Animals Act 1971 (Amendment) Bill

I welcome the Bill and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) for his hard work and for using the opportunity of being drawn in the ballot to introduce it. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson), whose ten-minute Bill two years ago raised the profile of this important matter. As for declaring interests, I am the owner of some cows, a bull and a few sheep, but I am allergic to the dust in horses' coats. It gives me a hay fever-type reaction, which is very unpleasant. Despite that, I am a patron of Herefordshire's riding for the disabled. As hon. Members will know, the Bill has considerable cross-party support. The recent early-day motion 1092, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire, and the earlier early-day motion 14, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), which I co-sponsored, have attracted widespread support. That is because there is a strong feeling that the operation of the current law is unfairly punitive, especially in relation to animal ownership and riding schools. I support the Bill because it will help to correct an anomaly in the law that I do not believe Parliament intended. I do not believe that Parliament would have legislated to provide that the strictest liability be applied to animal owners when their animals have been involved in an accident, even when the owner has taken all reasonable steps to anticipate and prevent it. Nor do I think that Parliament intended to cause rising insurance premiums or to strangle riding schools and force them out of existence. During the original debate on the 1971 Act, section 2 received little comment. It was referred to mostly as a code, bringing together the existing laws and the recommendations of the 1967 Law Commission report on civil liabilities for animals. However, it is worth mentioning the short debate on section 2 in the other place, which appears to support the notion that Parliament and the Government of the time may not have intended the Act to be interpreted as it was in the Mirvahedy case. The late Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone, commented on how the Bill had changed from an earlier draft. In relation to concerns about an owner becoming liable for"““normal acts on the part of such an animal, which in certain circumstances could cause danger””," he reassured the other place that:"““in the case of an animal not belonging to an inherently dangerous species, only that animal's abnormal characteristics can give rise to liability.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 October 1970; Vol. 312, c. 197.]" Furthermore, on Second Reading in this House, the then Attorney-General indicated that the provisions of section 2 originally proposed by the Law Commission had been changed so that"““where an animal has mischievous propensities, the keeper is liable only for such damage as is due to such propensities.””" That is good legalese. He explained this change, commenting that in the Bill as previously drafted,"““a perfectly harmless animal but one which might be capable of doing damage would render the owner liable. For instance…a horse might be capable of causing damage if it were suddenly frightened; obviously, it is capable of kicking out and causing damage. Therefore, the change which is made in the Bill is that the keeper shall be liable only for a mischievous propensity of which the owner must know.””—[Official Report, 27 January 1971; Vol. 810, c. 738-39.]" That change was the insertion of section 2(2)(b), which, as hindsight has demonstrated, provides contention and uncertainty rather than the improvement and clarification that were originally intended. The Law Commission's report that laid the foundations for the 1971 Act also went through the various permutations of strict liability. The application of strict liability under section 2 of the Act has led to much confusion and criticism by the courts, despite the attempts to clarify matters during its passage through Parliament in the early 1970s. There have been a number of cases in which decisions have been made under section 2, and in paragraph 9 of the Mirvahedy v. Henley judgment, Lord Nicholls stated:"““Unfortunately the language of section 2(2) is itself opaque. In this instance the parliamentary draftsman's zeal for brevity has led to obscurity. Over the years section 2(2) has attracted much judicial obloquy.””"