Badger Culls (Assessment)

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The Government have said that that they will fully audit the results. When they are fully audited and analysed and properly published, I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman and others will want to examine them in great detail and return to the House with comments.

One point of fact is the dreadful disease that bovine TB is and the pain it causes to badgers, cattle and farmers. Significant attention has been given to the relatively small number of badgers being culled in these trials, but less attention is given to the 314,000 cattle that have been slaughtered in the last 10 years at a cost of £500 million to taxpayers. Indices of TB in cattle show that it increased ninefold between 1997 and 2010 in England, which now has the highest incidence of TB in the whole of Europe. The cost will rise to more than £1 billion over the next decade if nothing is done to eradicate TB from our communities.

It is important to remember that culling is simply one aspect of the Government’s comprehensive strategy to eradicate TB within 25 years. I hope that no one speaking in the debate will disapprove of that.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I will give way to my hon. Friend once.

[Martin Horwood]

My neighbour and hon. Friend and I share a concern for Gloucestershire farmers, and I am sure we share the ultimate aim of seeing both cattle and badger populations healthy and TB-free. Does he agree that preliminary data that seem to be emerging in the press, and which the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) referred to, suggest that less than half the target number of badgers were killed in Gloucestershire this time? If those data are correct, we may worsen the risk to Gloucestershire cattle because of the perturbation effect.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

That is speculation, but even if it proves to be true, we will need to have a debate over what the target numbers were, and I shall come on to that later in my speech. We will begin after this second year, and certainly in the third year, to be able to analyse some of the results and see what is already known through some anecdotal evidence, which is that some farms that have had TB reactors for six or eight years have, this year, for the first year in those six or eight years, had no reactors. That may be anecdotal evidence, but it begins to point to the fact that the culls are having a beneficial effect.

Badger Cull

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which takes me back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). It is about making it look as if something is being done, but, all too often, it results in even more damage.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the badger cull was the wrong thing to do and that we should have followed Scotland’s example, as it achieved BTB-free status in 2009 without culling anything. However, he must acknowledge the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), which he also announced when he was a Minister: the Government have also done the right thing by restricting cattle movement, which is probably a contributory factor in the fact that bovine TB incidence is now falling in England.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Mr Brown, you are being very generous in giving way to other Members, but may I gently remind you that we have agreed to keep our remarks to eight or nine minutes, including interventions? I hope that will mean that those intervening will eventually be able to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

No.

Today’s debate is unworthy of a Division and I hope that the House will not divide until it has had time to read and digest the report.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Wiggin]

No.

If the EU is going to ban our exports if we vaccinate, it should do so on proper health grounds. It will not be able to achieve that. If the Opposition object to scientific pilot schemes, they must apply the same science to badgers and to cattle equally. For 14 miserable years they did not do that. If the Government want to beat this disease scientifically, they will have to analyse what the scientists say and allow us to act within the law.

It is worth pointing out that there are many who believe that if the pilot culls are a failure, we should revisit gassing. I hope I am not alone in saying that I would hate to see that. Ultimately the House should unite in wanting to see healthy badgers, healthy cattle and healthy people. Unless we are consistent, scientific and determined, we shall be beaten by a minuscule bacteria, and this is not a fight we can afford to lose.

Wild Animals in Circuses Bill

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

A lot of work has been carried out. As I said earlier, we want to make sure that the legislation is effective. A number of challenges could be made against it if it fails to cover all the bases. I assure the hon. Lady that it is our full intention to see a ban come in that will be effective at dealing with the small number of animals that remain and that deals with the possibility of travelling circuses or new circuses wanting to set up in this country. I will come on to explain what the Government have been doing in the meantime to bring in a rigorous licensing system that will be of comfort to the hon. Lady.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I warmly welcome the Government’s announcement that they have the clear intention to legislate for a ban on wild animals in circuses. Does the Minister appreciate that he will have very strong Liberal Democrat support within the coalition for such legislation to be brought forward in this Parliament? That is what I think all Members and our many supporters want.

[Richard Benyon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I think there is a coalition of the whole House on this legislation, and that the Government and all of us will be able to be proud of it.

There is some justification for saying that there have been plenty of opportunities to introduce this legislation over previous decades and before, so let us look at what we are proposing. All Members will appreciate what it involves when they realise that the legislation will not only be robust, but will be something of which we can all be proud.

Badger Cull

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. In fact, a vaccine is a lot closer to being developed than he and others suggest, so there are alternatives to culling. Earlier in the week, the Secretary of State made much of saying that there no alternatives. The tragedy is that there are alternatives but this Government seem extremely reluctant to bring them forward.

On tackling cattle-to-cattle transmission of the disease, the ISG report states:

“Movement of cattle from infected herds in the periods between routine herd tests has long been recognised as a cause of new herd breakdowns, and it is generally accepted that most of the sporadic herd breakdowns in relatively disease-free areas of the country result from movement of infected animals.”

The evidence suggests that focusing on the role of badgers in the spread of bovine TB is a distraction and that priority should instead be given to preventing the spread of the disease between cattle. That is why the motion calls on the Government to introduce a programme of vaccination, which eminent scientist and former Government scientific adviser Lord Robert May points to as an important tool in tackling TB. He says:

“What is particularly irritating is that we have the vaccines in the pipeline, but the commitment to really go in and test them is…not there”.

DEFRA confirms that. A statement on its own website reads:

“BCG…is the most suitable cattle TB vaccine candidate in the short term. Experimental studies show that BCG vaccination reduces the progression, severity and excretion of TB in cattle…and field studies show that it can reduce transmission of disease between animals.”

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that farmers’ voices are not unanimous on this issue? I have been contacted by Gloucestershire dairy farmers who support the vaccination model being developed by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust and, in the short term, the model of meticulous biosecurity that has been advanced successfully by Gloucestershire farmer Steve Jones, who has managed to contain bovine TB despite the fact that his farm is in the very centre of the bovine TB area.

[Caroline Lucas]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is absolutely right that farmers are not speaking with one voice on this issue. Many of them recognise that we need an effective strategy but that culling is a costly distraction from achieving that.

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[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

In Shropshire in 1997, 47 cows were slaughtered as a result of bovine TB. Last year, more than 2,000 were slaughtered. There has been a huge increase in the disease in my constituency and throughout Shropshire.

I have spent a lot of time with many of my Shropshire dairy farmers and sometimes, having gone around their farms with them, I have found myself sitting at their kitchen tables, having coffee and talking about the impact of that slaughter on them and their families. I do not mind saying that sometimes we—grown men—have sat around the table and cried, such is the emotion. The impact—not just on them but on their families and, in particular, young children—of whole herds being taken away for slaughter is devastating.

I hope that hon. Members who oppose this action will take the time—I invited the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) in good spirit—to come to Shropshire and areas of the country facing this extraordinary crisis, and to meet our constituents and hear the emotion in their pleas for action. Hon. Members would then begin to understand why so many Government Members feel strongly that action must be taken now.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case. I stood beside a dairy farmer in my constituency as their herd was loaded for slaughter, and it is an extremely distressing experience, but that is all the more reason to listen to the science and not make the situation worse. It is simply wrong to suggest that that is not what people on both side of the debate are trying to achieve.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Of course, we will be arguing about the science, and both sides feel strongly that their scientific arguments are correct and that they have the correct scientists’ feedback on their side. That will continue throughout the debate.

Rio+20 Summit

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and all the other speakers of all parties with whom I agree on many issues. Speaking as a Liberal Democrat, as a former member of the Environmental Audit Committee and, indeed, as a former GLOBE delegate to the Cancun climate change summit, I feel as though I am speaking among friends here on many of these issues. I commend the Environmental Audit Committee for its report, for its mission to raise the profile of Rio+20 and for its role in securing this debate today.

Twenty years ago, I was involved in raising the profile of the original Earth summit. I then worked for Oxfam, and we were sending out tens of thousands of mailings to Oxfam supporters, trying to get them to lobby their MPs. I remember that a young campaigner called Caroline Lucas was working there at the same time. Whatever happened to her, Mr Deputy Speaker? Even then, we were trying to link the issues of global poverty, global justice and global sustainability, and trying to persuade people that they were absolutely inseparable. In the intervening 20 years, it has become even clearer that that is the case. The risk of climate change, and the risk that it poses to the global economy, as well as to people’s lives and livelihoods, is now even better understood. The risk of climate change accelerating beyond 2 above pre-industrial levels is also much clearer, not only from the United Nations framework convention on climate change reports but from domestic reports such as the Stern report, which catalogued in excruciating detail the risks of flooding, famine and disruption, and the challenge that they would pose to global economics as well as to people’s lives.

Even then, we predicted that the first people to suffer the most from climate change and environmental disaster would be the poor. Sadly, that has proved to be the case. With hindsight, it was probably true even then, as environments in the horn of Africa and the Sahel were beginning to change on a permanent basis. The risks to the poor in countries such as Bangladesh are even clearer now. This is also true in the UK, and even more so now. In 2007, my constituency was extremely badly flooded, and it was the uninsured and the underinsured—those on low incomes—who often suffered the most. We know that that kind of extreme weather event, even in relatively wealthy countries such as ours, will be much more frequent thanks to climate change. It is even clearer that we cannot separate climate change and environmental sustainability from issues of poverty and social justice. Only by taking concerted action across rich and poor nations, forested and deforested nations, and those nations that are the most and least vulnerable to climate change, can we tackle this global challenge. We are, as someone said a few years ago, all in this together.

Alongside carbon emissions and natural resource use, Rio+20 must tackle the issues of poverty, food, energy access and water. I do not entirely agree with the support expressed by the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) for GM technology. There are other ways to tackle food production, including introducing more efficient food production, as the hon. Member for North Antrim said. Less wasted food in the richer countries would be a significant contribution, as would the fairer distribution of land and better education and training for poor farmers in many parts of the world. All those things can work together to make the whole planet more efficient at producing and distributing food.

Several hon. Members, including the hon. Members for Gower (Martin Caton) and for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), have highlighted the many failures in development and environmental protection over the past 20 years. In the graphic phrase of the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, many of the scientific indicators are still flashing red. And yet, many things that have happened during those 20 years have given cause for hope. Many people thought even 20 years ago that the UNFCCC process might run into the ground and expire very quickly, but despite some close calls, especially in Copenhagen, it is still on track. It is still a UN-led process incorporating more or less all the countries of the globe, and that in itself is an encouraging development.

Several hon. Members have said that monitoring and verification are a crucial part of the process, and we have seen significant progress in that regard. There is a significant prospect of reconciliation between China and the United States on those issues, which offers the prospect of whatever follows the Kyoto protocol being a more robust and verifiable process. We have also seen the setting of high-level millennium development goals, and the acceptance by many nations that those goals can provide a driver for international and domestic action, even though we know that many of them might be missed.

In this country, the use of domestic legislation has been important, as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness said. The Climate Change Act 2008 set the 80% target, and this Government have produced the natural environment White Paper, which is a truly radical document. If the policy of valuing natural capital that it advocates were put into practice and were to make a difference to the detail of Government policy, we would be taking a massive step forward. We have also heard the promise to establish the world’s first green investment bank, and seen the prospect of the green deal making a radical difference to energy efficiency.

There have also been many other smaller, less high-profile initiatives, such as the local sustainable transport fund proposed by the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), and his promotion of alternatives to travel. He has done many of those things on a small scale, to make sustainable development approaches work across different Departments. However, we need to embed that right across Government to make sure that it functions right across Government. I commend my hon. Friend, too, for securing an abstention in the recent European vote on biofuels, which I think was a positive step. We have seen progress at the European level as well. The establishment of the European Commission’s emissions trading scheme may be flawed and limited, but it was a first step towards international action on limiting emissions, which has been copied worldwide.

A great deal of action has been taken by what we are nowadays supposed to call non-state actors—or people, as we used to call them. In business and, significantly, non-governmental organisations, in politics and for the Environmental Audit Committee and the media, this is an issue that has become high profile, leading to a great deal of action at the local and individual level as well as the governmental level.

What are the key messages for Rio? First, it is right for us to support the high-level goals. I strongly urge that they should include goals on resource use as well as on development and carbon emissions.

In opposition the Liberal Democrats produced a document called “Our Natural Heritage”. It highlighted the risk of things such as nickel, tin, tungsten, zinc, bauxite and oil becoming rarer in some cases and perhaps even running out in the next 50 years; or, if they did not run out, becoming much more expensive and more environmentally damaging to extract. The economic risks as well as the environmental risks were pinpointed, and we suggested introducing an anti-waste and resource efficiency Act to parallel the Climate Change Act 2008, to monitor and set objectives for sustainable resource use and reduce the associated risks. I still commend our publication to Ministers. One policy we got through from this document was the local green space designation to protect green spaces important to local communities. I can see why that was a politically attractive one to pick out, but I think our proposed resource efficiency Act would have been even more important. If the Rio high-level goals helped to contribute to promoting governmental goals on resource use and worldwide goals, that would be significant.

Other issues have been raised for Rio, including crimes against the environment, which I believe is important, as is challenging the primacy of economic growth as an indicator of the quality of success of economies.

Finally, the political message conveyed by who attends the summit is particularly important. It is welcome that the Secretary of State has committed to attend. I would love to see the Deputy Prime Minister flying the Lib Dem flag there as well, but just for once we should put party advantage aside and strongly urge the Prime Minister to attend Rio+20 if he possibly can. I think that would send out exactly the right message—that, 20 years on, we are turning youthful idealism into real leadership and tangible action at governmental and global level.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

The Rio summit of 1992 represented what many people saw as a comprehensive programme of aspiration towards an international understanding of sustainability and a move towards a sustainable world economy. As the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) set out, a number of important things came out of Rio 1992, which I believe was signed up to in the end by 178 Governments. It was to a large extent informed by the unsurpassed definition of sustainability from Brundtland—that it is development

“that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

That is the famous part, but the central definition refers to other things from Brundtland, such as

“the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and, the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organisation on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.”

If anything, it is that second element of sustainability that we have let slip by over the 20 years since Rio.

As hon. Members have mentioned, Rio led among other things to an outpouring of local enthusiasm in the form of Local Agenda 21. I was an enthusiastic Local Agenda 21-er at that time, but we were probably naive about implementation and subsequently about what sustainability actually meant.

I was recently invited to an interesting seminar on sustainable aviation. There, I wondered whether the concept of sustainability might have been pushed a little to the margins. As far as the approach to Rio+20 is concerned, it is important to get clear what we mean by sustainability and what we mean in respect of the needs and the limitations that go with the sustainability concept. We must then address those matters very seriously in the Rio+20 discussions.

Things have certainly not happened since the original Rio along the lines that those who participated and lauded what happened there would have expected. Although considerable progress has been made with the millennium goals that were set at the Rio+10 summit in Johannesburg, most of them will not be met by 2015, partly because, as I think we now know, many Governments who say they will do things simply do not do them. Being clear about that at Rio+20 will be an important part of securing a realistic outcome from what it may achieve.

Rio+20 is likely to proceed on a much more sombre basis than earlier summits of this kind, but as other Members have pointed out, last year’s Durban summit on climate change demonstrated that expectations can sometimes be confounded, and I hope that we can approach this summit in that spirit. The fact that it has been demanded by the developing world rather than by developed nations makes a significant difference. It will look to the themes of Rio, but it will do so in terms of everyone’s development. It will consider the concept of a green economy in the context of sustainable development and the institutional framework that will make it possible, and I believe that it will do so in the light of the whole Brundtland report rather than just the oft-quoted first line. It must concern itself with the carrying capacity of the planet and with its concomitant—the need for global equity in the sharing of the resources that go into sustainable development.

It might be salutary to compare that starting line with what we thought obtained at Rio 20 years ago. The work of the Stockholm resilience centre at Stockholm university was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Martin Caton), and was examined in some detail in the Select Committee’s report. The centre asked what the planet could put up with in a number of areas before its sustainability threshold was breached. What were the planet’s sustainability boundaries? It considered 10 of them: climate change, ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, the nitrogen cycle, the phosphorus cycle, global freshwater use, land system change, the rate of biodiversity loss, atmospheric aerosol loading, and chemical pollution. That work made it clear that we have not only transgressed three of those boundaries—the rate of biodiversity loss, the nitrogen cycle and, of course, climate change—but have often done so in a startlingly profligate way, and are close to doing so in three other areas: ocean acidification, the phosphorus cycle, and land system change.

Rio+20, then, is not just about how the planet can carry sustainable development, but about how can we row back and make the planet sustainable again, in terms of the carrying capacity that the Stockholm resilience centre set out so carefully. We should, however, celebrate some of our international successes. For instance, as a result of an international convention, we have returned ozone depletion to a point at which carrying capacity has been restored, and have done so through international negotiation and discussion in a way that was not thought possible a few years ago. That analysis, however, tells us only some of the tale. The reason for our transgression of the boundaries that I have mentioned is, overwhelmingly, the extent to which the developed world has hoarded its access to the planet’s carrying capacity at the expense of all other countries.

This is about sustainable development, but it is also about a worldwide green economy that is based on fairness and equity. In that context, it is clear that the proposals that Colombia and Guatemala are bringing to Rio+20—there may not be time to organise their sustainable development goals properly, but I think they understand that, and see this as a starting point—do not counter the existing millennium goals. I refer to the adoption of sustainable development goals for all, not just developing nations, relating to combating poverty, changing consumption patterns, promoting sustainable human settlement patterns, biodiversity and forests, oceans, water resources, advancing food security, and energy sustainability. All those are sustainability goals for the whole world: they do not simply mean that the developed world is giving back some of what it took from the developing world in the first place.

I think that the promotion of global resources will inevitably have to be developed in order to promote those goals. I hope that the United Kingdom will support the idea of a global transaction tax—even if it does not support efforts to introduce such a tax at European level—with the proceeds going to the development of these sustainability goals.

[Martin Horwood]

I strongly support the hon. Gentleman in making that call. The Government may have been right to reject a financial transaction tax at an EU level, which would have meant a real risk of driving businesses to other financial centres. A global financial transaction tax would avoid that risk.

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I appreciate his continuing loyalty to his adopted coalition on the issue. I thought someone had to go it alone and advance this idea, but he is right: a global transaction tax that everyone could unite around would be a far preferable way of proceeding, particularly if that tax was clearly hypothecated for the purposes of global sustainable development and global equity.

I agree with what the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said about her approach to Rio in her recent speech to NGOs. Rio must be a workshop, not a talking shop. I also agree that being green is integral to sustainable economic growth and that we must put value on our carrying capacity so that it becomes an integral part of our economic transactions, not merely the fuel for them to take place. We must also add the essential ingredient of global equity in respect of resources. I hope the Secretary of State will pledge that the UK will push for that goal at Rio and call for the Colombian agenda of sustainability with global equity to be moved decisively forward.

That is the shape of the outcome I want at Rio. I do not want to be back here in 20 years talking about Rio+40 and wondering what might have been. By then it will be too late, as the Stockholm environment institute shows.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and, as a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I too want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) for her commitment to do more and more work on the environment across the whole House.

I want to focus in particular on recommendations 1 and 9 of the EAC report and the Government’s response to them. Recommendation 1 rightly observes that

“there has been inadequate progress on sustainable development since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.”

Sadly, I think that that is something of a grave understatement. Although there has certainly been some progress, it has been very slow and incremental, whereas the science demands an urgent paradigm shift. No wonder our report states:

“There is still far to travel. Some ‘planetary boundaries’ having been breached, and others approaching, make the task more urgent than ever.”

I agree very strongly with that. There is enormous urgency behind the agenda as planetary boundaries are indeed being breached. If everybody in the world lived as we do in the rich north, we would need another three planets to provide the resources and absorb the waste. I hardly need to say that we do not have three planets; we have one, and it is already looking pretty degraded.

Recommendation 9, however, claims:

“It would be unrealistic to expect the imperative for economic growth not to be high on the agenda of many countries going to Rio+20, developing and developed.”

My case is that as far as the developed countries are concerned, we need a different imperative high on our agenda. Indeed, the recommendation goes on to state:

“The Government should resist any moves there might be to use the financial situation to dilute the extent of the environmental and social aspects of the green economy discussed at Rio+20. Rather, it should emphasise…that environmental planetary boundaries will ultimately limit the room for growth.”

It is important to state in black and white that there are limits to growth. I know that that is not a popular perception or idea, but it is very clear that on a planet of finite resources with a rising population and rising expectations, infinite economic growth simply is not possible.

[Martin Horwood]

Does the hon. Lady agree with the economist Kenneth Boulding, who said:

“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”?

[Caroline Lucas]

I will forgive the hon. Gentleman for taking one of my best lines, but I think that that is a very important point. I am glad to see that our sources are moving in the same direction.

The source to which I want to refer is a film, “The Age of Stupid”. I do not know whether many hon. Members will have seen it, but it features Pete Postlethwaite as the sole survivor of a climate catastrophe. It is based in 2050 and he is looking back to today. He looks through all the newsreels—real, genuine newsreels with all the evidence that we have around us that climate change is happening—and he says, in words that still make the hairs on the back of my neck go up in a shiver, “Why is it, knowing what we knew then, we didn’t act when there was still time?” To me, that is just about the most important question that we could ask. Given that we have all this evidence that we must act, what is stopping us?

Part of it is to do with the fact that for too long, a shift to a green economy has been portrayed as though we were talking about shivering around a candle in a cave. It has been portrayed too often as being about hair shirts and we have assumed that if we scare the life out of people sufficiently with the terrible stories of what will happen—and it will happen if we do not get off the collision course with climate change—that, on its own, will be enough to motivate people to change their behaviour. Yet, as we have seen, the evidence shows that that is not what will motivate behaviour change.

Such change would be motivated by our painting a much better picture—a much greener, more compelling vision—of what a zero-carbon economy would look like and by our making the point that it is about a better quality of life. We should also make the point that the current economic model is not even working on its own terms, and we need look no further than the financial crash to see that. Not only that—it is not actually making those of us in the rich countries any happier beyond a certain point. There is a lot of evidence that once basic needs are met, beyond a certain point more and more economic growth does not make us happier. The stress on turbo-consumerism is not increasing our well-being. I could not put it better than Professor Tim Jackson, a professor at the university of Surrey who wrote the wonderful report, “Prosperity without growth?” He has said that we

“spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.”

To me, that sums up more or less what we are doing wrong.

We need real change. We need to recognise that the economy is a subset of the wider ecology and the environment—not the other way around. We need to recognise that, although technology and efficiency have their parts to play, they are not going to get us there on their own. In a planet with a rising population and rising expectations, to think that efficiency gains and technology alone will get us off the collision course we are on is to be in fantasy land. We need behaviour change as well and more education on population growth—an issue that no one has put on the table yet this evening. Population is a controversial issue but it has to be part of our discussions about a sustainable future. I am talking not about anything coercive, but about education and the provision of family planning for those women who still need and want it in developing countries. I am talking about recognising that the impact of different populations is different in different places. The impact of our fewer numbers in the north is far greater than that of higher numbers in the south, but population still has to be part of the discussion.

Social justice also has to be part of the discussion. The aim of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs does not apply only to the rich or those in the global north—it has to apply to every citizen. Under current trends, it looks as though there will be 9 billion people by 2050, and the real challenge we face if we are serious about a green economy is how future populations will be able to consume equally on a per capita basis and still remain within resource constraints. I suggest that that could only be feasible if we in the rich north significantly reduced our consumption patterns and our impact on the planet.

We have started to make some policies based on recognising the need for constraint, starting with the Climate Change Act 2008. I believe, and the science suggests, that we in the developed countries need to be reducing our emissions by something like 90% by 2030, so I do not agree with the targets in that Act, but the architecture in it is incredibly important. The Government could do much worse than to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rio summit by amending the Act, first, to set targets that are in line with the science and, secondly, to include traded or embedded carbon. For too long it has been too easy to outsource our responsibility for much of the carbon that is produced in order to make the products that we consume. The fact that the production happily happens over in China, with the impact going on to its balance sheet rather than on to ours, seems grossly unfair to me. If we are importing products from other countries, the carbon that is embedded in those products should be part of our calculations and audits.

There are also biodiversity constraints. Our consumption of resources has a knock-on effect for habitats, so that needs to be strictly regulated to prevent further loss of biodiversity and, where possible, to reverse the losses that have already happened.

Other hon. Members have talked about our current fixation with economic growth, which means that we over-emphasise the measure of that growth—gross domestic product—to the detriment of other measures of success. Really, our policy on growth is no more or less than a policy to increase GDP by a certain percentage each year, but as others have said, GDP measures do not differentiate the social value of different forms of economic activity or revenue and capital. A Government who use up their capital—the country’s natural resources—and treat it as national income, can boast of having delivered growth and increased GDP. We have seen that on a vast scale with the billions of pounds-worth of oil and gas from the North sea that has been treated as revenue with no thought to the fact that that income is a one-off boost to the economy. For 30 years it has made the UK economy look much healthier than it actually has been, and instead of the proceeds being invested wisely in the future—for example, on renewable energy facilities that we can use when the oil and gas run out—it has been used to fund consumer booms that have led to the inevitable busts.

Perhaps worst of all, the use of GDP as a measure does not count the full costs of production, such as the impact on our natural world and on people’s quality of life. DEFRA’s natural environment White Paper suggests that we can produce metrics of natural environmental value for transactions, but we need to be clear that simply saying that the natural environment has a value is not, in itself, sufficient to ensure that it is internalised in decision-making processes. I would also argue, as the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) was in some senses, that it is impossible to put a value on some resources. What value do we put on a liveable atmosphere? That is a public good, not a private good. Relying on the markets to offer protection is therefore insufficient. We need regulation as well.

Businesses need to be hugely involved in the project, and in some respects are far more advanced in their thinking on this agenda than Ministers. We could learn from some of the businesses that are already beginning to think about what it would mean for them to live in a steady state economy, rather than one that was based on more and more production and consumption. As others have said, it is incredibly important that we send a very clear message about the importance of the Rio Earth summit, and we would do that by ensuring that our own Secretary of State is there, but I join other hon. Members who have said strongly that the Prime Minister also needs to be there to send a strong message that this matters, that this is urgent. The time that we have in this Parliament—the next three or four years—will be critical as to whether we invest properly in getting off the collision course that we are on with the climate crisis. It falls on our generation to do that. It is a huge responsibility, but it is also an awesome opportunity.

Dangerous Dogs

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I, too, will try to be brief. I congratulate the hon. Members for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) on their accurate and appropriate comments about this serious issue.

I would like to draw the Minister’s attention to the latest in a long series of cases that have hit the headlines in my constituency. On 7 May, the headline in the local paper stated: “Savage dog went in for the kill”. It recounted the story of an Alsatian cross called Cleo that suffered horrific injuries at the teeth, I suppose, of a husky-type dog in Springfield park in Cheltenham. Her owner was 71-year-old Mr Robbins, who has already had a triple heart bypass. I imagine that he was terrified by the whole incident. It probably posed a threat to his health, and it would certainly have terrified any bystanders, especially parents, who may have imagined what could have happened had it been their child, rather than another animal, that irritated the dog. Mr Robbins said:

“It was a vicious attack and it was horrible to watch…The man was kicking his dog to get him to stop.”

The dog that attacked Cleo was on a lead, but dragged its owner to the ground as it pounced. According to the article,

“Police have not established whether the owner of the other dog could be charged with breaching the dangerous dogs act.”

That may provoke looks of astonishment from the Minister and other hon. Members, but we can draw a few conclusions from that story. First, the dog in question was not one of the four banned breeds—I am not sure when a Japanese Tosa was last seen in Gloucestershire, or whether Gloucestershire constabulary would recognise it if it saw one. Although that part of the legislation should remain—I would not want to be the Minister who removed it and later saw an attack by a dog of that breed—emphasis needs to shift away from breed and towards behaviour.

Secondly, because the attack was on an animal rather than a human, it carries less weight under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, and that issue needs to be tackled. Thirdly, the owner tried to control his dog by kicking it which, as we have often noted, suggests that the origin of the dog’s problem lies with the owner. As the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton rightly pointed out, there is no definitive way of identifying a dog’s owner. I know from Cheltenham animal shelter and other places that at times, people have claimed ownership of a dog until they realised that they were at risk of prosecution, at which point they passed the animal to someone else. That also has to be tackled. Universal microchipping is ready to roll. Welfare charities know how to run the system; it takes seconds and costs a few pounds, and if it makes a surplus to enable the provision of more resources for dog control, that would be desirable. The time for universal microchipping has arrived.

We must not, however, wear rose-tinted spectacles when looking at this issue. As well as owner behaviour we must tackle dog behaviour. If a dog is showing extremely aggressive behaviour, as in the case I mentioned in my constituency and other such instances, we need powers to deal with that. The Association of Chief Police Officers, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other organisations have pointed out the importance of early intervention. Whether or not that involves control orders—dog ASBOs, as they have been called—we need something to enable properly licensed persons in a local area, including those who work in animal shelters, local authority employers and the police, to exercise professional judgment about whether a dog is dangerous.

One animal I saw at Cheltenham animal shelter was so aggressive that the well-trained staff could approach it only with a humane version of a cattle prod. They were not clear who the owner was, and did not know whether, if someone claimed to be its owner, they would have to release that dog out into the community. The dog that attacked poor Cleo is still at large in Cheltenham. Something is badly wrong if we cannot confiscate a dog when necessary. Even if no attack has taken place on a human being or been documented to the satisfaction of current legislation, if a dog is clearly aggressive in the eyes of professionals, they should have the power to confiscate it. They do not necessarily need to put it down; it could be neutered, trained or re-homed. In extremis, sometimes a dog may need to be put down. Unless such matters are tackled with care and a degree of urgency, I fear that I will read more headlines like the one that I quoted from the Gloucestershire Echo, and I would not want that. I hope that the Minister understands the urgency of the problem.

Wild Animals (Circuses)

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

I will forgo the obvious opportunity to use many of the numerous witticisms that I have heard during the past 48 hours about my appearance here, but I will start by simply trying to say that I will walk the tightrope over the next 10 or 15 minutes.

As several hon. Members have shown, this debate has demonstrated that, with one or two exceptions, there is passionate agreement across the Floor of the House that we should see an end to the use of wild animals in circuses. I assure the House that nothing divides us on that front. When we came to office a year ago, we had the advantage of receiving the results of the consultation to which the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) referred, and we had to examine all the options. A ban was one of those. We did not have the advantage of the advice that he received because that was confidential to the previous Government.

We had a new set of advice from our lawyers and we had to use that in coming to our view. It clearly indicated that there were serious risks of a legal challenge should we opt for an outright ban, despite our being minded to do so. I will return to the detail of those legalities because that has occupied much of the afternoon’s debate, but it is for that reason and in the interest of avoiding a long judicial process that we concluded that the quickest way to reduce and, we hoped, eliminate cruelty to wild animals in our circuses would be a robust licensing system, which might well result in circuses deciding to stop keeping such animals.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), who moved the motion, has shown diligence in pursuit of his cause. However, I am afraid his dedication has allowed him to misrepresent a number of issues, and some of that has been repeated by other hon. Members. The first is the Commission’s view about whether this is entirely a matter for member states. I remind the House that the view of a Commissioner is simply that. I have seen the letter sent by the Commission to the Captive Animals Protection Society, and I understand that that is the view of the Commission, but as I said in the House last time we debated the subject, it is ultimately the courts that interpret legislation, and our lawyers have to advise us not about what the Commission’s view is, but how they believe a court might interpret the legislation.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Had there been time for me to be called, I would have made the point that cruelty, in the sense of physical cruelty to animals, is not the only issue. People’s experience of wild animals is much richer through the internet, television and, indeed, the Cheltenham science festival, making it unnecessary for animals to be kept in captivity. There is increasing scientific evidence that there are complex emotions and intelligence in animals, especially intelligent animals such as elephants, which make any kind of systematic confinement inherently cruel, even if physical cruelty is not present.

[Mr Paice]

I fully understand my hon. Friend’s comments and I shall pick up one or two of them in a moment.

Sustainable Livestock Bill

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen and wherever for that good point. The people most closely connected with farming in this country, while they support the aims of the Bill’s sponsors, do not support the Bill itself. We have to ask why that is.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The Rare Breeds Survival Trust, which has connections with livestock and farming, thinks that the Bill is a good thing and may promote a local feed industry, which could help to protect British farmers from fluctuating feed commodity prices. Does the hon. Gentleman not welcome that?

[Mr Nuttall]

I welcome the fact that there are groups such as the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, which works to maintain historic breeds and to promote organic farming. There is nothing wrong with that, and I appreciate the fact that it supports the Bill’s aims. However, my hon. Friend will agree that it represents a relatively small part of the farming community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

The National Farmers Union would say that there is no disadvantage and no evidence that larger-scale dairying or housing has a negative impact on the environment.

[Martin Horwood]

One local farmer in Gloucestershire told me of one very specific disadvantage: such practices would undermine the reputation of British farming for good animal welfare and, therefore, damage the British farming brand in general.

[Mr Nuttall]

That is a comment from one individual, and individuals will have their own views, but I suspect that it is not the majority view. I shall make a little more progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) on being so successful in the ballot and on bringing the Bill before the House. As he knows from my interventions and from a private conversation, I am not entirely in favour of his Bill, but I do congratulate him on securing this debate. It is important because it has brought the issue of agriculture back to the House and given us the opportunity to have an important discussion about where we want one of our most important producing industries—indeed, our critical producing industry—to go. This industry puts food in the bellies of our people and will determine the health of our nation, and this is an important debate for those reasons.

One of the best things that we do as a country—whether in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland—is produce high-quality, traceable, nutritious food that is also profitable. We should be proud of that fact. We should encourage the industry and do everything we can not only to sustain it but to develop it and to ensure that the food that is produced in this nation is some of the best in the world and, indeed, the envy of the world.

We, and indeed the Minister and the Government, face a real challenge in ensuring that that happens, because there are many pressures on our food producers and farmers. We should do all we can to promote their livelihood and their industry. We should not succumb to siren calls to change our practices unless we are utterly convinced that those changes will perfect and develop further an industry that is crucial to our people.

We need to put into perspective some of the points that have been made about our industry. The livestock sector—beef, dairy, pig, poultry and sheep production—contributed £2.3 billion to agri-food output in Northern Ireland in the last year for which figures were available. Of that, approximately 72%, or almost £1.65 billion, was sold outside Northern Ireland. That means that we run a very successful export industry, and it is called the food industry.

We should be careful about doing anything that changes the careful balance in our marketplace. The Bill could affect that balance detrimentally. I do not believe that that is the intention of its promoter, but it could be the effect. We should remember that more than 20,000 people are directly employed in the agri-food sector in Northern Ireland alone. Tens of thousands more are employed across the rest of the United Kingdom.

What are the devolved Government of Northern Ireland and, by extension, the other devolved Governments across the United Kingdom doing to ensure that we address some of the matters that have been brought before us as a result of the Bill’s trajectory? The Climate Change Act 2008 is already in place, and action is being taken. Indeed, the Northern Ireland Programme for Government has a target for a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors in the next 15 years.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman may not know that the Climate Change Act relates to emissions in this country and cannot possibly make any impact on, for example, deforestation in Argentina and Brazil. This Bill is designed to do that.

[Ian Paisley]

I accept that point and I will discuss it when I deal with that aspect of the Bill, which, I believe, reflects the promoter’s gut instinct.

Our stakeholder group in the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development was formed at the end of July last year and wishes to consider how best to reduce greenhouse gases in the agricultural sector in Northern Ireland while remaining competitive in the marketplace. Our devolved Government have already taken several steps to address the issue, and I know that that also applies to the other devolved regions and to central Government in Westminster.

Do we need more legislation? Parliaments have a propensity to legislate when there is no need to do so. We should be careful not to load more bureaucracy—legislation for legislation’s sake—on to industry and the production of food. That is a key reason for my opposition to the Bill.

Given that work is already under way genuinely to address the problems, there should be no need for more legislative interventionism. Indeed, it would create additional bureaucracy and be less effective in delivering the necessary meaningful improvements and have an adverse impact on the agri-food industry.

There are three tests that the Bill must pass. The first is the economic sustainability test, which I believe it Bill fails. As I said, about £20 billion-worth of food is produced in the United Kingdom, and the Bill would force the Government to try to compel the new, ongoing common agricultural policy negotiations to change the subsidy rules so that every hectare of farm land in the United Kingdom would have to receive an increase in subsidy of between £100 and £200. For the life of me, I do not see the current European Union increasing food and farm subsidy in the current CAP negotiations. I wish that it would; it is not a realistic prospect, yet that needs to happen for the Bill to be effective. It will not happen in 2013, and we would therefore be arguing for something that is detrimental to the economy.

Production-limited support is contrary to World Trade Organisation regulations. If something is contrary to the CAP and WTO regulations, the likelihood of our getting an increase in the subsidy is small. The cost for farmers of having to purchase in a particular way in order to produce in a more carbon-efficient way would mean an additional burden and would be detrimental to the industry. Ultimately, who will lose? The farmer will put his hand in his pocket again and spend the money, but you, Mr Hoyle, I and the consumer will lose, because food prices will go up. Instead of good-quality, traceable food at a reasonable price, we will have more expensive food. The consumer will ultimately lose out.

What will the consumers do? They will do what all the polls tell us: they will buy not the high-quality food that is produced in the United Kingdom but the cheap, imported food, which will flood into the United Kingdom, further damaging our agricultural sector. In the past few years, we have fought against cheap meat from Brazil. If it is made even more accessible to our markets, when our consumers go to Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda, they will fill their trolleys with cheap Brazilian imports. Why? Because they are cheaper, and that is what will drive the consumer. We should realise that. I do not agree with the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) that such prices will make us want to become vegetarians or vegans; they will just make us want to buy cheaper food. That is a genuine downside to the Bill, so it fails the economic test.

The Bill also fails the social test. My constituency is made up of lowland and hill farming, and there is a certain shape and scope to our land. A previous contributor described it as God-given beauty. It has been shaped by the grazing habits that farmers have introduced. Under the Bill, that would change. It will become more expensive to graze our animals on the uplands because it will be more expensive to import the food for them. The shape of our land would therefore change dramatically, so the social impact would not be as effective as the Bill suggests.

The Bill also fails the environmental test. It would use the sledgehammer of environmental protectionism to crack a nut. The entire UK agriculture industry is responsible for only 7% of our greenhouse gas emissions, and our emissions have already fallen by 21% since 1990.

John F. Kennedy memorably said:

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie… but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”

We have heard some myths today which should be debunked. The Bill has an admirable aim to stop deforestation, but it will not do that. The House could pass the measure and say, “We want to stop deforestation,” but the Bill will contribute nothing to that aim. Indeed, its very publication contributes to deforestation because it needs paper. We must recognise the myth.

Another myth is that livestock will be raised indoors—that we will drive through our land and see great big silos and sheds where our livestock is raised. However, when I drive through my constituency, I see cattle and sheep in the fields.

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

That just demonstrates how behind the times the right hon. Gentleman really is. In today’s modern economy, we must have flexibility. We do not have wages boards for other sectors. His Government never brought back any of those abolished by the previous Conservative Government. If this system is so wonderful, why did Labour not bring any of those back? The answer is that at least some of his colleagues recognised the need for that flexibility. The reality is that the industry should make its own decisions in negotiations with its workers in tandem with the advice of the National Farmers Union.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

As the Minister is in hock to the Liberals, he will be aware of our commitment to landscape and biodiversity, including hedgerows. In reviewing the regulatory burden, will he ensure that the taskforce considers the new report on hedgerows by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which suggests that regulations have helped, that it is necessary and possible to simplify them and that we should enhance the protection of hedgerows in the countryside?

[Mr Paice]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I accept his comment. The point of deregulation and the role of the taskforce is to simplify the burden, not to lower standards. I cannot repeat that too many times. We have no intention of reducing the protection for hedgerows. I was as concerned as my hon. Friend about them, but if we look at the issue carefully, we will find that many of the hedgerows have been removed not by farmers—in fact, they have been planting a lot more in the last decade—but as a result of development and local government actions.

Dangerous Dogs

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) on securing this debate on an important subject. I assume that it is her first Adjournment debate, and she has got off lucky; my first Adjournment debate was called at 3.15 in the morning, so this is early by comparison.

I fully understand the importance of the issue that my hon. Friend raises. Members who, like me, represent more rural constituencies do not see the problem as much as my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) do. Nevertheless, we are very aware of it. I respond directly to the challenge of the hon. Gentleman: the issue of dangerous dogs falls squarely within the remit of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He is right about cross-cutting with other Departments. My noble Friend Lord Henley is directly responsible for that part of the Department’s activities, although, as I shall try to demonstrate, there are areas on which we work closely with other Departments.

We take the issue seriously—so much so that the coalition agreement makes an explicit commitment to tackling the problem. Both hon. Members said that there are many strands to the problem. There is the irresponsible ownership—at the lesser end, but still a serious issue—and there is the clear problem of dogs being used to intimidate and as part of the commission of crime. Furthermore, there is organised dog fighting. All those issues have a knock-on effect on the welfare of the dogs, let alone all the other problems that they cause society.

Most of us find it difficult to understand why people would want to keep a dog, particularly one of the more vicious breeds, as a status symbol. The need that those people feel to have such a dog alongside them to bolster their image is probably a sign of their inadequacy. Nevertheless, it happens and we have to address it.

Many suggestions have been made. As hon. Members must be aware, the previous Government commissioned a consultation on the problem. That period has finished and we are analysing the results, which we will publish. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend say that she does not necessarily believe that the issue requires more legislation. She made a couple of suggestions, which I shall come to. As I shall try to describe, there is a plethora of legislation on the matter—too much, some would argue. It is often a matter of enforcement. The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 has become a bit of byword for hasty legislation, but the reality is that in the 19 years since it was passed nobody has come forward with a comprehensive alternative.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Paice]

Very briefly.

[Martin Horwood]

I am grateful, given the hour. Is the Minister aware of the Bill proposed in another place by my noble Friend Lord Redesdale, which is intended to tackle some of the issues to do with ownership and microchipping, while shifting comprehensively away from the specific list of obscure breeds towards the deeds and behaviour of the dog, and indeed the owner, which seems to get to the crux of the issue that the hon. Lady rightly identified? What is his view of that proposed legislation?

[Mr Paice]

We are very much aware of Lord Redesdale’s Bill. My noble Friend Lord Henley is looking at it very carefully and trying to work with Lord Redesdale on it. We have our doubts about some aspects, but I recognise that it is a noble attempt to try to deal with the problem.

Part of the problem has been the lack of enforcement across the country. We clearly want to see better enforcement, and we have provided better guidance and funding for training in police forces. Both hon. Members who spoke referred to the Metropolitan police, who have their specialist status dogs unit to target the problem. That has resulted in more dogs being seized year on year in the London area. I understand that between April 2004 and April 2005, just 42 dogs were seized, by 2008-2009 the figure had risen to 719, and it is expected that in the past year up to April 2010 the figure will have been 1,100. That dramatic increase demonstrates the importance of the issue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton referred to council housing leases and social landlords. Earlier this year, the Department for Communities and Local Government published guidance for social landlords entitled, “Tackling anti-social behaviour: Tools and powers—toolkit for social landlords”. That includes the powers available under current legislation for social landlords to tackle dangerous dogs. More recently, DEFRA facilitated the production of guidance for magistrates courts designed to help to speed up cases involving dangerous dogs. Last year, DEFRA issued widely welcomed guidance aimed at enforcers of the legislation. It was written in association with the police and the RSPCA, as well as some local authorities, to set out the law in detail and provide advice.

I want briefly to refer to the existing legislation and then address some of the points that may take us forward. The 1991 Act provides the police with powers to take action when any dog becomes dangerously out of control in a public place or a place where it has no right to be. Offences under that legislation have risen considerably. The Act also prohibits the keeping of certain types of dog. I understand what my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) said about the problems of specific breeds. However, the fact is that in 2004, 17 people were successfully prosecuted for that offence, and by 2008 that figure had risen to 115. The maximum penalty for keeping a keeping a prohibited type of dog is six months imprisonment, a fine of £5,000, or both.

Importantly, the police have also said that the prohibition of certain types of dog is useful in tackling organised dog fighting, as it is predominantly pit bull terriers that are used. I hear the point made by my hon. Friend about the problem being the owner, not the dog, but there is a bit of a caveat to that—certain dogs are far more predisposed to aggression. Why else does everybody want to use a pit bull? Clearly it is easier to use them; we do not see many fighting chihuahuas around the countryside.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Paice]

No, I cannot, I am sorry. I am really tight for time.

The 1991 Act strengthened the powers available to magistrates courts to place controls on dogs under the Dogs Act 1871. Those controls can be about muzzling a dog, keeping it on a lead, excluding it from specific places or having it neutered. The maximum penalty for failing to comply is £5,000.

The Offences Against the Person Act was passed back in 1861 but is still valid because of the point that the hon. Member for Ealing North made—it can be used in a situation in which people use a dog as a weapon. The maximum penalty is five years in prison. There is also the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.

The consultation that was carried out recently addressed a range of issues, such as extending the current criminal offence in the 1991 Act of allowing a dog of any type or breed to become dangerously out of control to private property where a dog has a right to be but where it may well still be a danger to young children. There is also the serious problem of attacks on public workers, particularly postal workers, in gardens or drives. It also invited comments on whether the prohibition of certain types of dog should be repealed, as we have discussed, or extended to other breeds.

The idea of compulsory insurance was given short shrift. The then Government put the matter in the consultation and rightly decided quickly that it was not the right way forward. People’s advice and views were requested on the introduction of dog control notices, and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has indicated that improvement notices have been successful. It considers that dog control notices could also work well.

Some people advocate compulsory microchipping. At the moment, our view is that as with licensing, the people whom we are trying to address would not do it. One could argue that dogs found without a microchip would be destroyed, but we would end up with the serious problem of having to destroy a large number of dogs. Again, the majority would be paying for the sins of the minority.

Finally, my hon. Friend proposed that anyone convicted of a violent or drug-related offence should not be allowed to have control of a dog. That is clearly a matter for the Home Office, and I will try to ensure that it is aware of the suggestion and gives it the consideration that it merits.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the whole Government take the matter very seriously. We are aware of the concerns and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing them to the attention of the House. I promise her that we will not let the matter slip.

Question put and agreed to.