Animals Act 1971 (Amendment) Bill

My hon. Friend gives an interesting set of circumstances. I think that he will find that if an inexperienced rider were put on a horse that was inappropriate for them, there might well be liability for negligence. I am aware of some cases along those lines. It is horses for courses, if I may use that pun. I am not entirely sure that such a case would turn on section 2(2), because it would involve a normal characteristic of the horse. If the inexperienced rider caused the horse to behave in a way that was not a normal characteristic—I have details somewhere in my pile of documents of a case in which someone was thrown in such circumstances—there would not be a claim under the Animals Act. It would be an example of a normal domesticated horse behaving in a normal way that could have been anticipated, although there might be a negligence claim because the wrong person was put on the wrong horse. As I said, the other relevant example is a dog case: Gloster v. Chief Constable of Greater Manchester. A police officer, who was the claimant, was bitten by a police dog. He was in a police car chasing a stolen vehicle. The driver of the stolen vehicle ran off and the policeman gave chase. The dog handler on the scene had his German shepherd and would have given chase and effected an arrest, but the claimant had not heard the command to remain in his vehicle. Once police dogs are set loose, they will go after the first person they see. Unfortunately, in this case it happened to be the police officer, because the dog handler fell over and the dog slipped its leash and bit the policeman, not the car thief. The conclusion was that there had been no negligence and that it was an accident. Because the dog had been trained to act as it did, it was not its characteristic or natural inclination. The likelihood of the damage being severe was not due to any characteristic but because the dog had, as the defendant put it, ““big, sharp teeth.”” It is characteristic of German shepherd dogs that they are capable of being trained to perform certain acts, but the act of attacking or biting was viewed not as a characteristic in itself, but merely as a manifestation of the dog's characteristic in being able to respond to instruction. In that particular case—another section 2(2) case—the claim failed because of the fact that the behaviour was a normal characteristic of the animal. The hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire says that many problems have been created, but we see from the cases I have described that, in practice, they have not. All the cases failed because the animals behaved in a normal way, whereas in the Mirvahedy case, the animal behaved in an abnormal way. If the animals behave normally, no problem is caused by Mirvahedy or section 2(2). There may be a claim in respect of negligence, but in the cases I have cited, no negligence was found. Let me deal now with certain issues related to the explanatory notes, the first of which is the question of strict liability. It is important to reflect on the fact that strict liability is not a novel concept in the law—I am not going to go through it in detail, as we explored it in earlier interventions—as the Occupiers' Liability Act 1957, the Consumer Protection Act 1987 and all the Factory Acts through history are quite happy to impose strict liability. At the risk of straying across the channel, the French civil code imposes strict liability on animal owners, who are responsible, pure and simple, for the damage caused by their animals. I am not going to read out the French, as that might be out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I have here the text of the code if anyone wishes to check that my translation is correct. The fact remains that when it comes to strict liability, there is nothing novel in Europe either. I would like to deal now with the impact assessments of the Bill. I say that I would like to, but the problem is that the impact assessment is somewhat difficult to find. The explanatory notes state:"““An Impact Assessment has been published alongside the Bill””," and we are told that it can be found at www.defra.gov.uk. Unfortunately, that is a rather optimistic assertion. I have had the Library try to find it, but I received a letter this morning telling me:"““Although para. 15 of the attached Explanatory Notes to this Bill refers to and paraphrases the Impact Assessment, I and my colleagues have not yet been able to trace a copy of the document. I have contacted the office of the DEFRA Parliamentary Clerk who was not able to immediately trace a copy. ””" A number of other office numbers to contact were then mentioned. The problem is that if we are expected to debate a Bill, we should be able to scrutinise the impact assessment relating to it. I suggest, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that it will be very difficult to do so if the impact assessment cannot be found. That problem needs to be addressed because when I had a go at finding the Minister's website, I could not find it. The particular website referred to in the explanatory notes has hundreds of impact assessments, so it may be lost in a herd and cannot be found. The Library has been working for me, but it cannot find it, and even the parliamentary Clerk cannot find it. That does make it rather difficult to scrutinise this particular Bill. The impact assessment is, however, summarised in the explanatory notes. I am sure that it is summarised accurately; I have no reason to think otherwise, though I would have liked to have had the opportunity—