Associate Parliamentary Group For Animal Welfare

On Tuesday we attended Parliament to take part in the APGAW meeting.  The topic was "The Enforcement Of Animal Welfare Legislation" - looking at how it works and discussing whether it is effective.

There were 3 speakers who presented on behalf of the police, the RSPCA and a local authority.

Inspector Patrick O'Hara from the Metropolitan police was certainly an inspiration - he runs a Dog Unit within the area of the M25 and seizes animals under the Animal Welfare and Dangerous Dogs Acts.  Last year they seized 130 dogs and rehomed an amazing 118 of them.  They have a team of fosterers, and the emotional welfare of the dogs is given consideration.  Inspector O'Hara stated that one of the problems is the time it takes to bring a prosecution case to court.  The system doesn't take into account the emotional difficulty for the dogs who shouldn't be expected to be in a kennel environment for up to 9 months - particularly when the dogs are often seized from situations where they may already have some emotional trauma.

The speaker on behalf of the local authorities explained that the enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act in the UK is currently somewhat of a postcode lottery.  Local authorities in fact have no statutory obligation to enforce the Act.  They do however have a statutory obligation to pick up stray dogs.  Other problems also include a lack of qualified staff, a lack of resources, the costs of investigating prosecutions and that young vets are generally not willing to write reports for prosecution.

The inspector from the RSPCA showed photos of emaciated animals where they had brought prosecutions against owners.  They did admit that the system is dysfunctional.

We wanted to take forward our experiences to the committee and stated that it is unacceptable that it is a postcode lottery as to whether the Animal Welfare Law is enforced or not.  Faye has dealt with cases where ponies had been in the same or worse condition than those shown in the RSPCA presentation and yet no prosecution was brought against the owners.  Instead you are expected to personally pay for a private prosecution - why should an individual be expected to pay to prosecute someone who has broken the law in this country...why doesn't this come from the same pot of money that is used to prosecute other offences?  She also stated that she has been at welfare situations where Defra, the Police, and Trading Standards all denied any responsibility of enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act and there should be a straight forward standard procedure.  Sometimes it seems more like the authorities would rather an animal just died, as it would be easier to pick up a dead body and not have to worry about any sort of investigation!

The RSPCA did state that the situation regarding equines in the UK at the moment is appalling and is disgraceful.  New legislation is about to come into force regarding fly grazing which will enable the authorities to act more quickly.  The passport system is a mess and the NED database won't be back in operation until 2016.

The costs involved regarding horses is huge and this a big problem for the enforcing authorities, particularly regarding the pick up of the animals.

Neil Parish was very supportive and re-iterated that moorland ponies are owned and all of them should be passported and microchipped without exception and owners held accountable for welfare situations - if owners can't look after animals properly, then they shouldn't keep them at all.

All the responses and discussion from the meeting will be put forward to Defra who are looking at making improvements to the legislation.  Most of the groups present felt the Act itself was satisfactory but it needs to be enforced!

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