Dangerous Dogs Act 1991: New Breeds

Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Every single one of these attacks is a tragedy. So often, they happen in the home, and some of the people involved really should not be in charge of a dog. We are concerned about the breed that people are concerned about now, XL Bullies, because we see from the available data we have that they are disproportionately involved in serious dog attacks. There is a divergence of opinion on this. My noble friend mentions organisations that campaign on this and are unhappy about the breed-specific nature of it. They have one view; another view is that none of the fatal attacks that have taken place in recent years were carried out by a prohibited breed that was registered under the Act. We want to get this right. That is why we are talking to everyone, including the police, vets and campaign groups. We want to make sure that we are keeping people safe.

[Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in the United States, the National Rifle Association argues—spuriously, in my view—that it is not the firearm that is the problem but the person carrying it. In this country, we control dangerous firearms and have very few mass shootings—the opposite of what we see in the United States. Does the noble Lord agree that a dangerous dog that is bred to fight and is inherently dangerous is rightfully being looked at as being banned?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I entirely understand the noble Lord’s point. Most of us who keep a dog can know its breed precisely because there is a breed registration book and it is perfectly easy to describe it. There is no evidence of how you define some of these “fighting dogs” or “status dogs”, as some people call them. I am not making some bureaucratic excuse for not taking action because we are taking action but, in order to make the law effective, if we are going to ban a breed, we have to really ban it and not allow people to get round it by having some nuance of that breed.