Greyhound Welfare

Lisa Cameron Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Rosindell. I thank the EFRA Committee and the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) for leading the debate today. I start by thanking the great many organisations that work for greyhound welfare across the UK, including Scotland’s Greyhound Rescue, the League Against Cruel Sports, Blue Cross, the RSPCA, the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Scottish Greyhound Sanctuary, Give a Greyhound a Home, the Dogs Trust, the International Fund for Animal Welfare and West of Scotland Greyhound Welfare, which looks after greyhounds in foster homes and kennels across my area.

Greyhounds are raced until they are three to four years old. Then, many will be put down. Greyhounds are described as being very clever. They are generally very gentle, and they are fantastic with children. Two 20-minute walks a day is all they need, as they are built for speed, not stamina. They should be rehomed, not disposed of.

My first contact with greyhound racing was extremely distressing, and it has never left me. I was working as a psychologist in the NHS, and my colleague was married to a local vet. He was just starting in his career, and he was doing evening sessions at the greyhound track at Shawfield stadium in Glasgow. I believe it is a regulated stadium. At unregulated stadiums, veterinary cover may not be in place at all. My colleague routinely came into work upset, stating that there had been another dead dog in a bag in her garage that morning before she left for work. She described the terrible circumstances in which her husband worked in the evenings, where he was placed in a double-bind. He had to put down dogs that were injured or judged not to be good enough, otherwise they would be killed in inhumane ways—hit over the head with bricks, with their bodies discarded in the countryside and their ears cut off to prevent detection. They were left on motorways or in mass graves elsewhere. The dogs were simply treated as commodities by individuals whose sole goal was to make money at their expense. He often had to euthanise dogs that could have been treated medically and recovered; otherwise, in his words, they would simply have met a much worse fate. As a young vet, that must have truly depressed him, and it still upsets me to this day to think of it.

The second time I came into contact with greyhound welfare issues was slightly different. I was working in forensic mental health services. I often had to risk-assess violent offenders and provide recommendations for their management. I had to assess an offender who had been extremely violent towards his partner and children. He owned two greyhounds, and assessment revealed that he went hare coursing illegally with the dogs. As with many violent individuals, he had a history of violence towards animals, including his dogs. They were regularly kicked and beaten by a man, six foot tall, who used them to kill hares in the middle of the night. It was his favourite pastime, alongside violence towards humans.

Since that time, many of my colleagues and friends have rehomed greyhounds. They speak of the unspeakable lives that greyhounds live today, both within and outwith the industry. Some greyhounds are engaged in illegal hare coursing. Few prosecutions occur, so things have not got better. It makes me sick to the stomach to think of the suffering and distressing lives that thousands of greyhounds have today.

I would like to see change from the Minister. The industry needs radical reform. There should be one system of regulation covering all tracks. Local authority officers are not resourced properly or trained adequately to be able to assess tracks. They are not required to inspect tracks regularly, and that needs to be addressed. We need to address data on retiring greyhounds, the number of dogs euthanised unnecessarily and the accidents and injuries that occur at trackside. As we have heard, thousands of dogs go unaccounted for each year, and that simply is not good enough. There need to be regular inspections of breeders and training kennels, and not just tracks. We need to ensure the welfare of the dogs where they spend most of their lives.

The problem of doping needs to be addressed. Dogs are drugged to speed up or slow down their progress. That further undermines the integrity of greyhound racing and has serious effects on dog welfare. Mandatory testing should be required at tracks. Those found to be using drugs should face punishment including fines, bans, imprisonment or rehabilitation, or many of the above. We need to increase the number of dogs tested.

Ultimately, I do not wish to see self-regulation continue in the industry, as I feel it prolongs the time it takes for change. I have little faith in the industry regulating or reforming independently. The UK is already behind many international standards. Repeated attempts at reform have failed, so we need Government action now. There should be greyhound passports or tracking and a moratorium on new tracks opening. Bookmakers should take responsibility and contribute to improvements in standards. The public simply will not stand for inaction in this realm. We must address the scourge of greyhound cruelty that permeates the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady makes a point that several hon. Members have raised. As she will be aware, this area of legislation is a matter for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. There is already a statutory horse-racing levy, which has issues of its own. To extend the remit in the way that she and others have suggested would require primary legislation—I do not think we could do that through secondary legislation—and I am told that there may also be EU state aid and competition law issues. Clearly, those types of obstacles will shortly be removed, and in that context the Government may want to revisit and reconsider the issue in the future. I simply say that it would not be as simple as she says to amend the legislation. I am sure that DCMS Ministers will look at this debate, since they are looking closely at these issues in the context of the horse-racing levy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton mentioned rehoming, which is a very important issue. There are estimates—they are only estimates—that around 8,000 greyhounds leave the industry, the sport, tracks and racing each year. The Retired Greyhound Trust and other animal welfare charities do incredibly good work. The Retired Greyhound Trust rehomes between 3,500 and 4,000 dogs, and we think that other welfare groups rehome around 1,500 dogs. Some people say there are therefore between 1,000 and 1,500 missing dogs.

We have got the GBGB to commit to publishing clearer data about dogs that leave the sport, in terms of what happens to them and what leaving means. I think we all agree that we should aim at all costs to avoid the euthanasia of perfectly healthy dogs. Wherever possible, we should try to rehome these wonderful, kind, loving dogs. I met two of them when a constituent brought two greyhounds that had been involved in racing to see me.

The EFRA Committee’s report made it clear in paragraph 60, on page 16, that the

“introduction of microchipping should significantly improve the tracking of greyhounds bred for racing from birth to death.”

Let us hope we get some progress on that.

The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse raised the issues of trainers’ kennels, which I have dealt with, and of disappearing dogs, which I believe we can make some progress on. He referred to the £0.5 million welfare initiatives fund that we mentioned in our response to the Select Committee, which I understand was the result of better than expected fund income and an underspend. That is obviously a welcome boost at a time when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton said, funds for this sort of work have generally been declining.

The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) highlighted some appalling cases of animal cruelty. I am as horrified by her examples and anecdotes as any other hon. Member or member of the public would be. I simply point out that every single case she cited is a clear breach of existing animal cruelty laws. Those cases breach the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and would have breached animal welfare legislation predating the 2006 Act.

The hon. Lady also said that we should have a moratorium on the opening of new tracks. I am not sure that that is the challenge we face. We have some 28 tracks in total, 24 of which are under a scheme with the GBGB. Only four are regulated by local authorities, and they are small independent tracks. I am not sure that the challenge we have is dozens and dozens of new tracks opening up and causing new problems. This sport does not seem to be expanding; if anything, it might be losing popularity. I therefore do not believe that we need the type of moratorium she suggests.

The hon. Lady and several other hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), raised doping. That is already an offence under the Gambling Act 2005, and people can be prosecuted for it. Depending on what is used, it is also potentially an offence under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. The hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow may take the view that there has been insufficient enforcement or that inadequate penalties have been applied in some cases, but the legal remedy for those issues exists.

[Dr Cameron]

I thank the Minister for clarifying those issues. Is there scope to put more resources into prosecution and ensuring that regulation goes much further?

[George Eustice]

There may be opportunities to review enforcement. Indeed, in DEFRA at the moment we have concluded another review of animal licensing establishments, where we are looking at getting more consistent enforcement across the piece on animal welfare. I am sure that I can look forward to another debate in this place because the EFRA Committee has also undertaken an inquiry into some of those proposals, which we are considering at the moment.

I may have misunderstood the hon. Member for Redcar, but she appeared to suggest that the Animal Welfare Act does not apply to the independent tracks or all tracks. That is not true. Whether a racing track is covered by the UKAS accreditation scheme or indeed by a licence from a local authority, all tracks and everyone at all times are covered by the Act—there is no exemption. The 2010 regulations supplement our animal welfare legislation; they are not an alternative to it.

The shadow Minister, in that vein, raised the level of inspection of those small independent tracks. That is ultimately an issue for the local authority. There are only four such tracks and only three local authorities are involved in licensing them, so the local authorities tend to be very familiar with the tracks they license and are in a good place to judge the level of inspection that is required. It is often the case that the smaller tracks tend to be for hobby racers rather than the professional industry, and we often have fewer issues with them. Therefore, in some circumstances a local authority may deem that an annual inspection is unnecessary.

I am grateful to the EFRA Committee for both its scrutiny of this matter and its report. The report’s findings support DEFRA’s own review of the 2010 greyhound regulations. Both the EFRA Committee’s report and DEFRA’s review found that there had been a number of successes in the past six years, as well as areas in which the industry could and should have done more. The GBGB is beginning to address those concerns, and we have agreements with it to do so by 2018—a two-year probationary period. Should the board fail, the Government will consider other approaches, including regulation.