Clause 4 - Unnecessary suffering
Animal Welfare Bill
12:00 pm
Bill Wiggin (Shadow Minister (Agriculture & Fisheries), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Leominster, Conservative)
The Committee will find that my amendments on this issue are similar to those of the hon. Gentleman, and his summary about a belt-and-braces approach was helpful.
Amendment No. 97 seeks to ensure that mental suffering is included in the Bill. It is easy to provide evidence of physical suffering to the court in cases in which the scars can be seen. However, the judiciary should also be able to consider the possibility of mental suffering. The 1911 Act covered certain types of mental suffering, and the RSPCA has expressed concerns about the absence of those provisions in the draft Bill. The amendment would help the court to decide whether harm had come to an abandoned animal, if it determined that, in the circumstances, the abandonment had caused the animal to suffer mental suffering.
Amendment No. 161 seeks to ensure that mental suffering is included in the Bill; we have been lobbied about this by various groups. Paragraph 18 of the explanatory notes mentions that the suffering offence covers physical and mental suffering, but I think that that should be stated explicitly on the face of the Bill. The code for the welfare of meat chickens and breeding chickens states that as one of the five freedoms, chickens should have
''Freedom from Fear and Distress—by ensuring conditions and treatments to avoid mental suffering.''
If mental suffering can be stated explicitly in a code for chickens, I see no reason why it cannot be mentioned on the face of the Bill.
I am confident that animals can be victims of mental suffering and I would therefore like to have that point covered. I suspect that the hon. Member for Stroud, who kindly added his name to the amendment, might feel the same. I will allow him to return to his seat in case he wants to speak to the amendment.