Harvey’s Law

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hayes]

With her usual perspicacity, my hon. Friend anticipates the final commitment that I wish to offer. The Highways Agency is of course responsible for large roads—the key arterial routes—but it is my estimation that the majority of fatalities among cats and dogs are on local roads. The Highways Agency looks after our motorways and major trunk roads, but I believe that we can go further. Following this debate, I intend not only to communicate with Transport for London but to write to all local highways authorities throughout the country to draw their attention to the Government’s position and invite them to reflect on their own local policy. That would not only take us back to where we were in respect of the mandatory obligation to collect, record and notify owners; it would take us further than we have ever been if we were able to bring about a circumstance whereby we were doing the right thing on roads throughout the country.

I was describing Dickens’ claim that there is no greater love than the love of a cat or dog, which brings me, finally, to Hemingway. He is not one of my favourite writers—that might be for political reasons—but he did sum up what I said at the start of this debate about why animals have the effect on us that they do. He was speaking of cats, but he might well have been speaking of dogs too, when he said:

“A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not”,

and dogs do not either. Today, Members have not hidden their feelings, and neither should they have. I am a Minister who never hides my feelings.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

It is my great misfortune to have missed most of this debate, but I need not fear, because Mr Derek Twigg is going to sum it all up in the next few minutes.