Dog Control and Welfare

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Miss McIntosh]

Indeed. That was one of our conclusions. One hesitates to use the word “bitch”, but in this debate it is appropriate. No puppy should be sold without the mother—the bitch—being present. That is so important, and I pay tribute to those who have done so much to highlight it.

Again, things should be done on the basis of deed not breed. However, we need to look at the ban on certain types of dog in the 1991 Act. That Act has not prevented attacks. There have been ways of “breeding round” the ban, which should be addressed.

We were especially concerned about the poor welfare of puppies and dogs, due to common breeding practices among puppy farmers and some pedigree breeders. Our report calls for any breeder producing more than two litters per year to be licensed and subject to welfare checks; I hope that goes some way to addressing the concerns expressed by the hon. Lady. That simple change could help to prevent irresponsible breeders from producing more animals than they are able to manage effectively, which are then sold on to unsuitable owners for profit.

To sum up, we welcome the extension of legislation to attacks on private property and to attacks on assistance dogs. However, we believe that it is something of a wasted opportunity not to have pursued a fuller, wider, more comprehensive consolidation of all the laws in this area. Also, I urge the Minister to introduce dog control notices and to persuade his colleagues in the Home Office that those are a much better tool than some other measures.

On sentencing, it has been put to me by a constituent that a sentence of two years is insufficient for a fatal dog attack. Death by dangerous driving carries a 14-year prison sentence, whereas death by careless driving carries a five-year prison sentence. Where prosecutions under these new laws on dogs are brought, perhaps somewhere between a five-year and a 14-year jail term would be a more fitting tribute to those loved ones who have been lost rather than the two-year term that is being proposed.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

As with driving offences, we must differentiate between those people who are deliberately setting their dogs on other people and deliberately training their dogs to be vicious and to be attack dogs, and those who have not cared for their dog appropriately, with the result that the dog becomes vicious. Two years in jail is inadequate, as the hon. Lady said, particularly for those people who have deliberately set out to use their dog as a weapon.

[Miss McIntosh]

Indeed. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for those comments. I do not know if that was what the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ogmore, had in mind when he said that the guidance should be published. However, it is obviously for the Sentencing Council to direct what the sentence should be. Nevertheless, I hope that the message will go out from the House today that we are united in our concern in this regard, and that the sentence should be appropriate for what is judged to be effectively a new crime.

To conclude on sentencing, I refer to our concern about resources in relation to local authorities. There should be dog wardens in each area. Also, the police should be properly funded and resourced with a tool more akin to a dog control notice, which we know already works successfully in one part—Scotland—of the United Kingdom.

I will conclude by saying that action is urgently needed on these key issues. Clearly, there is a balance to be struck between the freedoms of responsible dog owners—I wish to record that the vast majority of dog owners in this country are indeed responsible—to enjoy their pets, and the need to protect the public from those who are not responsible and who do not control their dogs responsibly. The welfare of dogs, other animals and local communities must be protected from the actions of irresponsible dog owners. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to rehearse these arguments, and I urge the Government to act on the Committee’s recommendations.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I start by saying how much I welcome the two reports on this issue from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I congratulate its Chair, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), and her Committee on all the work that they have done on this issue, their excellent campaigning and the reports that they have produced.

In addition, I echo the Chair’s commendation of the charities that have also been involved in campaigning on this issue. I also commend the Communication Workers Union, the Royal College of Nursing, the British Veterinary Association and all the other organisations that have joined together to urge the Government to take action, and particularly to introduce dog control notices, which I will talk a little bit about in a moment.

I share the Committee’s disappointment that the Government are not introducing holistic legislation to cover the issues of dog control and dog welfare, because the two cannot be separated. This debate is about control, but fundamentally it is about dog welfare, because the fundamental question is, “Why do dogs attack?” They attack because of how they have been trained, or not trained, and how they have been socialised and educated.

As someone who has tried to get the authorities to take action on a number of occasions, I believe that it would be much more straightforward to have one source for action—one consolidated Bill—rather than having to rely on different pieces of legislation, including some that go back 150 years.

The House is, of course, aware of the tragic death of 14-year-old Jade Lomas-Anderson, and I am grateful to the Chair of the Select Committee for meeting Jade’s parents and for her kind words. Jade was attacked by four dogs—we believe that they were two Staffies and two bull mastiffs—in her friend’s house, where she was staying overnight as a special treat because she had done so well at her new school. By all accounts, Jade was a very bubbly girl who was loved by many people. Her parents, Michael and Shirley, are campaigning for a change in the law—as they say, Jade would have wanted them to—so that no other family has to suffer as they are suffering.

I cannot now say, as I could the first couple of times I spoke about her, that Jade was the last person to die because of dangerous dogs. Since Jade’s death on 26 March, 79-year-old Clifford Clarke has been killed by two dogs in Liverpool. There are 210,000 dog attacks each year and more than 6,000 people are hospitalised each year because of them, so there have been many attacks since Jade’s death.

In Bolton, six-year-old Abigail Boyd was attacked in Farnworth. She was sitting in her garden when a dog that had already been reported to the authorities for being loose came in and bit her. Her eyelid had to be stitched back on and she has deep wounds under her eye. She was lucky not to lose her sight. Two-year-old Ryan Magee was left terrified when he was bitten by a dog tied up outside a community centre, as he and his father were walking past to go in.

Last week, in Atherton, Jade’s home town and mine, there were three attacks by dogs. Even following the attack on Jade, the police’s attitude has not been as one would have wanted, in terms of taking such attacks as seriously as they should be taken. It is fortunate, although I am sure the victim does not feel fortunate, that one person who had to go to hospital after an attack was a young man in his 20s. Had he been a child, it is likely that the dog would have attacked his face.

After every attack, no matter how small or large, there are terrible after-effects and the victim is left traumatised. Earlier this week, I spoke about a farmer who signed my petition. After her cattle were attacked, she was deeply traumatised and unable to sleep for a week. People are left with a lifelong fear of dogs. People suffer life-changing injuries—often children, who have the most terrible facial scarring. I read of somebody recently who lost a foot to a dog attack. In the worst situations, family and friends are left mourning loved ones.

The Government have said that they want to retain remedies under statute and common law, but I encourage them, again, to bring those together under one dog control and welfare Bill, because it is difficult to get action under myriad legislation.

I started doing a little bit of work on this, even before I was elected, when one of my volunteers was attacked by a dog while delivering leaflets for the election. He had gone into the owner’s property to put a leaflet through the door and, as he was bending down, another bull mastiff attacked him, latching on to his arm. Fortunately, it was a man who was attacked, not a child, a woman or somebody of smaller stature. Pat managed to stay on his feet, with the dog still latched on to his arm.

The police could take no action, because it was private property. The owner said, “Of course, we’re going to have our dog put down because of this terrible attack.” The dog is still alive and living in the garden and people are still able to enter it. We asked about the paper boy and the owners said, “Oh, it’s all right. The paper boy knows not to come in.” That is fine, as long as it is that paper boy, but what about a different paper boy, or somebody else—whether a postal worker, the nurse, or some other worker who needs to enter that property?

The ex-mayor of Blackrod lost two cats to attacks. Eventually, we managed to get the police to take action, but initially the response was, “There is nothing that we can do about it,” which illustrates the need to bring legislation together. The ex-mayor of Westhoughton was walking his dog nicely in the park when it was attacked by a loose dog. When he took his dog to the vet, the vet was able to describe the dog likely to have attacked it, because he had seen a stream of people whose dogs had also been attacked. To date, we are not aware of any successful action taken against that owner. Clearly, the authorities have to sharpen up their act.

I was contacted by a constituent soon after Jade’s death who said that, close to Jade’s house, no more than 400 yards away, there is a dog loose in a shared communal garden. We struggled to get anybody to take action about this, because it is supposedly private property, but—hang on a minute—everybody else walks through this garden as well. The police have now instructed the owner to keep the dog muzzled when it is out of the house, but we have still failed to get the housing authorities to take proper action.

We need all the legislation to come together, so that it is easy for action to be taken, but most importantly we need dog control notices. We need that early intervention mechanism, so that when a concern is expressed about a dangerous dog, action can be taken.

[Luciana Berger]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government’s proposals in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which they say will deal with this problem, just introduce a new layer of bureaucracy, adding to a lengthy process involving the courts? Conversely, a dog control notice could be issued on the spot and could adequately and properly deal with prevention.

[Julie Hilling]

I agree, and because the proposals are subsumed in antisocial behaviour legislation, not enough priority will to be given to dog attacks. I understand that the police are, potentially, dealing with drugs or other issues, so when somebody is just complaining about a dog barking, for example, how much attention will that get?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about prioritising the matter among the wide range of measures that police and community safety agencies have to deal with. There is also the technical, but important, issue of how much time during the progress of a large, complex Home Office Bill will be put aside for debating these issues, which have not been debated enough, technically and in detail. Does she agree that we should definitely find time to do that, and that introducing guidance as rapidly as possible would help us?

[Julie Hilling]

I agree. My hon. Friend raises some important points.

The dog control notice could say, “Keep that dog on a lead”, “Keep it muzzled”, or “Keep it away from children”. I hope that it would state, where necessary, that the dog owner needed to reduce the number of dogs in the household, because the home was not suitable for them. A range of actions could be taken.

We still cannot talk about Jade’s case in detail, but the one complaint we know of was about noise. Had a properly trained person who understood dogs been able to go round at that point, perhaps action could have been taken. I would be the last to say that action could have saved Jade, but the fact that we do not take action at all, apart from saying, “Keep your dogs quiet”, means that we are liable to have more and more of those terrible attacks and tragedies.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am a little concerned that in the debate about dog control notices, which, for the reasons the hon. Lady has given, are specific to a particular dog owner and dog, we will lose the argument because of that business of a dog being muzzled. The dog does not need to be muzzled all the time. It is important to show that we are being reasonable in what we ask.

[Julie Hilling]

Absolutely. I agree that people may be concerned that it is cruel to keep a dog muzzled. However, that is only in specific situations and with specific instructions about what to do with a specific animal. There is also concern that the proposed legislation will get rid of dog control orders as well. Such an order is a good, simple mechanism whereby local authorities can introduce exclusion orders in parks orders about clearing up after dog fouling, orders about keeping dogs on leads in particular areas and orders about people having to put their dog on a lead, if instructed to do so by a responsible person. I am concerned that, again, we may lose those measures in a much larger piece of legislation that does not allow such detail.

I agree with the hon. Lady that we should extend this welcome legislation to other protected animals, including assistance dogs. I see no reason why it should not be extended to other protected animals. If someone’s dog, or other animal, is attacked while they are behaving responsibly, they have to face all the trauma and expense of an injured animal. One indicator of a dog being dangerously out of control is that it attacks other animals. We should take account of that and extend the legislation.

I agree with what has been said about breeding. A dog is much like a child, in that it needs to be properly educated and know its place in the hierarchy. It needs a proper beginning in life, and should not be taken away from its mother too soon. I appreciate that there is now consensus that people breeding more than two litters a year should be registered, but I was interested to hear the comment from the ex-chief vet of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who believes that anyone who breeds a litter should have their dog registered, even if it is an accidental breeding. That is his personal view, not the RSPCA’s.

[Luciana Berger]

May I correct the record? I previously said that 20,000 people had signed the petition, but the figure is actually more than 30,000. Does my hon. Friend wish to join me in congratulating Pup Aid, which put together the petition, and Marc Abraham, who is the vet leading the charge? I hope the Government will sincerely respond to the need to consider dog breeding, particularly the need not to separate pups from their mothers too soon.

[Julie Hilling]

I join my hon. Friend in congratulating the people involved. Dogs are similar to children, and early intervention, early training—I do not know about early training of children—early socialisation, and all those sorts of thing are crucial to ensuring that at the end we have a well behaved dog and owners who understand what to do.

There is lack of education, starting with which dog people should have in their particular domestic circumstances. The trend now for many people to go for bull breeds is worrying. Thinking back 30 years, people on estates such as Hag Fold, where Jade and I lived, would have walked around with a Heinz 57, which is a mongrel; now people choose big, powerful dogs that need a lot of exercise, which they will not necessarily get in their environment, and a lot of care, and they are not necessarily safe around children. I am not castigating all the bull breeds—I am not castigating Staffordshire bull terriers or anything else—because we know that some of those dogs are well socialised, well trained, well cared for and well controlled, but I am worried by the proliferation of such big breeds in areas where they are not suitable.

Blue Cross and other animal charities offer good training to school children at both primary and secondary level to teach them how to be around dogs, how to behave around dogs and how to understand the signs that dogs give out so that they know whether it is, “Yes, you can come and stroke me,” or “No, please stay away.” We need children to understand how dogs behave and the signals that they give. The training also teaches children how to care for their pets, particularly dogs, and how to train and look after them. Again, part of the problem with dangerous dogs is the way those dogs are treated, whether accidentally because people just do not know enough or, as I said in my earlier intervention, because people deliberately train dogs to be vicious and aggressive.

We need adequate enforcement, even of the current legislation. Michael Anderson, Jade’s dad, did a bit of research and found that there are just two dog wardens for the whole of Wigan, which is a large borough where more than 300,000 people live. Goodness knows how many dogs live in our community, so having two dog wardens feels inadequate. We somehow need to provide adequate resourcing.

Michael Anderson talks of dog attacks being of epidemic proportions, and I agree. With so many dog attacks each year, we need concerted, dedicated action to address them. We need to promote responsible ownership and early intervention measures. When I was out with my petition, many people said that it was not dangerous dogs but dangerous owners that were the problem. Our focus needs to be very much on ensuring that people treat dogs properly; it is very much about dog welfare.

I hope the Minister will consider not only the Bill that is going through the House, and how it might be amended, but further action on the whole issue of dog control and welfare. Even if we get the amendments to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill that we want, they will still not go far enough in addressing dog control and welfare. I hope he will say something positive about what DEFRA will do to bring all that legislation together.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I will try to ensure that my contribution is less than 15 minutes.

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling). I sympathise with her constituents who have lost their lives, as I think we all do. I also agree with her about the need for education in our schools. It is not only the children who may not have pets in their homes who need education; children in homes where, unfortunately, animals are being treated cruelly also need to be shown the right way to rear and look after animals. There is a lot that can be done in our schools, so I welcome the hon. Lady’s comments.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), the Chair of the Select Committee, for bringing this opportune debate to the Chamber. We on the Select Committee have done a lot of work on the matter, and it is good to have both the Minister and the shadow Minister here this afternoon.

I welcome the microchipping proposal because it means all dogs will be microchipped; it will also help people whose dogs have strayed. Of course, microchipping will only be as good as the database that is put in place. If people go to Blue Cross or Battersea Dogs Home, they will find that of the dogs that come in with microchips, which is probably only 30% or 40% of the total, only 30%—10% or 15% of the total—can be traced back to their owners; the microchips are often not up to date. I am sure the Government will bear that in mind.

We must ensure that the original owner is responsible for the microchip and, if they sell the dog, for ensuring that the microchip is up to date so that the dog can be properly traced. People who sell their car have to ensure that they know exactly where the car is going because otherwise if someone is later done for speeding, the original owner will receive a notice through the post stating that they were driving the car when they were not. I suggest, therefore, that if the previous owner of a dog receives a fine or a summons to court, they are responsible for it. That would concentrate people’s minds. People who sell their dog would then ensure that they knew where the dog was going.

We have talked this afternoon about the need to be careful that, as with dog licences, microchips are not just for the law abiding, which is an issue I have raised before. The last thing someone who is breeding a dog to be dangerous or to be a weapon wants is for that dog to be traced back to them. There are people out there who will wilfully ensure, as far as practicable, that their dog is not microchipped, or if the dog is microchipped, that it is not linked with them. That is fundamental.

When police and council dog wardens come across people who are, say, beating their dogs in the park to train them to be vicious, that is the moment to take in and microchip the dogs, and probably take them away from their owner. At the very least, the dogs should be linked with the owner so that the owner can be held responsible for what the dog does thereafter. Again, I agree with the hon. Member for Bolton West that it is not necessarily the dog that is at fault; it is about the owner who has trained the dog to be vicious. We have to be absolutely clear about that.

That brings me neatly to my next point. It is right that we extend the legislation to deal with people who have in their home dangerous dogs that bite postmen or social workers. In doing so, however, we must be aware that if the dog is protecting the property and someone goes in to trespass or burgle, the dog will take some sort of action against that person. In that case, I do not see why any individual should be prosecuted as a result. That will be the difficult balance in the legislation. Often, when postmen or social workers going into people’s houses are bitten, it is not the first time it has happened. The dogs are sometimes well known for being vicious, and we need to take action on those types of dogs and owners. That is absolutely clear.

Furthermore, while breed-specific legislation is okay up to a point, we now have people bringing dogs into the country and breeding them to be dangerous, so we have to be clear that our concern is the action of the dog and not necessarily the breed of the dog. Leaving the breed-specific legislation as it is does not help when dogs from all over the world are being brought in to breed a more vicious breed of dog. People who do that are outside the law and they do not want to be found; we need to make sure of them, so that we can pin their dogs back to the individual.

[Julie Hilling]

Local authorities spend about £57 million a year on kennelling costs, when dogs are thought to be or might be of a dangerous breed, but with two effects. First, kennelling costs a great deal of money and, secondly, the dog suffers more trauma when kept in kennels while we work out what we should do with the animal. I absolutely agree that it is deed, not breed, that is more important.

[Neil Parish]

The Blue Cross hospital here in London might have dogs of a breed that is considered vicious, yet an individual dog need not be vicious. Once such a dog is taken into care, there is a death warrant on it, irrespective of whether the dog deserves it. We could go round such conundrums all day, but we should rehouse dogs if possible. Sometimes dogs are taken into care just because people cannot cope with them—they are not training the dogs to be vicious; they simply cannot cope with them any longer. Dogs of a good temperament, but of a breed that might be considered more dangerous, are often the ones that have to be put down, and I do not agree with that.

Moving beyond dangerous dogs as such, an issue at the top end of dog breeding is that many are bred to be too pure. Pugs might be bred so they cannot breathe properly, because that is how masters and breed judges see the case; Alsatians are bred with bad hips, because sometimes that is how the pedigree breeders think that breed should be. Linking with the microchip measures and, clearly, back to the breeding, therefore, the Government need to be absolutely certain that dogs are bred to be not only pure, as in that instance, but healthy. That might be going beyond the subject of today’s debate, but the Kennel Club and others are working hard on the issue, and we need to do more. If some pedigree dogs are being bred from a gene pool that is too small, we need to introduce other breeds to ensure a proper gene pool so that they can breed properly—so that they have good hips, for example.

On puppy farming, it is right that for more than two litters the farms or breeders should be registered. DEFRA is working on that; people need to be clear where dogs come from—through puppy contracts, such as those used by the British Veterinary Association—what the dog’s parentage is and where its mother is. If possible, people should see the puppy with the mother, so that they know exactly what they are buying; they should not buy something advertised over the internet or out of the back of a white van, because they have no link to the mother. Such puppies could have been taken from their mother far too young and they could be traumatised and may also be suffering from many diseases. When something happens to a puppy because it has many illnesses, the children of the family it was brought into might be traumatised as well. Again, proper linking to the original breeder through the puppy’s microchip will make all the difference, because people will find it much more difficult to bring puppies in and pass them off as bred somewhere else, which is often the case.

This afternoon, we have a huge wish list, yet as all of us recognise, Ministers and shadow Ministers included, we can make as many laws as we like, but we also have to enforce them. The laws have to be enforceable, and that is what we are keen to see. Resources in councils and the Government are limited at the moment, so we need to concentrate on getting the system—the microchipping —right, with a link to the owner so that the police or dog wardens can take action quickly and effectively. Ensuring that we do not have to kennel dogs for so long will also reduce costs. A lot of good can be done through the Bill.

I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton: the vast majority of dog owners in this country are good and responsible. We must ensure that we go after those who are not. We must also act against dogs that attack not only people but a dog guiding a blind person—that has to be just as bad as an attack on a person. It is terrifying enough to have a dog of one’s own attacked by another dog, but imagine people walking down a road unable even to see the other dog approaching before it attacks their guide dog. That must be absolutely terrifying, and all those things should be taken into consideration.

Finally, if horrendous crimes have been committed by dogs, and if the owners have trained the dogs to carry out such acts, we must ensure that the book is thrown at those people, and that they receive sentences commensurate with their crime. Sometimes, of course, a dog that is not normally dangerous goes out of control, and that has to be looked at slightly more leniently. The situation now is that we must take action against those who are out to perpetrate crime. Once again, I thank my hon. Friend for the debate, and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

I very much understand that, having sat in more Bill Committees over the years than I care to enumerate. I recognise that that is exactly what the Public Bill Committee will wish to do, in examining the notices. What I hope will emerge is that the antisocial behaviour measures provide a flexible package that will deal effectively with irresponsible dog owners, and will do everything available under a DCN, and more.

When the hon. Gentleman was saying, “Will it do this, will it do that?” he saw me nodding. That was because I had a sort of mental checklist, and was thinking, “Yes it will do that, yes it will do that.” It could include, for instance, positive requirements for an individual to attend training classes or to keep their dog on a lead—that sort of specificity.

There is a view that we are talking about a broad-brush area-based measure, but that is not the case. The measures are intended exactly as we are saying—to address the issues of a person with a dog that might get out of control, and to be able to deal with that at an early stage. Crucially, they are personal to the owner and not the dog—a point stressed by everyone—which is an important difference between our measures and the dog control notices. The focus must be on the individual understanding of the person’s responsibility for the animal under their control, and what they need to do to improve their management of that animal.

My expectation is that once people understand both the flexibility and the compass of the proposals, they will accept that such matters are covered. However, it is not for me to pre-empt discussions in Committee. I simply invite Members in each place to approach this with an open mind and to see whether the items on their individual mental checklists are ticked off.

Incidentally, public space protection orders will directly replace dog control orders, which will enable local authorities to impose the same restrictions, while also consulting on other issues in the vicinity.

I think that all that will do the job, but I completely recognise that Members need to be persuaded, which is why I invite them to consider the evidence carefully.

[Julie Hilling]

I may be pre-empting the Minister’s comments, but another concern is about prioritising and resourcing. In talking about the gamut of antisocial behaviour, what priority and resources will be given to this area?

[Mr Heath]

That is difficult for me to answer, because it will be in the hands of local authorities in combination with the police. I can only express the hope that such behaviour will be a key area, but we will not give it a greater priority just by giving it a different name. Either it will be seen as something that local authorities and constabularies need to address, or it will not. I hope and expect that local authorities will address it because of all the cases that hon. Members have recited, which we all recognise as extremely serious. If they do not do so, I hope that they will swiftly be reminded by their constituents that they need to give that matter proper care. It would be meaningless for me to give her a blanket assurance, other than to say that that is certainly my expectation.

Another issue that has repeatedly been raised, with several Members covering common ground, is consolidation of legislation. I perfectly understand the argument that it is nice to have a neat legislative bundle with everything that relates to a particular subject. The fact is that English and Welsh law is not like that, and never has been. Consolidation is quite difficult to achieve, and we have sometimes found that consolidated legislation misses out important elements of former legislation. To be perfectly honest, I am not convinced that the substantial resource required to consolidate legislation is worth it, because practitioners perfectly well understand the legislative tools at their disposal.

We should instead concentrate on consolidating our approach to, and our strategy for dealing with, dog control and welfare issues. That is different from getting the legislation into some sort of legal Napoleonic code. For instance, when we considered consolidation, we found that the provisions are reasonably accessible and that there is no great confusion. It certainly has not been brought to my attention that there are significant confusions in existing legislation.

If we consolidated, would we retain all the civil and criminal options currently available? Some people ask why on earth we rely on legislation from 140 or 150 years ago, but such legislation is sometimes a good basis for dealing with illegal activity. Many practitioners have told us that it would be a great mistake to consolidate the Dogs Act 1871 into current legislation because it is very useful and covers some areas that are not obviously covered by other legislation.

I hear the arguments for consolidation, but, first, we could not have introduced the measures before the House in the time scale available—that is important, because this is urgent—and secondly, it would not necessarily achieve anything. I agree with the hon. Member for Ogmore that we must ensure that we provide perhaps a single set of guidance—I shall talk to my noble Friend Lord de Mauley about whether that is appropriate—so that everybody knows what applies, how it applies and how best to use it to achieve Parliament’s objectives.