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Bill Wiggin: The Committee will find that my amendments on this issue are similar to those of the hon. Gentleman, and his summary about a belt-and-braces approach was helpful.
Amendment No. 97 seeks to ensure that mental suffering is included in the Bill. It is easy to provide evidence of physical suffering to the court in cases in which the scars can be seen. However, the judiciary should also be able to consider the possibility of mental suffering. The 1911 Act covered certain types of mental suffering, and the RSPCA has expressed concerns about the absence of those provisions in the draft Bill. The amendment would help the court to decide whether harm had come to an abandoned animal, if it determined that, in the circumstances, the abandonment had caused the animal to suffer mental suffering.
Amendment No. 161 seeks to ensure that mental suffering is included in the Bill; we have been lobbied about this by various groups. Paragraph 18 of the explanatory notes mentions that the suffering offence covers physical and mental suffering, but I think that that should be stated explicitly on the face of the Bill. The code for the welfare of meat chickens and breeding chickens states that as one of the five freedoms, chickens should have
''Freedom from Fear and Distress—by ensuring conditions and treatments to avoid mental suffering.''
If mental suffering can be stated explicitly in a code for chickens, I see no reason why it cannot be mentioned on the face of the Bill.
I am confident that animals can be victims of mental suffering and I would therefore like to have that point covered. I suspect that the hon. Member for Stroud, who kindly added his name to the amendment, might feel the same. I will allow him to return to his seat in case he wants to speak to the amendment.
Mr. Drew: I was just trying to give my apologies for being about to go to an Adjournment debate. I am waiting for some clarity on the wording from the Minister. It is linked closely to what I want to say about amendment No. 191, so if the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will reserve my remarks for that amendment.
The Chairman: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. He kindly informed me that, as is unfortunately so often the case in this building, he has to be in two places at once. I wanted to make sure that he had his say in case he has to go next door.
Paddy Tipping: I shall be here later, and will pursue the issues in amendment No. 191 if my hon. Friend would like to brief me before then.
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I want to probe the Minister on amendment No. 5, and the matter of mental suffering. The Minister and his officials have received a lot of correspondence and lobbying on the proposal. The 1911 Act is clear that mental suffering should be included but it is not in the Bill. The Minister will argue that the Bill, as drafted, deals with mental suffering and my plea is that he states the case clearly. There may be an opportunity to consider the matter later in clause 56, which is entitled ''General interpretation''. Depending on what the Minister tells us this afternoon, an amendment might be tabled to that clause on what constitutes suffering. It would be easy to put together an amendment defining suffering as both physical and mental suffering.
This is an important matter of process and the RSPCA and others want a good discussion on it; it was debated at length on Second Reading. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Justine Greening: I, too, add my support to the amendments. In particular, I support the proposal to specify mental welfare in the Bill, which is wise for several reasons. First, it would align the Bill with the explanatory notes. The Bill will obviously have to be enforced when it becomes law, but its main aim is the prevention of cruelty. In the real world, people are first alerted to an act of cruelty by hearing the mental distress of animals—for example, they may hear them yelping or squealing in pain. To include mental suffering in the Bill would send a clear message to the public that when they pick up on that suffering, they should report it. To exclude mental suffering may lead people to think that if they have not seen the animal physically hurt, there cannot be a prosecution. We should be conscious of how the proposal is interpreted, not just in the courts but by the general public, and structure it to ensure that the public feel that they can play a role in helping to prevent animal cruelty.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley) (Lab): In whatever way we achieve it, it is important to ensure that the Bill makes it clear that animal suffering covers mental as well as physical suffering. As hon. Members have said, the best way to do so might be to consider clarification of the interpretation in clause 56.
Neglect gives rise to many types of mental suffering. Hon. Members will have seen, and be aware of, many types of neglect and the Bill must be clear about that because it will aid prosecutors and the courts.
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Shona McIsaac: I think the Minister will find that every member of the Committee will support the inclusion of mental suffering in the Bill. As hon. Members have said, the 1911 Act alluded to mental suffering in the terms ''cruelly infuriate'' or ''cruelly terrify''. Those words summarise what we are talking about; there is merit in adding the words in the amendment to the Bill, and the amendment would be simple and straightforward to introduce. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood said, the words could be added to clause 56, which is headed ''General interpretations''. Will the Minister make that simple amendment on Report? We are considering the
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Animal Welfare Bill, and an animal's mental welfare is as important as its physical welfare. I therefore hope that he will take the suggestion seriously and add the suggested words later in Committee or on Report.
Mr. Bradshaw: I understand the concerns expressed by members of the Committee who are worried that the Bill will not protect animals from mental abuse. Let me make it clear that the Government believe that suffering includes mental suffering. My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes reminded the Committee of the quaint wording of the 1911 Act, which refers to certain types of mental suffering infuriating or terrifying an animal. That is too prescriptive and limiting an interpretation of mental suffering and underlines why it is undesirable to prescribe what constitutes mental cruelty.
Shona McIsaac: The feeling of the Committee is not that we want to be prescriptive but that we want the words ''mental suffering'' added to the Bill. That is what we are getting at; we do not wish to define the term. Given that the 1911 Act contained those quaint words, the fact of their vanishing could cause certain magistrates to feel that they no longer apply. I am worried about that. We must be very clear so that magistrates know that mental cruelty is covered in the Bill.
Mr. Bradshaw: I shall try to reassure my hon. Friend further. Most people accept that we have moved on since 1911. We live in a society in which most, if not all, people accept that suffering can be mental as well as physical. The question that I am putting to the Committee is whether it is necessary to spell that out in the Bill. I have listened carefully to what my hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood and for Worsley (Barbara Keeley) have said about the scope for including a definition of suffering in clause 56, for example, and I will think carefully about that suggestion.
To pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Leominster about the chicken code, we intend to introduce such codes to spell out much more clearly and explicitly what constitutes suffering. I am sorry that hon. Members do not have those codes in front of them already as I hoped they would; my officials assure me that the Committee will have them by this afternoon's sitting. We have produced a draft cat code to give the Committee an idea of how the codes of good practice mentioned in the Bill will look. When hon. Members read it, they will find that, very much like the chicken code, it includes many examples whereby the welfare needs of a cat would be considered not to have been met as a result of mental suffering. The point of the legislation is to ensure through the welfare offence that those responsible for animals do not think solely about preventing overt physical cruelty. Bearing in mind what I have just said about looking again at the potential for a change to clause 56, I hope that hon. Members will not press their amendments.
Bill Wiggin: I am not quite sure, but I think that the Minister said that he would go away and think about the matter. I suspect that if we push him harder, he might return with his own amendments at a later stage. I am content with what he said. There is an unwritten
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risk that it is difficult to prove mental suffering alone in creatures that cannot speak, and I am sure that the Minister will bear that in mind. I would be content to withdraw my amendments, but I do not lead on this group.
Norman Baker: The amendment is in our name, or at least that of the Liberal Democrats. I have listened to what the Minister says, and I hope that he has listened to what the Committee says; I am confident that he will have done. There is a common view across all the Committee that there is a need to include some reference to mental suffering in the Bill, and that seems to be the view of all Members who have spoken, and even, perhaps, that of the Minister himself. The reasons are clear: it could be seen as watering down the 1911 Act, as the hon. Member for Cleethorpes rightly said. Secondly, although there is probably more understanding that mental suffering can exist than there was 100 years ago, that understanding is not unanimous or universal. There is, therefore, a possibility that if it were not mentioned explicitly, particularly in relation to animals, it could be deemed not to be included by some unhelpful judge at some point in case law. Those are two good reasons for including the phrase in the amendments.
Is there a reason for not including those words? The Minister talked about prescriptive lists, and members of the Committee accepted that point. I certainly admit that he is right on that, as did the hon. Member for Cleethorpes. We do not want to go down that road, for reasons that he understands. However, including the words ''whether mental or physical'' or some other variation is not prescriptive. In fact, it would be a general definition, which adds to the Bill rather than subtracting from it. I am not particularly wedded to the words in amendment No. 5. If the Minister wants to come back with something else, I shall be perfectly happy and am happy to withdraw the amendment. However, I hope that he will have taken the temperature of the Committee and realise that something has to be done: there is a general wish for something to be in the Bill. If he can find some way of doing it, that would be great, but we shall have to have something, either later in Committee or on Report.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
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