Voluntary and Charitable Sectors

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, we are all indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for raising an issue which is so important to the sustenance of a compassionate and generous society. I am a trustee of a number of charities and draw attention to my entry in the register of interests. However, I will talk specifically about a group of charities, and tens of thousands of volunteers, who care for one of the most vulnerable groups in our society: the animal welfare charities that do so much to help care for our nation’s animals.

I accordingly make a declaration of interest as a cat owner. I am with Charles Dickens, who said:

“What greater gift than the love of a cat?”.

It is a gift I can return today by speaking a little about the challenges faced by those charities such as Cats Protection, at whose selfless work I marvel, caring for abused, sick or stray animals.

We are of course a nation of animal lovers: 13 million households have pets, including 9 million dogs and at least 8 million cats. Aside from the pure joy of a loving relationship, pets play an important role in the development of our society. At the start of life, children taught properly to care for an animal—often by the animal charities and their volunteers—learn important life skills about the need to be compassionate to those who are vulnerable. As we grow older, pets, particularly dogs and horses, provide physical exercise which is important to general health—perhaps I should have got myself a dog rather than a cat. Later on in life, animals play an absolutely vital role in providing companionship to the elderly.

On the other side of the coin, deeply regrettably, so much of what is wrong in our society, whether it be bullying in schools, anti-social behaviour or social deprivation, is intimately bound up with instances of animal cruelty, one of the most despicable of all human acts. Concern for animals is one of the foundations of a civilised society.

Of course, most animals are loved and cosseted but, tragically, not all of them are. That is where the voluntary and charitable sector steps in, tackling cruelty, finding caring homes for unwanted animals and educating the public about animal care and welfare. The leading charities in the sector, household names such as the RSPCA, Cats Protection, the Dogs Trust, Blue Cross and Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, have been playing a vital role in looking after vulnerable animals for many generations, and I take the opportunity of this welcome debate to pay tribute to them. Volunteer support is absolutely crucial to these great organisations, as we have heard from so many other noble Lords. Cats Protection, for example, has over 9,100 volunteers across the UK, working alongside around 500 full and part-time staff. The estimated value of that volunteering is around £60 million a year. Each year, those volunteers help care for 194,000 cats and kittens, rehoming and reuniting around 46,000 of them, and deal with 24,000 feral cats through trapping them, neutering them and returning or relocating them.

It is the same story across the board in this sector. Volunteers working for the Dogs Trust help to care for 16,000 dogs in a national network of rehoming centres, while last year the Blue Cross army of 2,600 volunteers put in 320,000 hours of hard work looking after more than 40,000 sick, injured and homeless pets. It is absolutely fitting in the debate today to honour all those volunteers, many of whom are in full-time jobs, with family commitments and animals of their own to care for, who work so hard to look after vulnerable animals. They are worth their weight in gold.

The scale of the challenges those charities and their volunteers face is enormous, as the economic downturn from which we are now emerging has taken its toll. The number of animals abandoned last year, according to the RSPCA, was up by nearly 60% since the start of the economic problems, while RSPCA inspectors had to investigate over 153,000 complaints of cruelty.

However, it need not be this way. In his introduction to the recent PDSA report in 2013, The State of our Pet Nation, its director Richard Hooker said:

“So many problems that are seen by animal welfare organisations across the UK are entirely preventable. People continue to make misinformed choices at every stage of their pet ownership journey, and consequently pet welfare is being compromised”.

Now for my tiny little bit of advocacy, led in this direction by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. Parliament and Government can do a lot to help these charities and their volunteers cope with what is a growing animal welfare crisis. I will highlight three things: education, regulation and funding.

First, over the long term the best way to tackle the problems animal charities and their volunteers face is for better education of young people. How much more optimistic the long-term prospects for animal welfare would be if all children understood the five welfare needs of animals. The charities themselves do a great deal in this area already. For instance, Battersea Dogs & Cats Home talked to 13,000 young people in 10 London boroughs last year. However, animal welfare needs to be a mainstream educational issue, and I urge the Government to look at making it part of the national curriculum in primary schools.

Secondly, we need to try to ensure that the statutory rules and regulations governing animal welfare, particularly relating to the breeding and sale of pets, are kept up to date. Legislation in this area is over 60 years old and is contributing to the animal welfare crisis by making commercial breeding and sale of pets too easy in a digital age. I hope that is another area that the Government will look at.

Finally, while animal welfare charities of course rely on voluntary donations, grants and legacies, there is a case for more seed-corn funding from Defra for community education projects of the sort piloted in inner London in 2012 to help the neutering and microchipping of dogs. As we have heard, the charitable sector itself can provide time, expertise and volunteers, but there is also a role for government, particularly in view of the wide range of public policy issues that are bound up with this area.

Shakespeare wrote:

“How far that little candle throws his beams!

So shines a good deed in a naughty world”.

Today has been our opportunity to applaud all those extraordinary volunteers and charities whose good deeds and selfless acts of generosity shine in a way that makes so many lives better.