Animals — House of Commons, 2019-06-05
Topic: Agriculture
Neil Quentin Gordon Parish (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I welcome the Minister’s speech and the statutory instrument. I also welcome the contribution from the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) and endorse what he said about the need to change the law to increase the sentence to up to five years. At the moment, the maximum sentence is six months and four months if you plead guilty. For some of the horrendous cases, that is not enough. I do not think that party managers on any side of the House need worry about getting the regulations through, as only somebody who is slightly off-piece would go against them. We really need to get this done I am happy to welcome the regulations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies) said, three years ago, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee undertook a report into animal welfare. One of our recommendations was to ban third-party puppy sales. The Government decided that they could not go along with that, but when one chairs a Select Committee one never gets too worked up about that because there is a constant dripping and eventually the stone starts to wear and a new Secretary of State comes in and decides on a consultation. It is very good to see the regulations here today I want to talk about the practicalities. I, too, pay tribute to Marc Abraham and all the organisations. Many people have supported the campaign to get these measures on to the statute book. I include in that the general public because, as has been said, we are a nation of lovers. Do not forget: we are talking not just about dogs, but about cats. I am always corrected by Cats Protection. Cats also matter very much, so I want to put that on the record My hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire talked about the time we visited a puppy farm in Wales. The dogs were bred far too often and did not get proper exercise, and the surroundings and conditions were poor. What also struck me was that the breeders received about £200 for the puppies, which were going to a dealer in Birmingham, who was probably selling them for £500 or £600. There are several issues here. Not only were the puppies bred in the wrong conditions, which were poor, but the money was going back not to the breeders but to the dealers I do not know how we deal with this exactly. I think I am right in saying that there are between 7 million and 9 million dogs in the country. That is quite a lot of dogs. If you say that, on average, a dog lives 10 years, you probably need 750,000 puppies a year to replace the dogs that have died. Therefore, we need good, proper puppy breeding probably on a reasonably large scale. It needs to be done properly, with bitches not overbred and other things taken into consideration; otherwise more and more puppies—I know the Government are tightening up on this—will be smuggled into the country. There only needs to be one television programme that promotes a particular breed of dog and then everybody in the world wants that particular breed of dog, and there are not the puppies here, so they become very lucrative. For some of the gangs, it is probably more profitable than dealing in drugs or anything like that and they are less likely to get prosecuted or to get as heavy a penalty. There are criminal elements who see this very much as a money-making operation I know that the Government cannot stipulate the quantities and breeds of puppies that are bred, and I do not think the shadow Minister, in a socialist Government, would even consider the idea of prescribing how many breeds or types of dog should be bred—[Interruption.] Only teasing, don’t worry. We must face this issue because we have to ensure that there is a good supply of healthy puppies who are properly assimilated with their mother and are at the right age when they leave her. The set-up should not be as it is in many of these situations, where the puppies do not have their true mother and do not belong to that mother. All those things are a real problem, so this legislation is absolutely right. However, it will not completely cure the problem if we do not deal with the sentencing, so that someone who is cruel to animals can get up to a five-year sentence. Let us send the right message out to the criminal element and let us look at how the puppies are bred and make sure that we encourage best practice.