Dangerous Dogs

John Pugh Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans]

Absolutely. Unless dog control orders can be enforced and policed, they do not mean anything.

Therefore, instead of dog control orders, the Government could have followed the example of the Scottish Government who have introduced dog control notices. The Northern Ireland Assembly has also introduced control notices as a way of monitoring the behaviour of dog owners.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman dismisses microchipping, but presumably if it were made compulsory with proper enforcement, there is also a case for dogs, particularly dangerous dogs, being confiscated from people who do not have them microchipped.

[Chris Evans]

That is it in a nutshell. If people had dangerous dogs that were not microchipped, they could be confiscated.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) on securing this stimulating debate and on the measured, thoughtful way in which he introduced the topic.

I cannot compete with some of the horror stories that have been mentioned, but no politician is far from this issue. This year, I was accosted by two amiable Alsatians that did not quite wish me to canvass the house that I had intended to visit. In my constituency this year, a councillor has been bitten and a caseworker has lost part of a finger. Hon. Members might like to speak to my good friend the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr Benton), who to this day bears the marks of a serious attack by dogs.

Fundamentally, the problem is dogs’ bad behaviour, but that is associated with the problem of neglect and poor training, which is worsened a great deal by the contemporary cult of the status dog, which people use as a potential deterrent or threat. Hitherto, the resolution, which has been fairly straightforward, has been to ban so-called uncontrollable, savage dogs that are naturally disinclined to behave themselves in a civilised fashion. The view has also been that owners of dogs that are out of control should be charged by the courts, and guidelines have been issued in that regard over time. There is general consensus that such measures are not sufficient and that more is needed.

All hon. Members have acknowledged the fact that we cannot legislate for the genuinely unpredictable. Occasionally, even well-behaved dogs go beserk and do strange, unpredictable things, even if owners wish them not to do so. Hon. Members are probably aware of such cases. However, much of what people are anxious about is, sadly, predictable. The fundamental drive behind all our contributions today is the desire to see dog owners made more genuinely responsible for their dogs. Otherwise—something suggested to me by police dog handlers—there ought to be some restriction on who can own certain sorts of dogs. That idea was put to me seriously by a man who has had a lot of experience breeding dogs and working with the police with dogs. If we do not allow someone with a criminal record of some length to own firearms and the like, why would we allow him to own a dangerous or potentially dangerous dog?

That is a separate point from the drive to increase owner responsibilities, and I have no particular view on which of a number of different suggestions along that line would be best. I favour microchipping, but one might want to look at insurance, which has not been mentioned so far; at obliging owners to muzzle or keep dogs on a lead; and at neutering certain dogs, if they are to be owned in certain circumstances, almost as a precondition of sale, although none of that gets around the issue that is dogging the whole affair, which is the problem of genuinely irresponsible owners. They do not even shoulder their current responsibilities and, if asked to do more, will discard the animals that they have taken on. There seems to be a lot of evidence that that is happening—a large number of Staffordshire bull terriers end up in pounds throughout the land and are destroyed. The other day, the average life expectancy of a Staffordshire bull terrier was cited as about four years, because people take them on but discard them when they become troublesome.

I am genuinely convinced that the threshold for the ownership and breeding of dogs needs to be raised, either generally or for specific breeds, but that will only be an effective remedy if coupled with sensible plans for realistic enforcement. Without enforcement, no proposal will be worth while, but there is the question of how enforcement will be funded, which drives us back to the issue of whether a licence is a viable idea.