Clause 46 - Conditions for grant of warrant
Animal Welfare Bill
10:15 am
Norman Baker (Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Lewes, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 42, in clause 46, page 25, line 40, at end insert
‘for a period of 10 days’.
The clause relates to the conditions for the granting of a warrant and sets out four conditions, any of which would satisfy the granting of a warrant. Those conditions are relatively sensible. However, in respect of the third condition in subsection (4) there is no time limit set on the leaving of a notice in a conspicuous place on the premises. As a matter of good law, time limits ought to be set so that those who have premises understand what the time limit is and any court, in determining whether the third condition is met, would be able to state sensibly whether 10 days—under my amendment—had passed.
The absence of a time limit seems to leave open a defence that the notice applied to the premises was inadequate and therefore the condition was not met. It cannot be the Government’s intention to provide such a let-out.
I said 10 days, because that is a reasonable amount of time that appears elsewhere in the Bill. I have no objection if the Minister wants to say that that period should be five or 28 days, or another number, but a time limit needs to be set, and there is not one here.