Lord Whitty
Main Page: Lord Whitty (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Redesdale
My Lords, the purpose of Amendments 8, 9 and 18 is to clarify the situations in which it is reasonable for a dog to show aggression. The Bill protects a dog’s owner from any prosecution if the dog bites a burglar or a mugger. It seems right to me that any dog’s owner should feel secure in the knowledge that his dogs will defend him and his house against someone threatening him or breaking into his house. It has been put to me that a dog in its owner’s garden with a good secure fence surrounding it, with clear warning signs that a dog is within, would be expressing only normal behaviour if it should show aggression to someone entering the garden.
It has also been pointed out that, in addition to dogs used by the Crown to protect property, there are now private security companies providing similar protection services. Those companies are licensed by the Security Industry Authority and there is now a British Standard that covers their training and use. Dogs are also used for similar purposes as part of displays. Those dogs compete against each other at trials to demonstrate their ability to control someone who is dressed as an intruder and wearing appropriate protective clothing. I believe that it would be unreasonable to prevent the continuation of such displays.
Amendment 8 seeks to allow the dog to behave naturally and for the owner to be protected if he has taken reasonable precautions to ensure that his dog is properly under control. The second part of the amendment seeks to protect those companies while they are being used at work. Amendment 18 defines the companies. Amendment 9 seeks to exempt dogs being used at such trials. The real effect of these amendments together is to broaden the number of situations in which a dog may lawfully show unprovoked aggression to include dogs kept under control on private properties, dogs used as commercially registered guard dogs and dogs at work trials.
The amendments have taken many hours of negotiation with a number of bodies. The great value of a Private Member’s Bill is that certain issues can be brought forward so that, if this Bill ever goes forward to another place or is accepted by the Government in another form of legislation, many of these issues will already have been aired. I beg to move.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, the noble Lord referred in passing to the Security Industry Authority. Is he aware that late on Monday night we had a debate on the Public Bodies Bill where it was clearly the intention of the Government to abolish the statutory basis of the authority? For clarification, I should like to know whether, if it no longer had statutory authority, that body could perform the role that the noble Lord envisages in this legislation.
Lord Redesdale
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asks me to tread on difficult and prickly ground. That is beyond my pay grade on these Benches. There has been much discussion about the Security Industry Authority’s roles and responsibilities. It is one of the organisations that will be carrying on for a while, and I am sure that its responsibilities will be passed on to another organisation. It might not have to be regulated to deal with this role.