Online Animal Sales: Regulation
Debate between Mike Penning and Peter Dowd(3 years ago)
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Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. Unusually, I do not think I can disagree with a single thing that has been said in the Chamber today. As I look around the Chamber at the colleagues who are going to contribute, I do not think I will disagree with anything they say either, but do not test me too much.
It was a pleasure to be with Ricky and several colleagues outside No. 10 in the pouring rain. The longer we stayed, the more it rained; it was horrendous. To get 100,000 signatures from one person’s experience means that that experience touched the nation. It did so, as we have already heard, because we are a country—a United Kingdom —of animal lovers. I have seen more people get agitated about an animal being hurt than about people hurting themselves or other people. In many ways, that is right, because the animals cannot defend themselves.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) said, puppy farms are the most abhorrent industry out there. When I was a very young lad, I used to work in Petticoat Lane, Brick Lane, in north London, where puppies were sold at the side of the road in cages. They had obviously come from puppy farms, way back then, 50-odd years ago. We banned that; we stopped that. But the marketplaces that were there off Petticoat Lane and other markets around the country, in all colleagues’ constituencies, are now online. It is fundamentally unacceptable for platforms or marketplaces or whatever they want to call themselves today to say, “Hold up! It’s too difficult to monitor this,” just like it is too difficult for them to pay some tax occasionally. They spend untold amounts of money making sure they get around that sort of regulation, and it is about time that we put regulations in place not after the fact but as these things are happening, today.
I commend the Government and the Minister for the work on Lucy’s law; it was life-changing for a lot of people. What is also life-changing for a lot of people is when, in good faith, they see a puppy online with its gorgeous little eyes, and its mummy sitting there looking after it and snuggling up so that it can have its milk, but it is not the puppy that they get and it was not its mother giving it milk. I have constituents who say to me that when they go with their children to collect the puppy that they bought online, and there is the little puppy—in a car park, because, of course, something is going on in the house, or else they have been shown mum, but mum is nowhere near the puppies—and within months, and sometimes within days, the puppy is not only ill but is not actually what they thought they had bought in the first place. I have a constituent who bought a whippet. It is the biggest whippet ever seen now and it has clearly been cross-bred. People are petrified of going back, even if they know who the seller might be, because these people are serious criminals. Let’s not beat around the bush—they are criminals.
Peter Dowd
If the law were passed, it would be an exemplar for other countries across the world; it would send the message out. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would be a win-win situation, both for the consumer—the person buying the dog—and more importantly for the dogs and the animals themselves?
Sir Mike Penning
I completely agree. In fact, it would be a win for everybody if we get this right, including for the Inland Revenue, because none of these people pay any tax. It would be a complete win for the animal—not just for the puppy, but for where it came from, that puppy farm. The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) said she had lovely Jack Russells. I saw some footage of a bitch that came on heat and they put her in a shed with three or four male stud dogs, to make sure that she had puppies within a few weeks. That animal nearly never survived, let alone gave birth. Those things are happening; these people are criminals. Although we quite rightly say that we need to give more power to local authorities, we need to give them the expertise and ammunition to scare the criminals out of the marketplace. At the same time, the people providing that marketplace need to close it down.
In the world we live in today, animals will be bought online, and the pandemic increased the number of people going online. I went through trauma—absolute trauma—at home, because we lost our dog. It is the first time in my life that we have not had a dog at home. She was 22 and a dachshund—before they were fashionable, as they are at the moment—and we lost her. At home, both my daughters and my wife are saying, “Let’s get a puppy. We’re at home. We can look after her now.” I stood my ground, for one simple reason: we are not at home now.
If people go to any of the rescue centres, they will see that there are thousands of animals there now. The people who got the animals were in the right frame of mind at the time. Admittedly, lockdown put a lot of us into very difficult times. At the time, it was the right thing to do, but now it is not. If someone goes to a rescue centre, they will not be able to just pick an animal up and walk away. The staff will check the person out and ensure that the animal is healthy, and that is what we should be doing today. I say this to the Minister. It may be difficult, but lots of things are difficult in government. That is why we are in government—to sort these things out and to sort the online market in animals out. It can be done if there is a will, and there is a will in this room today.
Police Funding Formula
Debate between Mike Penning and Peter Dowd(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Peter Dowd
My hon. Friend just set out clearly the jiggery-pokery finances of this Government. That is what it is—it is hocus-pocus. By 2020, this Minister, or his successor, will no doubt be accusing the West Midland police of flying by the seat of its pants for having such small reserves. In any event, the West Midlands PCC was already doing what the Minister was, post-hoc, suggesting that he should do. Evidently, there is a contagion of disingenuity in the Home Office.
More shocking were the contents of the Home Affairs Committee report of December 2015. In last week’s Opposition day debate on police funding, we had this Minister refusing to take interventions, with the exception of those from one or two of his own Members, in full obsequious mode. I am afraid that his insouciant and dismissive attitude towards Members of this House has antecedents—in other words, he has form.
Mike Penning
I will not give way now, but I will do so in a minute. Most of the debate was not about the future funding formula; it was about the previous funding formula and previous austerity measures. There was a degree of concern—from, I accept, Members on both sides of the House—about how that was done and about how we should go forward.
Hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), have asked about the uplift in firearms capability. We have put £36 million out there, and there will be more to come. It is separately funded. Hon. Members have raised the issue of counter-terrorism, which is also funded separately from the formula.
I accept that in Bedfordshire, as the hon. Member for Luton South (Mr Shuker) said, there are some real issues with the funding formula, and I have met him and other Bedfordshire Members to talk about that. There is more that could be done. Bedfordshire was given counter-terrorism money but did not manage to spend all of it. That is really interesting, in view of the fact that it was given the funding for that specific use. The percentage of warranted officers who are off duty because they are not fit for operational duties is 10%. That percentage is high for such a small force, and it is, understandably, a concern. I accept that there is work that we can do together.
Peter Dowd
Does the Minister acknowledge—let us use that word—that given what happened with the review of the police funding formula and its withdrawal, there is deep concern that the same thing should not happen again and a fear that the formula will not be fair? That is the concern.
Mike Penning
Opposition Members can exacerbate that fear, but they cannot deny that I came to the House and ate an awful lot of humble pie because my officials got things wrong. As a Minister of State, I took responsibility for that, and we will go forward to make sure that we get it right. I repeat that there will be winners and losers; that is always going to be the case. Some people will be happier than others.