Clause 4 - Unnecessary suffering
Animal Welfare Bill
12:30 pm
Bill Wiggin (Shadow Minister (Agriculture & Fisheries), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Leominster, Conservative)
I am grateful for that interpretation of amendment No. 99. In fact, I was offered the feeding of live rodents to snakes as an example to give the Committee, but I am not particularly happy with it, because it is actually rather dangerous to feed live rodents to snakes; very often the rodent fights back and does more harm to the snake than does feeding it in another way. That is not the intention of the Bill, and I agree with what the Minister said about that. The amendment is really to do with who is liable if an animal fights with another animal, and I suspect that that goes beyond this Bill, which is why it is a probing amendment, as I said.
However, on the Minister's other points, particularly with regard to police horses, I am not sure he is right that withdrawing the word ''property'' makes the police liable. Perhaps he would like to think about that?
In respect of amendment No. 99, I wanted to learn the answer to the following question: in the unfortunate event of one animal attacking another, at what point is the owner of either animal liable—or, rather, in breach of this legislation?