Dog Control and Welfare

Debate between David Heath and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Thursday 13th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Heath]

It might be a good examination question—we sometimes refer such matters to the Law Commission for their erudite musings—but I do not particularly want my Department to spend time on that at the moment. I am not being flippant; I am simply saying that that is not the most pressing thing, because it would not improve the effectiveness of what we are doing.

On microchipping, which several Members mentioned, I am grateful for the support expressed for what we are doing. It is absolutely essential to get it right and that implementation is successful. We are working closely with everybody who has a direct interest, such as the Association of Chief Police Officers, local authorities, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, Blue Cross, the British Veterinary Association, Dogs Trust, the Kennel Club and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We will ensure that, as far as possible, we get the message across to the great bulk of the public that they now need to do microchipping. We are working with database operators and the microchip manufacturers and implanters to address standards and ensure quality and consistency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) made the point that the onus is on owners to maintain the data on the microchip. It will be an offence not only not to microchip a dog, but, just as for a vehicle registration, to have inaccurate information on the registered database.

We have addressed the issue that some dog owners do not have much financial resource available and may see microchipping as a difficult cost to bear: free microchipping is accessible through Dogs Trust, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and Blue Cross centres—35 in total—and some local authorities also offer free or discounted microchipping. I am grateful to everybody working on that, and to the Kennel Club for providing free microchip scanners to all local authorities.

This is a good opportunity to promote national microchipping month. Its launch a week ago was most successful. It was hosted by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton, who is not in the Chamber at the moment. We are progressing on the issue in what I hope is an effective way.

I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury—

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The Cotswolds.

[Mr Heath]

I am sorry; I am behind the times. It was Tewkesbury. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) that we would love to move more quickly, but all the advice says that we are moving at the most sensible rate to get to our objective. We will ensure that microchipping starts with puppies and is extended to the whole dog population. In my view, the most important thing is to get it right and have something that is usable in tracing back to their owners not just all the dogs that go missing each year, but those that cause nuisance. Hopefully, we will be able to connect them to an owner rather more easily than at the moment.

Of course, some owners will not microchip, just like the huge number of people mentioned by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton who ignored dog licensing procedures when they were in place. There will be some who will simply not want to do it, but at least now there will be an offence. When a dog is found, if it does not have a microchip and we can trace it to an owner, that owner will have committed an offence. No licensing system is perfect, but this will certainly go a long way.

[Mr Heath]

That pre-empts not only the legislation, but the secondary legislation that we are introducing, although of course we will answer in due course. It will be an offence, so there will be a penalty. The offence, in the first instance, will be failure to keep the information up to date, but if the information is there and we can trace the dog back to the owner, it will depend what the dog has done and the circumstances.

I should mention an important point. Having discussed the circumstances, I should give some reassurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) that the courts will be able to take into account the circumstances of the case. We will have to return to the discussion about what comprises curtilage of a property, what a dwelling is and so on.

There is a difficulty of definition. We certainly want to deal with the issue of the postman or the political canvasser who gets bitten by a dog out in the yard or garden, where they have perfectly legitimate business, but we also do not want to penalise the householder whose dog is doing its job of protecting property against an intruder who has no business there. Getting that balance right is critical. When someone is within a house, it can reasonably be assumed that unless they have been invited in, they must give a strong argument for why they have legitimate business in the house rather than being an intruder.

It is different for a garden, or sometimes even a shed. A child going to pick up a football that has been kicked into a garden should not be set upon by a dangerous dog. They may be an intruder, but they are nevertheless not a burglar or anyone with malicious intent. A public interest test must be satisfied before a prosecution can be brought. I hope that the guidance to the prosecuting authority will make that distinction clear. It might satisfy the difficulty that Members have correctly spotted with the definition of what exactly comprises the area that we are discussing.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

My hon. Friend has been speaking for a long time and has given us a huge amount of detailed information. Before he sits down, will he comment on the divisive issue of the feline and canine sector council, which is dividing the dog world and making dogs’ fur fly?

[Mr Heath]

I most certainly will. I have the unprecedented benefit of having rather longer than usual to reply to the debate. I hoped that I was making use of it to provide the answers that hon. Members wanted, so I apologise to my hon. Friend if I was taking too long to get to the issue he raised. I have one more thing to discuss first, if I may—dog breeding—because it was raised by a number of hon. Members.

It is absolutely right that breeding is a key element of education, apart from anything else, which is exactly the point made by the hon. Member for Ogmore. People must know, first of all, what is and is not appropriate, and the consequences of breeding puppies. Buyers also need to know whether they are buying a breed that needs a 5-mile run every morning, so they do not keep it in a flat on the 17th floor. They need to know—the hon. Gentleman will know—how adorable a Jack Russell might or might not be before they buy one, and what special requirements it might have.

A sort of ignorant cruelty can be involved when people buy the wrong breed of dog in the wrong circumstances and then find that they cannot manage it. That is sad, because they probably bought the dog for unimpeachable reasons—they love the look of the dog and its nature—but they simply cannot look after it. Education is important.

Another important point was raised by the Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth about the threshold for needing a licence. I would love to be able to give him an absolutely explicit response, so that he could say, “Yes, that’s the answer.” It is not as simple as that, as is so often the case with licensing. Although there is a five-litter cut-off for what is, in any circumstances, considered a business, it is for the local authority to determine who is in the business of breeding and selling dogs when it comes to smaller numbers of litters a year.

There is no definitive term that has the sanction of statutory law behind it; it is for the courts to agree or not agree with the local authority. Actually, there are a variety of circumstances in which that sort of decision comes before the court: there is a degree of flexibility, and trading standards officials must satisfy the court that what they are dealing with is a business in the legislative sense. One litter produced in a 12-month period is unlikely to be considered a business; five litters almost certainly will be, but local authorities have a number of tests that they are asked to apply to determine whether somebody is trading. I will not go into them now, because that is for another Department to determine, but those are the criteria used, and they have the support of case law, if not statute law, in deciding whether somebody falls into that category.

I do not know whether I have satisfied my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth; I suspect that I have not, because it is a vague response. If he is not satisfied, I ask him to talk to his local trading standards officials about whether they feel they have the right legal criteria in place to do their job.

[Mr Heath]

I do not think that it would be a defence to say that there were fewer than five litters. It would be about the circumstances of the breeding programme and the puppies being put on sale. I hear what my hon. Friend says. I will take the matter back to my hon. Friends in Departments with responsibility for that area to see whether clarification is necessary.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds set out clearly why he is concerned about the canine and feline sector council. Let me be absolutely clear that it is not a Government organisation; it is independent of Government. I hope that immediately sets some of his concerns to rest. However, as an independent sectoral body, it could be a useful vehicle that pulls together the views of the sector and feeds them into the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England, which again is not a regulatory body. It simply provides advice for Ministers from the perspective of the users of welfare legislation in the widest sense. Therefore, what we are talking about is not a regulatory or a policy formation body, but a conduit for information, hopefully with the benefit of proper discussion within the sector.

The Kennel Club is one of the bodies represented, and the Dog Advisory Council, which my hon. Friend mentioned, has been invited on to the sector council. I hope that Sheila Crispin will take part, because I would certainly like her views as well. The one thing I stress again is that this is not a regulatory body set up for the purposes of excluding anybody or indeed including one sector to the disbenefit of others. I hope that satisfies my hon. Friend.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I hear what the Minister says, but it seems that the support council was set up with undue haste and very little consultation. Perhaps he will tell us how the chairman was chosen. Was he chosen by open advertisement, for example?

[Mr Heath]

I cannot answer that because the council is not a body of Government; it is independent of Government. Perhaps my hon. Friend needs to have a discussion on this matter with Michael Seals, the chair of the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England. I am happy to try to arrange that for him if it would help. It would be wrong for me as a Minister to assume responsibility for something that is not within my control, but I am, none the less, happy to try to oil the machinery that allows him to get the answers he wants.

I have, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds reminded me, spoken for some time now.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between David Heath and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for introducing this new clause. We had a taster of the argument it raises earlier in our proceedings, when he got some answers from the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is constitutional affairs Minister, but I shall attempt to give some more answers today.

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting question, ably supported by the hon. Members for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) and for Enfield North (Nick de Bois). If I was asked to defend 15 years as the right length of time for qualification, I am not sure that I could come up with a convincing argument, other than the fact that that is what Parliament decided. Parliament has considered this matter on a number of occasions, and it has come up with different definitions of the appropriate qualifying period. On no occasion hitherto has Parliament decided that there should not be a qualifying period, however; it has always said, “Well, there must be a point at which somebody’s links with their country of origin are sufficiently tenuous not to entail having a vote.” Whether that is the correct view is for the House to decide. I merely report the view the House has taken when it has discussed this matter previously.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Surely the fact that somebody would want to register their overseas vote to take part in a general election in this country is sufficient evidence in itself that they have sufficient interest about what is going on in this country to merit being allowed a vote, rather than being denied it.

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman makes a strong point. I am simply reporting the fact that when Parliament debated this matter in the past, it always took the view that there should be a limit.

As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, many other countries take a different view on the appropriate franchise. Some provide for their citizens to vote in domestic elections, while others have specific Members of their legislatures who represent the diaspora. I recall once meeting a charming gentleman who was an Italian Senator. I think I represent a fairly large constituency in the context of the UK Parliament, but its size paled into insignificance when compared with that of his constituency, which, if I recall correctly, was Australasia, Asia, Africa and Antarctica. That is a fairly large part of the world. I do not know whether he visited every parish council on a regular basis, but he certainly represented a lot of Italians who were living abroad. The point is that different countries find different ways of addressing this issue.

Our position at the moment is that we give eligibility to vote to people within 15 years of their living abroad. We extend that also to Members of another place for the purposes of voting in European elections. Some exceptions are made in respect of members of the armed forces, persons in Crown service, persons working for the British Council and their spouses and civil partners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

indicated assent.

[Mr Heath]

So we would still need to have a responsibility on overseas electors to register, rather than have the registration officer seek these people in order to enable them to be registered. Having said that, if we can find better and easier ways to enable that to happen, we should do so; the advent of IT processes may well do exactly that. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his new clause. He has made some very important points and I undertake that the Government will give them serious consideration. We will see whether there are proposals that we might wish to bring forward in due course to address some of his points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

We are not entitled to vote only through Commonwealth membership. We are entitled to vote as British citizens. British citizens are Commonwealth citizens, and that is why the legislation is drafted in such terms. I understand why the hon. Gentleman feels that it is important to make such a distinction, because I would hope that those of us who hold British citizenship are proud to do so. I am also proud to be part of the Commonwealth, which reflects the great history of our nation, and our electoral law takes account of that.

There are aspects of British electoral law in which such a distinction is necessary, and therefore is specifically stated, because an entitlement is restricted to British citizens. For example, the Representation of the People Act 1985 sets out that only British citizens are entitled to register as overseas electors. When the distinction is necessary in legislation, it is made. While I understand the intention behind new clause 5, it is not necessary to change the construction of our electoral law in such a way. I fear that if it were enacted, it would introduce a potential inconsistency with other legislation which uses the phrase “Commonwealth citizen” to include British citizens and other Commonwealth citizens.

However, the hon. Gentleman raises an important point and I will go away and consider it further to see whether there is a useful distinction that ought to be made in our legislation. I hope he will not press the new clause today, although it is useful for him to have raised the issue. Perhaps we should at some stage address the question of whether that distinction should be made. Perhaps we should at some stage also look at the franchise, but now is not the right time and the Bill is not the right place to do that. Nevertheless, he is perfectly entitled to raise the point today.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

With the leave of the House, may I comment briefly on what the Deputy Leader of the House said in response to my new clause? He said clearly that the Government were keen to look at the issue. He rose to my challenge and raised a few minor problems with extending the franchise beyond 15 years for overseas voters, and he responded to some of my hon. Friends, whom I thank for supporting me in the debate, about some of the difficulties of the registration process.

Of course everybody wants the integrity of the electoral register to be maintained to the utmost degree. Only those who are eligible to register should register. We all understand that. The Deputy Leader of the House asked how an electoral registration officer would promote who is entitled to register as an overseas voter, which in the Bill is a positive duty. May I suggest that for overseas voters, that would be only a reactive duty? The electoral registration officer would have to react only to a valid application that was made to him.

May I suggest to the Deputy Leader of the House and to the Committee a practical way of dealing with the issue? The hon. Gentleman should table an amendment on Report or an amendment should be tabled in another place to take powers to extend but not reduce the 15-year period at a time when the Government are satisfied that the registration process is robust and maintains the integrity of the electoral register. He would be able to do that in tandem with the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, his hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who told the House last week that he would look at the measures for the registration process that I suggested to him—namely, using the passport as an identity document, abolishing the annual requirement to register, perhaps introducing a permanent opt-in for people who had registered validly once, and the possibility of using British embassies so that people could register and, even better, vote there. The Cabinet Office Minister undertook to look carefully at those measures, which could be introduced under the Bill and under the existing legislation and secondary legislation. I suggest that the Deputy Leader of the House table an amendment to take a power to extend the 15 years when the Government are satisfied that those measures are in place. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw my new clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 4

Voting procedure

‘(1) Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983 (c. 2) (parliamentary elections rules) is amended as follows.

(2) In rule 37 (voting procedure) after paragraph (6) insert—

“(7) A voter who is in the polling station or in a queue outside the polling station for the purpose of voting at the time specified for the close of the poll shall be entitled to apply for a ballot paper under paragraph 1 above and a ballot paper shall be delivered and the voter entitled to vote in accordance with this rule.”.’. —(Mrs Laing.)

Currently, voters who are in a queue at a polling station at 10 pm but who have not yet been issued with their ballot paper are unable to cast their vote. This amendment would allow for ballot papers to be issued to any registered voter who is in the polling station or in a queue outside the polling station at 10 pm, in order that they may then cast their vote.

Brought up, and read the First time.

Members’ Salaries

Debate between David Heath and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

Hear, hear to what the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) said at the end of her speech: I do not think that we want to be in this position again.

I want to pick up on something that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) said about pay review bodies. Yes, it is true that a succession of reports from such bodies has been accepted by the Government. They deal with teachers, the Prison Service and the health service. Every single one of them says that there should be no increase in pay this year for those who earn more than £21,000. Only one pay review body is proposing an increase for people who earn considerably more than £21,000, and that is the one that deals with Members of Parliament. Why is that happening? Because it is not an entirely independent review, as we have already heard from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Commons, and because it was pre-emptively interfered with by the decision of the previous Government and the previous House in setting the parameters for our pay, which has resulted in the anomalous position of the proposal of a 1% pay increase for MPs while everyone else in the public service gets a pay freeze. That is why we have had to come back to the House today.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

On a point of clarification, there has been a lot of disquiet in the debate about Members of Parliament having to vote on their own pay. Can my hon. Friend confirm whether there will be an annual vote on our pay when IPSA takes over this matter?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David Heath and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Monday 26th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

Well, that is their opinion. It is perfectly clear that it is not possible for Bills to be produced in time to allow full pre-legislative scrutiny in the first 10 weeks of a new Government when those Bills are to be debated in the very near future; I would have thought that that was obvious to any Member of this House. We are clearly committed to using pre-legislative scrutiny whenever possible, but I repeat that it is clear that, with a new Government and a new House of Commons, there will be new Bills that cannot go through that procedure.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

The Deputy Leader of the House will be aware that in the previous Parliament many Bills were almost totally rewritten during their passage through the House. In due course, after the Government have had time to write their Bills, will the Deputy Leader of the House be able to say that pre-legislative scrutiny will be the norm, and not the exception, for a Bill in this Parliament?

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman makes the important point that what is most important is that Bills are written correctly and are made right first time, rather than having them rewritten, as was so often the case under the previous Administration. [Interruption.] We hear protestations from Opposition Members, but may I remind them that in the 2009-10 Session only five Bills were submitted for pre-legislative scrutiny and in the 2008-09 Session there were only four, whereas we have already announced three.

Backbench Business Committee

Debate between David Heath and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am not a member of the House of Commons Commission and I do not wish to tread on its toes, but what he says makes perfect sense to me and I shall ensure that that is communicated to members of the Commission.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Is the Deputy Leader of the House aware that radical and far-reaching repairs need to take place in the basement of this place, where high pressure steam calorifiers are located right next door to very high voltage electrical cables? That is so much the case that I understand that in the previous Parliament the House of Commons Commission even considered whether there would be a need to move out of this building. Has he taken that into consideration in these proposals?

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I can say only that the House of Commons Commission is considering this. As I say, I am not a member of that body, but I would not be putting forward this proposal today—I should remind hon. Members that it is one of the things that the Wright Committee asked us to put before the House— if we felt that there were impossible hurdles to cross this year. However, this matter may be something that we need to consider in future years.

I wish now to deal with the points made by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—they were also reflected in the comments made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz)—about the important matter of private Members’ Bills. The hon. Member for Wellingborough rightly drew attention to what I had said on a previous occasion when he tabled a similar amendment. He quoted me, so may I quote myself? That is always an invidious thing to do but as he quoted me, I shall quote myself. He said that I had said that “perhaps there should” be a change in Standing Orders. I stand by that comment—perhaps such a change should be made—because I want us to do a much better job of dealing with private Members’ Bills.

We do not do a good job on these Bills at the moment and the process contains procedural hurdles that are absurd, and are seen as such by our constituents. Far too often, excellent measures that are introduced by individual Members do not make it to the statute book, despite substantial support in the House, simply because of the way the system works. I am therefore delighted that the Chair of the Procedure Committee, the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), has volunteered that his Committee will examine this as an early matter of priority. It is essential that the Committee does so and I hope that it will make proposals. I also hope that the issue of how many Fridays are made available will become redundant because we will have so improved the way we manage private Members’ legislation that Fridays are not the crucial factor in deciding whether we make progress.

Dissolution of Parliament

Debate between David Heath and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

So be it—that is the point of parliamentary debate. However, there is no point whatever in having legislation on fixed-term Parliaments if there is no constitutional lock. Otherwise it will become a meaningless piece of legislation. I know of no legislation in any country that provides for fixed-term Parliaments that does not provide some form of constitutional lock—some form of entrenchment—in order to ensure that the legislation is not cast aside at the whim of the Executive.

That would seem to return to the position in which the Executive had the power and Parliament was deprived of it.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

As this is a contentious matter, will the Deputy Leader of the House tell us whether he is generally in favour of pre-legislative scrutiny? If he is, will this whole matter be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, and can he give the House some idea of the timing and of when the Bill is likely to be brought before the House?

[Mr Heath]

I cannot give details of timing—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] I cannot give details of timing on the first day of the Queen’s Speech debates in a new Parliament. I can only say that it is our firm intention that the motion will be brought forward before the summer recess, so hon. Members will not have to be patient for too long before they see its terms. As for the legislation, it is clearly set out in the Queen’s Speech as part of this Session’s legislation, so the hon. Gentleman can be assured that it will be brought forward.

In this instance, I believe that there is merit in listening to what people have to say about the legislation after it is published, rather than being too precipitate in moving from the motion, which will be debated by the House, to the legislation in due course. I hope that that gives the hon. Gentleman some reassurance.