Clause 2 - ''Protected animal''
Animal Welfare Bill
11:15 am
Norman Baker (Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Lewes, Liberal Democrat)
I am not entirely convinced that amendments Nos. 105 and 107 are very helpful to our consideration of the Bill. They may be well intentioned, but they may have a deleterious and counter-productive consequence. Amendment No. 105, which would replace ''or'' with ''and'', would weaken the Bill by requiring every condition, rather than simply one of them, to be met. That raises the barrier against any action, and therefore reduces the status of a protective animal.
Nor is it clear what would happen if an animal had ceased to be under the control of man and was living wild. How would something that had escaped from a circus, for example, be dealt with?