My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) has been involved in a bit of a battle over the years, particularly about dogs, and I am not sure where we are with that at the moment. Obviously, we have the sniffer dogs, and I think a couple of ducks live on the estate. Of course, we welcome all the mice, and there are a few rats about the place, I think. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Jane Stevenson) makes a good point; perhaps that is something for the Administration Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for Workington spoke about his French bulldogs. My wife and I look after one of our daughter’s French bulldogs, called Vivienne, and although she does not know it yet I look forward to a fair battle at the Westminster dog of the year show. I am very jealous that my hon. Friend the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee has already won that contest.
I want the United Kingdom to lead the world on animal welfare. We have some of the most progressive animal rights legislation in the world and I can tell my hon. Friend the Minister that I am looking forward to improving it even further at the end of the year. I do not understand why, although the Republic of Ireland and Scotland have recently increased the maximum sentence for animal cruelty to five years, sentences in England and Wales are still among the lowest in the world and the weakest in Europe.
The RSPCA deals with severe cases of animal cruelty every day, and on average someone in England or Wales dials its helpline every 30 seconds. It is absolutely shocking to think that that amount of cruelty is going on. In November 2019, a man admitted to beating his 11-month-old German Shepherd puppy to death. He was sent to prison for four months. Cases such as this are all too common. Currently, the average sentence for animal cruelty is about three and a half months’ imprisonment. An average of just over three people per year over the past three years have received the maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment for animal cruelty.