Clause 7 - Fighting etc
Animal Welfare Bill
1:00 pm
Bill Wiggin (Shadow Minister (Agriculture & Fisheries), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Leominster, Conservative)
Thank you, Mr. Gale, and welcome back to the Chair. We had an interesting and important debate, as you say, and I shall keep my comments short. We need to decide carefully whether the clause stands part of the Bill not because of what is in it, but because of what is not. I hope that during the break the Minister had a chance to think carefully about the feelings in the Committee on what recorded information is legitimate.
We understand the difficulties of drafting such a clause, and we know that the Government already propose to introduce controls on certain types of obscene materials in other legislation. I hope that the Committee has been something of a pathfinder in identifying what is obscene to us in animal welfare terms rather than in a pornographic or sexual manner. We face that problem specifically with dog fighting. I hope that the Minister will tell us that he has reconsidered his position and has positive comments to make. He controls all the tools necessary to draft something that would go some way towards alleviating the Committee’s fears.