Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Oliver Heald and Trudy Harrison

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)]

Q It is. Listening to the accounts that you just gave, which were absolutely horrific, I cannot comprehend the thinking that must have gone on before those incidents took place. Do you think that this Bill will reduce the number of those acts and, if so, why? Do you think it will act as a deterrent?

Michael Flower: I certainly hope so. To my mind, one of the great drives behind the Bill is to try to deter people from committing those offences. I go back a few years working for the RSPCA, and one of the main drives we had for bringing in the welfare offence at the time of the original Act was to introduce to English law preventive measures to stop animals being caused to suffer. The RSPCA is about preventing cruelty, not prosecuting it. We will prosecute it where offences are committed, but we want to prevent it. I hope that, if there is a five-year custodial sentence, that will act as a deterrent. It seems to me that there is a huge difference between an offender serving a 16-week custodial sentence, as is the case at present, and serving two and a half years. That must make some difference to some people, and it can only be beneficial.

Claire Horton: We are aware of research by the University of Birmingham and similar research in Italy that found even a relatively small change in sentences can have a significant deterrent effect. Certainly, given some of the examples we have cited, the sentence at the moment is disproportionate, considering that the sentence for fly tipping is five years, the sentence for theft is seven years and the sentence for driving while disqualified is significantly more than this. For someone who knowingly and determinedly kills animals in the way you have heard about, there has to be a deterrent. There has to be a punishment that fits the crime. At the moment, it just does not at all.

Of course, as was said, there is significant public and cross-party support for this change. I think people recognise that we need to be seen to be taking this seriously and to be acting. Certainly, at the moment, we are the worst of 100 countries in the sentence we offer. Battersea did some research in 2017—I am sure most of you have already seen it, but I have brought some copies for the Committee’s benefit, which I will leave here—that looked at sentencing for animal cruelty in England and Wales. We surveyed 100 jurisdictions around the whole of Europe, the US and Australia, and all of them, including Ireland and Northern Ireland, had higher sentences than England. We really do need to act on this, and we need to do it soon.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Q On deterrence, do you agree that it would help if the courts and the Sentencing Council worked up a list of aggravating features that would merit a long sentence within the bracket of up to five years? For example, you mentioned torture—setting one animal on another. You will know about my interest in service animals—I thank you both for all the support we had with Finn’s law. I suggest that if a service animal that is defending a police officer is attacked with a 10-inch knife and stabbed to within a very close shave of losing its life, that would be an aggravating feature too. What do you think of that?

Michael Flower: The Sentencing Council has actually produced sentencing guidelines for Animal Welfare Act offences already—the most recent version was introduced in 2017, I think—and they contain examples of aggravating features. As a prosecutor, we find them very useful. We would certainly welcome the Sentencing Council revising those guidelines to take account of the Bill, if it is enacted. In fact, I suggest that it is essential that it does. We have had an indication somewhere down the line that it is prepared to look at this fairly quickly if the Bill comes into force. Yes, I would definitely welcome Sentencing Council guidance.

NHS Pay

Debate between Oliver Heald and Trudy Harrison

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Trudy Harrison]

I thank the hon. Lady; I should have been clearer in saying that I support technical and academic routes into all employment in the health sector, because I understand that it is a team effort.

Over the past seven years, more than £90 million has been spent on the brand-new hospital in Whitehaven—more investment than ever before. I am delighted that we have been awarded more than £40 million of extra capital investment to refurbish and rebuild parts of the hospital estate, to bring it up to date and improve the experience of patients and staff. The funding will help to deliver faster diagnosis of conditions including cancer, easier access to mental health services and an expansion of our A&E department, leading to shorter waiting times for operations and more services in GP surgeries. There has been huge progress in improving patient care, and the funding will help to secure the highest-quality, most compassionate patient care anywhere in the world. Some £30 million of new funding will be invested across south Cumbria to modernise mental health facilities and improve A&E facilities at our hospitals, and nearly £10 million of the new capital funding has been earmarked for modernising mental health in-patient services.

Ensuring that we have a full complement of doctors, nurses and other staff on wards is essential. We simply cannot run wards without the appropriate staff. Our public sector workers, including nurses and other healthcare staff, are some of the most talented and hard-working people in the UK. Like everyone else, they deserve to have fulfilling jobs that are fairly rewarded in their take-home pay. We now have 12,000 more nurses working in our hospital wards than we did under the Labour Government, and retaining hard-working nurses and doctors is vital to maintain the service that we all appreciate. I am pleased that yesterday the Treasury decided to remove the 1% pay cap across the board.

One point I would like to draw attention to is the need to assist our talented, highly qualified medical clinicians to be able to do what they are trained to do and experienced in practising. From speaking to midwives both at my local hospital and elsewhere in our trust, I know that they are regularly spending up to three hours of their eight-hour shifts ploughing through administration work, stuck at a computer screen, rather than being out on the wards doing the work that they are trained to do—assisting mothers in labour and delivering children safely. I ask Ministers to look at innovative ways in which our trained staff can use the skills that they have.

It is the 42-year record low unemployment rate and our seven-year track record on deficit reduction that have made the end to the pay freeze possible.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that with the Labour years having led to far less recruitment and training of nurses and doctors than the country needed, we are now in an international labour market for those important workers? It is therefore important that pay rates are high enough to attract them to this country.

[Trudy Harrison]

Indeed; I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that intervention.

I end by commending the Treasury for yesterday’s decision to remove the 1% pay cap.