Illegally Tethered Horses

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Julian Sturdy]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and, as I said at the beginning, although the problem might seem to be suffered predominantly by rural areas, they are not alone, because I know for certain that urban areas throughout the country suffer as well. He is absolutely right about the chipping of horses, which I will go on to discuss, because I want to direct a few questions at the Minister.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has talked a lot about illegally tethered horses. Will he also discuss the problem of fly-grazing? In my constituency, and stretching the length of south Wales, we have had tremendous problems with vans appearing, often late at night, and being opened to dump horses in a farmer’s field. The horses are left there, sometimes for days, with many needing medical attention. The local authorities incur huge costs for vets’ bills, passporting and, ultimately, removing and selling the horses, and any sale does not bring in the money spent by the local authority on removing and looking after them.

[Julian Sturdy]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right about fly-grazing. The problem in my patch is more to do with tethered horses, although I know of local farmers who have suffered from fly-grazing. Overnight, on crops of cereals, horses can suddenly appear and be there for a number of days; it is difficult for the farmers to round up the horses or disperse them. In my constituency, the problem tends to be on areas that are not properly fenced, but I know of other farmers in other areas who have had their fences cut in the middle of night and horses let in, so that the crops are grazed and irreparably damaged beyond the cost of replacing them. She is also right to mention animal welfare, because a lot of the animals that appear on fly-grazing sites suffer from welfare issues, which need to be picked up properly; but that cost does sometimes fall on the local authority.

[Mrs Moon]

The responsibility for the horse, once it is illegally placed on someone’s land, rests with the landowner unless the local authority helps and supports some of the cost. That financial cost—not to the perpetrator but to the poor victim—is an issue that really needs to be addressed.

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[Julian Sturdy]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I agree with him. That must be the way forward if we are to solve the problem logically and fairly for everyone, and at the same time keep the welfare of the animals in mind. I would like local authorities to look at the matter.

[Mrs Moon]

The hon. Gentleman may find it interesting to know that throughout the length of south Wales we have found that it pays the Traveller community to abandon their horses. When they have done so, the local authority takes the horses into care and pays for veterinary bills and passporting, and then tries to sell them because no owner can be found. The horses may be sold for £200, but the veterinary bills and impounding may have cost £15,000. The matter is much more complicated than simply impounding a horse for the owner to recover. The owner waits until a horse is sold, and then buys it back really cheaply.

[Julian Sturdy]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I understand that there are complex arguments in the process, as I will explain. The problem also varies in different regions. In and around York and Yorkshire, the tethered horses seem to be valuable assets to the Traveller community. Whenever bailiffs have been used—there is a bailiff company operating around the country that gives 24-hour notice on a certain site where horses have been illegally put—they remove the horses and store them on a site at a cost to the private landowner, and almost always the fines have been paid and the horses have been returned because the Traveller community see those horses as a valuable asset and want them back. The situation may be different in other areas, and it will depend on different communities, so I understand that the position will vary from region to region.

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[Richard Benyon]

I know that my hon. Friend speaks regularly with his local authority, and I suspect that it will have a Traveller liaison or welfare officer, or dedicated staff who should be conveying their concerns on issues of animal welfare to the people involved. I assure him that our Department takes animal welfare extremely seriously; we talk regularly with the Local Government Association and I will happily raise his point to ensure coherence across local authorities, and the development of best practice.

[Mrs Moon]

One point is that responsible owners will have their horses passported. We are talking mostly about irresponsible owners who do not passport their horses, and it is therefore difficult to track ownership. In the Republic of Ireland, there is a requirement not only to passport a horse but to say where it will be lodged, and that gives people the capacity to track it. We have several passporting schemes, none of which are connected, and therefore it is difficult to track those passports.

[Richard Benyon]

I understand the hon. Lady’s point, and I will take it back to my colleague, the Minister of State who has particular responsibility for these issues, to see whether we can amend the horse passporting regime in the way she suggests.

I welcome the work done by the National Farmers Union task and finish group to gauge the scale of the problem, ascertain the best remedies under existing law, and identify where amendments to the law would enable the problem to be dealt with more effectively. Many dumped horses, however, are traded by people who tend to operate outside the law, so finding effective remedies will not be easy.

I assure my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer that I will seek more information about initiatives from around the country, and consider whether there is a role for central Government to improve, facilitate and evaluate those schemes to ensure that we understand the benefits of best practice. The aim would be to enable councils and other landowners to take better control of the situation. I also assure my hon. Friend that DEFRA Ministers will, together with colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Home Office, consider how we can secure a more joined-up approach to this matter across Whitehall.

Oral Answers to Questions

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

I am glad that my hon. Friend added the last bit, because to say that we would not implement any further regulations might be counter-productive. I can assure him that we will fight very hard against anything that we believe is against the interests of the British agriculture and food sector or the British economy. That has always been the case, and we will continue to do our very best to oppose such measures.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

What steps will the Minister take to put in place regulations to ensure that the Schmallenberg virus is not extended and does not create problems for farmers who still have good-quality lamb available for sale?

[Mr Paice]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to address that issue, which also comes up later on the Order Paper. We do not believe that any regulation on the Schmallenberg virus is necessary. The important point to note is that all the evidence of it that we are now seeing—the deformed lambs and a few deformed calves—is from infection caused last autumn in the midge season. We are working closely with the other member states in northern Europe, where the disease was found earlier than in the UK, to develop the science. A year ago we had never heard of the virus, so we are having to develop all the basic science to move forward with tests and maybe vaccination.

Food Prices and Food Poverty

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

That is very good to hear.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Bridgend food bank covers four of the 10 most deprived wards in Wales, so the service it provides is critical. In its recent report, it said that the people who applied for food there did so because of

“low income or ill health…repossession of their home…job loss or desertion by the…breadwinner, or”

burglary,

“house fire or unexpected benefit cuts.”

People who go to food banks go for a variety of reasons, but is it not appalling that in 2012, when we are celebrating the Olympics and spending millions of pounds, people are still starving?

[Mary Creagh]

I agree. Charities such as the Salvation Army and HelpAge are seeing an explosion in demand as incomes fall, working hours are cut and prices rise.

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me down a path on which I should probably not embark, but I repeat that, in my view, the emphasis has been on cost. I agree with the Bill that there should be a burning of the quangos. Having spent 10 years as a local councillor, I know how overburdened the country has become, and I would support any measure that would save money. There is a debate to be had about costs, and I think that that is the debate we should be having, rather than a debate about whether the position exists at all.

The statement made by the Lord Chancellor back in June failed to recognise that the chief coroner’s office was a single senior judicial post with statutory powers. The Government’s proposals will dismantle the office and transfer some, but not—by any stretch of the imagination—all those powers to other judicial and political figures, which risks creating another fragmented structure where lines of accountability are opaque and clear leadership absent.

The second issue that I want to raise is monitoring and training. That was one of the most important functions of the chief coroner under the Coroners and Justice Act, which gave him the job of both monitoring investigations of service deaths and ensuring that coroners who conducted such inquests were suitably trained.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Percy]

I give way to the hon. Lady, who has a great deal of experience in this area.

[Mrs Moon]

I too was a member of the Committee considering the Coroners and Justice Bill, and I support the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. Another issue that should be considered is the inconsistency in the recording of verdicts, especially narrative verdicts, which has been creeping in increasingly. In some coronial systems, coroners are recording up to 59% deaths as “other”, which means that we are unclear about how those people died. Nationally, the average is 14%. That has a particular impact in cases of suicide. We must look ahead, because we know that we shall have a huge mental health problem when our troops come back from the front.

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[Michael Dugher]

My hon. Friend adds to the list, and a written answer from the Ministry of Justice to my hon. Friend states that it is calculated that at least 95% of responses to the Department’s consultation on the Bill support the RBL call not to abolish the position of chief coroner.

It is widely acknowledged that there are currently great variations in both the manner and quality of coronial inquests. It is clear that reform is long overdue. The creation of the post of chief coroner was at the heart of the new reforms introduced under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, and that was the result of three years of review and consultation and proposed on the basis of cross-party support.

[Mrs Moon]

There is also inconsistency in the willingness of coroners to collaborate with academic research, which can be vital, such as in demonstrating health changes, in particular in relation to suicide, which is an area on which I focus. Some coroners are more than happy to open their records, so we can get an accurate picture of what some of the narrative verdicts actually mean. Others will not allow access to their records, and research is therefore skewed so we do not get an accurate picture of deaths in this country.

[Michael Dugher]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Before the recent legislation, review after review of the coroner system recommended that a chief coroner was the only way to bring about the required changes. In 2003, the Luce review, a fundamental review into death certification and investigation, found that the coroner system was outdated, inconsistent and unsympathetic to families. One of its headline recommendations was for the establishment of a chief coroner position to handle appeals and oversee standards. That review was followed by Dame Janet Smith’s third report of the Shipman inquiry, which again proposed that leadership for coroners should come from an independent chief coroner.

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[Mr Djanogly]

I have not come away with that impression when I have met those organisations.

Let me set out plainly that the chief coroner would not have had any enforcement powers to ensure authorities comply with actions to prevent future deaths that coroners may have reported to them. The chief coroner would not have had the power to investigate complaints about the conduct of coroners or, indeed, to direct a coroner on how to conduct an investigation. Complaints, quite rightly, will continue to lie with the Office for Judicial Complaints. The chief coroner would not, as some have suggested, have been responsible for managing or appraising individual coroners. On administrative issues, the chief coroner would not have been answerable to Parliament, as the Minister will be under our proposed ministerial board.

The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) said that, without a chief coroner, inconsistencies in the reporting of suicide verdicts and the increasing use of narrative verdicts would continue. The chief coroner would have had no remit to direct coroners in how they use narrative verdicts. Coroners are independent judicial office holders. Only coroners can decide on the appropriate form of verdict.

[Mrs Moon]

I served on the Committee that considered the Coroners and Justice Bill, and one of the things that I discussed throughout was the role of the chief coroner. One of my concerns was the totally fragmented nature of the system. I was given an absolute assurance in Committee that the chief coroner would have the capacity to oversee and call in verdicts and to ensure not only consistency but investigation, where there were suicide clusters in particular.

[Mr Djanogly]

The hon. Lady is very involved with coroners. We have had several meetings on coroners. She is dedicated to coronial reform—I respect her for that—but I am afraid that what she thought was the position arising from the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 is not right. Such inconsistencies and misconceptions are rife, which is why I feel that it is so important to address them now.