Clause 4 - Unnecessary suffering
Animal Welfare Bill
4:00 pm
Ben Bradshaw (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Exeter, Labour)
I certainly agree—this is a point that I have made on a number of occasions—that abandonment is an offence under the Bill and remains an offence if the welfare needs of the animal are jeopardised by the activity or if suffering occurs. But as I was beginning to explain when we adjourned, there is considerable difficulty in defining abandonment in a way that deals with some of the scenarios that I was describing.
Clause 4 is an attempt to move away from approach taken by the 1911 Act, which was to have list of activities that are offences, and to replace it with a general all-embracing offence of causing unnecessary suffering. While I understand that the act of abandoning an animal is a cause for concern, I do not see that it merits specific mention any more than beating, kicking, punching, infuriating, or any of the other the actions listed in the 1911 Act. Furthermore, the implication of amendment No. 98, would be that abandoning an animal is always an offence under clause 4. That is not always the case, which highlights the problems of definition which I mentioned a moment ago.