My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Randall for his sponsorship of this important Bill and for his continuous and totally reliable championing of animal welfare, both in this place and previously in the other place. Supporting the Bill is part of the Government’s continued commitment to improving animal health and welfare. While the Sentencing Act allows for higher sentencing for the worst cases of animal cruelty, the Bill will allow for the introduction of financial penalties to address less serious offences.
We in this country are rightly proud of our high standards and strive to maintain and improve our position as world leaders in animal health and welfare. As a society, we continue to demand these high standards from all those who keep animals, whether they are companions in our homes, work by our sides or help to produce the food that we eat. The Government are therefore committed to addressing not only the most abhorrent acts of cruelty but those less serious offences that, when ignored, could escalate, posing a greater risk to our nation’s animals.
We currently lack an enforcement option that will sit between and work with warning letters or improvement notices before criminal prosecution is undertaken. The Bill introduces a new system of financial penalties for animal health and welfare offences. It is simple but vital, as it will allow enforcers to deliver an effective and proportionate penalty to those who break the rules. Though straightforward, this measure has the potential to have a significant impact on how our standards are enforced.
A useful example of that might be if a pet breeder fails to include their licence number in online adverts for puppies and kittens. Businesses that breed animals must have a valid licence. Accidentally missing the licence number from an advert or forgetting to microchip animals before rehoming them might seem trivial and unimportant, but proper registration is critical to ensure
that people can buy pets with confidence from a legitimate source and with the high health and welfare standards that they rightly expect. That is where a penalty notice is useful.
We must look at the bigger picture when it comes to enforcement and, of course, we must get the balance right. We want to provide early redirection to guide people towards compliance but not arbitrarily penalise those who have made genuine mistakes. I am sure that we can all appreciate the need for a different approach for someone who has accidentally forgotten to log an animal’s movement, for example, and the cruellest acts of animal abuse. This Bill will support that early redirection, so we can reach our shared goals of protecting and improving the health and welfare of our animals.
I will briefly answer one of the questions put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, whom I thank very much for her constructive words. I will make it clear that criminal prosecution will always be the most appropriate course of action for the most serious crimes. The introduction of penalty notices absolutely will not water down our ability to prosecute those who commit them. It will, however, provide a means for enforcers to consider less serious transgressions. I will return to this point in a few moments.
As the noble Lord, Lord Randall, has so eloquently explained, this Bill covers a vast range of legislation. It will create a practical and consistent tool for enforcers across the animal health and welfare space. Other offences in comparable areas can lead to a £5,000 penalty, such as offences under the eggs and chicks regulations, and offences for fishing under the Marine Management Organisation. We consider it to be proportional, therefore, for penalty notices to have an equivalent maximum of £5,000. The Bill also provides enabling powers and allows offences to be “turned on” via secondary legislation. This ensures a targeted approach which considers the differences across sectors and species. Determining which offences will have options for on-the-spot fines, versus consideration periods, will be part of the discussion officials have with NGOs, subject matter experts and enforcement authorities, should this Bill pass and become law.
I will now respond to a comment raised by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington. In some sectors, like farming, there will be a period of consideration for the inspector and the animal keeper—as the noble Lord acknowledged in his remarks. This will sit in between an inspection and an offer of penalty notice. It will allow the farmer or animal keeper the time they need to present additional information, or a chance to rectify the issue in a reasonable timeframe. As the noble Lord also acknowledged, this commitment was made very clearly at Third Reading in the other house by the honourable Member for North Oxfordshire on 4 February. In her speech, she used bovine TB testing as an example of how this option might be used.
I turn now to the appeals process more broadly. I will avoid going into the minutiae, but I am happy to do so if noble Lords ask me to. Penalty notices have been designed with the safeguarding of farmers, animal keepers and animals themselves in mind. The Bill establishes that an enforcement authority can withdraw a penalty notice at any time before payment, allowing
for any misapplication of the penalty notice to be rectified. One imagines that this makes the appeals process much smoother, less bureaucratic, less cumbersome and more doable. To encourage a consistent approach to enforcement, the Bill makes it a mandatory requirement for enforcers to follow the guidance that will be laid before Parliament.
I will briefly return to another of the questions put to me by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, about engagement with stakeholders. I absolutely commit that we will engage fully with industry and other experts to determine the way penalties are applied to each relevant offence. I hope that in my earlier remarks I reassured the noble Baroness following her concerns that this might lead to watering down. It is absolutely not designed, in any way, to lead to watering down. However, in response to the second part of her question, penalty notices are not designed to replace any of the existing enforcement tools which we have already. That is not the purpose. Clearly, they will not be appropriate every time an offence is committed. Instead, they are designed to complement the existing enforcement for animal health and welfare offences. Enforcement authorities will be required to consider a set of factors when determining whether a penalty notice is appropriate, and the level of that penalty. The correct place to do this will be through secondary legislation and guidance. We have been clear that we will deliver a targeted and tailored approach to meet the sector’s needs. I reiterate the reassurances which have been made in the other place in the strongest possible terms.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked a number of questions. The first was simply in relation to the £5,000 fine. I hope that I have already responded implicitly in what I have said so far. This is not a set fine but the maximum—as my noble friend Lord Randall pointed out. It is, therefore, a sliding scale. Not every fine will be £5,000; some will be very much less than that. Clause 4 outlines the factors which the enforcement authorities will need to consider when determining the appropriate level of penalty. Enforcers will be required to follow the guidance which we will lay and publish when deciding the level of the fine.
The noble Baroness mentioned the Consolidated Fund. The enforcement authorities will be able to retain the costs incurred from issuing penalty notices, but any surplus will be surrendered to the Treasury. It is not a revenue-raising exercise. That is not its purpose. The costs will be recovered.
I thank my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury for his remarks generally and his support for this. He gave an example of his own pony suffering from African horse sickness. Clearly his actions were designed to be and were compassionate. It is impossible to imagine that they would fall foul of the rules that we are legislating for today. It would not be appropriate for me to go into details and rule de facto on specific cases, but his starting position and assumptions are entirely right. We have committed to work with a very wide range of stakeholders, including the enforcers, on precisely which offences would qualify for penalty notices. He mentioned one or two charities, such as the RSPCA, which I think, as he does, does a great job. They do not always get things right, but the legislation that we are putting
in place here does not require the Government to include charities as enforcement authorities. There are currently no plans for the Government to do so, but it is possible under the Bill’s provisions. Obviously, this will need to be done with full consultation and enormous care, but I struggle to imagine that the examples which he gave would not pass the test that he himself has just set.
I hope that I have covered most of the questions put to me by noble Lords. If any remain, I am very happy to follow up in writing. I know that my noble friend Lord Randall has also made himself available to talk to noble Lords if there are any issues that have not been covered in this debate. In the meantime, I conclude by thanking noble Lords again for their involvement in today’s debate, particularly my noble friend Lord Randall. It is testament to his commitment that he is here, having just pulled through Covid. He cannot have enjoyed standing and speaking for as long as he did earlier, but I am thrilled to see him back. I also thank the NGOs, including the RSPCA and the National Farmers’ Union, which have been instrumental in supporting the Bill to this stage.
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