Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Friday 4th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Grady]

The National Wealth Fund, which the Government are focusing on—building, to be fair, on work done by the previous Administration—has a real focus on helping local authorities to make sensible investments. Does my hon. Friend agree that given the various sagas that we have seen—Thurrock and solar, for example, or interest rate swaps by Hammersmith and Fulham back in the day—that is a very sensible objective for the National Wealth Fund?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

Order. The hon. Member for Crawley (Peter Lamb) will, I am sure, be speaking to the Dogs (Protection of Livestock) (Amendment) Bill.

[Peter Lamb]

I am fighting my way back to it, Madam Deputy Speaker. Just to address my hon. Friend’s point, having been a local authority leader for quite some time, I understand the pressures on councils to make such investments if their income is being reduced in other ways. Clearly, however, many lessons have had to be learned. I hope that the fund will provide opportunities to use public money far better.

If Members will please allow me to get back to the substance of the Bill, I will proceed with all due haste. My constituency is surrounded by fields, and consequently the provisions that affect those areas also affect my constituents. We have livestock in the constituency, particularly in the nature centre in one of the town’s main parks. It has just been rebranded as Tilgate zoo, but for a long time it was the nature and rare breeds centre, where I have spent many happy hours in various capacities. It is where I got married; that was a high point. It is where I was bitten by a turkey at the age of two; that was a low point. I am sure it all balances out in the long run.

I am afraid we do not have any alpacas or llamas, although I would love us to get some. We are supposed to be rolling out different country exhibits as time goes on. I am reminded that alpacas and llamas are no laughing matter. The Inca empire never developed the wheel; the entire empire was built off the back of alpacas and llamas. As such, they are worthy of great respect.

What we did have, however, was sheep and cows, but some pretty harrowing things happened to the livestock at the nature centre. In one case, a sheep was set on fire while it was still alive. Although the Bill does not directly deal with that, the mentality behind the disrespect of such animals is worthy of note. Far more often, dogs have been set on the animals, or at least people have not been in control of their dogs. We eventually had to remove the sheep entirely from the publicly accessible areas.

In fact, we went a bit further than that, because the local authority owns the park. We also had a problem around the main lake, where we kept finding that cygnets and baby ducklings were being mauled by dogs that had come off leash. We took the decision to implement a public space protection order, mandating all dog owners to keep their dogs on leads in those areas to try to reduce the risk to other animals. I will be honest and say that it was not well received. We are re-consulting on it now, but I suspect it probably still will not be desperately well received.

The big problem around these issues is that people love their dogs, and they think their dog could never possibly do anything wrong. I am certain that they are right about that in the overwhelming majority of cases, but there will always be situations where an owner will not be in control, something will happen and others pay the price—people are put at risk or we lose animals. Despite having voluntary provisions in these areas, experiences show that these are insufficient to the task of requiring people to keep their dogs under control. The provisions needs to cover all the cases; they cannot just deal with the odd exception.

It is really important that the Bill puts in place provisions to enable the police to take appropriate action to monitor, investigate and resolve situations where livestock have been affected. But it is not just about putting provisions in place. We have a habit sometimes of producing regulations but not allocating resource, and if we do not allocate the resource, we do not actually produce any better outcomes. A big concern of mine is that if we create laws that we do not then enforce, we encourage lawlessness in the long run. We should have sufficient regulation that we are capable of enforcing and are prepared to enforce in order to maintain the value and meaning of the law to our constituents.

This issue is not just about animal welfare. While it is tragic when incidents occur than affect livestock, it is a fundamentally a matter of economics as well—the point I made to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East. This is an industry; these are people’s livelihoods, and as we are well aware from debates in this place over the last year, they operate on extremely tight margins, and these people cannot afford the kind of losses that this abuse can cause.

It is important that there are systems of regulation in place to enable the industry to operate effectively into the future, because this is not simply about what happens to the industry; agriculture is a matter of national security for all of us. As an island, we have had to learn this lesson many times. As a country, we have always had to import some food from overseas, and there has always been trade. As far back as the neolithic age, we imported a certain amount of herring from Scandinavia. We saw very clearly in world war two the impact on society as a whole when U-boats were able to disrupt the trade system with the empire and convoys and sailors had to put their lives at risk to ensure that people would survive. This country made efforts at the time, with campaigns encouraging people to grown their own food, and efforts have been made since to try to create a large-enough agricultural sector in the United Kingdom so that we will always be able to feed our population. The development of buffer stock systems over the wars ensured that market fluctuations did not drive people out of business, and they continue to operate on some level to this day.

The impact on our national security was driven home to us during covid, when those who were working throughout the food distribution sector were designated as key workers. It is regrettable that we as a society have rowed back from realising that people in these logistical and retail roles play a far more fundamental role in our day-to-day ability to survive than many of the roles that we choose to promote in society. Ultimately, we need laws that are going to support those in this industry to thrive. In summary, I agree with the proposals in the Bill—and I have attempted to get through my speech at the fastest possible pace to make that point.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Hardy]

I hate to give my hon. Friend the parliamentary answer “in due course”, but he will have to forgive me.

As illustrated by the two Bills we have taken through the House this morning and the actions we have taken in our first year, we are very committed to animal welfare, which is of huge importance to the country. As we heard in the previous debate, we are a nation of animal lovers. We will not revisit the names of all our pets, but we genuinely have a kind and caring nature. One of my favourite events in Parliament is when we have the cats and dogs of Westminster competitions, which are more fiercely fought than some by-elections.

The depth of concern about this issue has been evident in today’s debate. The Government are fully committed to supporting this important Bill as it progresses through the other place. This Government were elected on a mandate to introduce the most ambitious plans to improve animal welfare in a generation. The Department has initiated a series of meetings with key animal welfare stakeholders as part of the development of an overarching approach to animal welfare, demonstrating our commitment to improving animal welfare across the board, and the Prime Minister has committed to publish an animal welfare strategy later this year—or “in due course”.

I thank all Members across the House for their support, engagement and constructive comments. Once again, I am also grateful for the support from farmers, welfare stakeholders, police and others who welcome the Bill. This Bill will have a lasting impact for those affected by livestock worrying, and I am delighted to support it. I thank the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury and look forward to seeing the Bill on the statute book.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

With the leave of the House, I call Aphra Brandreth to wind up the debate.