Schedule 3 - Hunting with Dogs: Prohibition
Hunting Bill
10:30 am
Mr Mike O'Brien (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; North Warwickshire, Labour)
It would certainly be unsafe to try to shoot an injured animal out of a dog's mouth—that is common sense. Indeed, that would also be the case if the dog were in close proximity to the animal. Any person contemplating a prosecution or complaint would have to consider whether ``reasonable steps'' had been taken. I am happy to place it on record that, in exercising these parts of the schedule, we expect the courts, and others who may have to make decisions on whether an offence has been committed, to exercise reasonableness and common sense about the varied and almost unpredictable circumstances that might arise. We do not intend to catch people who, while honestly working towards the objectives set out in the Bill, are responsible for dogs which, for reasons that are unintended, unexpected and not reasonably foreseen, behave in a way that results in injury to the quarry animal. That may happen, but the court and those people who make decisions about prosecutions must bear in mind the need to apply common sense.
There is a level of control that an owner can exercise over a dog, but that is limited because dogs are by their nature sometimes unpredictable. However, that does not mean that dogs cannot be kept under control; they can be controlled, trained and, to some extent, dealt with in a predictable way.