Restriction on Keeping Guard Dogs without a Licence

Part of Orders of the Day — GUARD DOGS BILL (changed from Dogs Bill) – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 16 May 1975.

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Mr. Alan Lee Williams:

I should like to confine my remarks to some of the points raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Mr. Weitzman), especially those concerning the rôle of the local authorities.

I am deeply concerned that we should not ask local authorities to take on additional burdens, especially at a time when Parliament is giving them more to do in ordinary circumstances. Part of the difficulty is that the local authorities have neither the resources nor the trained personnel to deal with this problem.

There has been some argument about the definition of a guard dog. Presumably one of the elements is whether the dog is trained or untrained. If so, the only body with requisite experience in the matter is the police. That is true of the Metropolitan Police. To be realistic and to tidy up the Bill, I ask the proposer to bear that point in mind and to consider whether he is satisfied that the local authorities should be burdened with this responsibility. I believe that the police are in a better position to undertake it.

There would have to be supervision of training in order to define what constitutes a trained dog. The mere fact that a person says that a dog is a guard dog does not mean that it is a trained dog. It could be simply a ferocious-looking dog, accompanied by a dog handler. That does not mean that the dog has been properly trained in security duties, certainly not as well trained as Ministry of Defence or police dogs. I should like my hon. Friend to say something about the problem of the training of dogs so that whoever supervises their licensing, whether the police or the local authorities, will also be able to examine the degree of training of the dogs involved.