a means of restraining animals in a way that causes them pain is adequately dealt with.

My right hon. Friend raises another important point in that containment fences can play a valuable role in ensuring that individual animals, dogs and cats, can roam free in the domestic environment in which they are loved and cared for. Several submissions have been made to our consultation on the matter. I know that my right hon. Friend cares deeply about the welfare of domestic pets and other animals, and he and others have made representations that we are reflecting on carefully.