RSPCA (Prosecutions)

Debate between Richard Drax and Glyn Davies

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me so early, Mr Williams. I wish to make only a short contribution that is effectively an observation. It is a huge pleasure to serve under the chairmanship of a fellow Welshman, and a proud Welshman at that.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) not only on introducing an important debate, but on the tone in which he did so and, indeed, on focusing on an essential point that the Government must address. He could easily have been tempted into other areas where Members who disagree with him may have wanted him to go.

I was a huge supporter of the RSPCA for most of my life. I was born on a livestock farm, and I became a huge supporter of animal welfare mainly because of the annual ritual of slaughtering the family pig. Anyone who remembers that will know what a terrible thing it was. Children who experienced it became supporters of animal welfare, and I was one of them. As I became older, it stayed with me. When I took over the family farm, I abandoned rough shooting on the farm, which had been a tradition. Indeed, for a while I stopped any form of hunting on the land simply because I wanted my farm to become a wildlife centre. At some later stage, I realised that that was not the right way to go to benefit wildlife, so I changed the entire policy. The farm had rough shooting and people investing in shooting, and I welcomed back the hunt. The hunt now meets on my farm because I was so outraged by the previous Government’s hunting ban.

This debate is on the specific role of the RSPCA and the way it is carrying out its job. The RSPCA is doing a range of things, but we are addressing the specific role of prosecutions. For most of my life, I was a huge supporter of the RSPCA. When I was a member of the National Assembly and chair of the relevant Committee, quite often the advice of the RSPCA was hugely beneficial and a big part of our decisions, but in my mind it was always an animal welfare body; I now find the RSPCA to be what one might loosely describe as an animal rights body. My personal support has disappeared. I do not feel that sense of support, and I think a huge number of people in this country who were previously big supporters of the RSPCA and saw it as making a huge contribution to the cause of animal welfare no longer see the RSPCA like that.

I say to Opposition Members who are very supportive of the RSPCA that, with its current focus on prosecutions, including high-profile political prosecutions, the organisation is losing the support of a huge number of people. We will find that the RSPCA effectively becomes an animal rights body in deep conflict with an awful lot of people like me, who have been great supporters of animal welfare.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, sadly, there is evidence of the increasing politicisation of many organisations, and the RSPCA is just another very sad case?