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The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 101, in clause 5, page 3, line 20, at end insert
'carried out by a registered veterinary surgeon.'.
No. 82, in clause 5, page 3, line 20, at end insert—
'(3A) For the purposes of this section, any procedure carried out on an animal as part of a medical treatment by a registered veterinary surgeon prior to the commencement of this Act cannot be prohibited through the making of regulations under subsection (4).'.
Bill Wiggin: Amendment No. 100 would ensure that vets do not commit an offence when carrying out a procedure that might save an animal's life and prevent it from harm. It would also ensure that the person carrying out such procedures is suitably qualified as a vet. As drafted, clause 5 is not sufficiently detailed about the exemptions for permitting mutilation for medical treatment. That has been left to regulations, to be made at a later date, but guidance is needed now and in the Bill. For example, if a cat has a badly broken leg, it may be in its interest to have the leg amputated. In such circumstances, the person responsible for the animal and the vet will need to know that their actions and the medical treatment that they administer are not in violation of the law. The amendment would provide that guidance and protect such people from the risk of prosecution.
Amendment No. 101 has similar wording and seeks to ensure that veterinary surgeons are protected from being accused of harming animals when they are only carrying out their duty to protect the life of an animal. As drafted, clause 5 makes no exemptions for mutilation, and a cat, for example, might need to have a leg amputated after a road accident. However, the clause does not state what a prohibited procedure is, and that will not be known until the relevant regulations are made. Clause 3(3) and (4) could arguably be deemed to offer some protection to veterinary surgeons in the course of their duty, but I believe that a medical treatment exemption should be included.
Amendment No. 82 is designed to prevent current medical treatments for animals from being prohibited in future regulations. The Bill does not include contentious issues such as tail docking, and it leaves them to be determined in regulations at a later date. There is a strong scientific case for tail docking not to be banned. It is already regulated under the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 and serves a medical purpose. Around half of working dogs suffer from tail injuries if their tails are not docked, and their owners' failure to dock their tails could be defined as cruelty under clause 4(1)(b). I accept that tail docking is contentious and believe that if the Government want to ban it, the proposal should be made in a Bill and not in regulations. My colleagues may deal with that this afternoon. Amendment No. 82 would ensure that while protecting animals from vicious and unnecessary
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mutilation, mutilation that is necessary for an animal's health can continue.
The Chairman: I draw it to Members' attention that later amendments refer to tail docking and ask them to confine their remarks to the amendment.
Mr. Bradshaw: We shall come to the details of tail docking when we come to the next group of amendments so I shall not say anything about it in connection with dogs. I shall address the amendments relating to vets and lay persons.
I hope that some of the concern that has given rise to the amendments has been allayed by Committee members having had sight of the draft regulations listing exempted mutilations, which were circulated earlier today.
Amendment No. 100 is intended to define the mutilation offence as excluding veterinary surgeons, so that when a procedure is performed by a vet, whatever the procedure is, it is not an offence. I have the greatest respect for the veterinary profession but I do not share the hon. Gentleman's view that it should be given a blanket exemption from an offence in the Bill. I have no doubt that the vast majority of vets would not perform unnecessary procedures on animals, and one of the functions of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons guide to professional conduct is to ensure that. However, mutilation is mutilation, no matter who performs it, and the fact that someone is a vet does not automatically mean that they should have licence to perform procedures that are not required as part of an animal's medical treatment. They should be allowed to perform procedures only for good management reasons in pursuance of an overall welfare benefit or for medical treatment, just the same as anyone else. It may be rare that a vet performs a procedure for other reasons, but on such rare occasions I believe that an appropriate remedy should be available.
I hope that the draft exemption order will reassure the hon. Gentleman that all procedures that may need to be carried out in the exercise of veterinary judgment will be exempted from the scope of the ban. I also hope that he agrees that the procedures that will be banned—for example, ear cropping a dog, devoicing cockerels and mulesing operations on sheep—should not be performed at all, even by vets, unless it can be shown that they are for the purpose of medical treatment.
4.15 pm
On amendment No. 101, just as I do not believe that vets should be given a blanket exclusion from the scope of the mutilations offence, I do not believe by the same token that lay people should be excluded from the protection given by the medical treatment defence. The ''medical treatment'' in subsection (3) ensures that procedures are not considered mutilations within the scope of the ban in the clause if they are carried out for therapeutic purposes.
In general, the purpose and effect of the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 is to prevent lay people from
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administering medical treatment to animals. To that extent, the amendment does not add anything to the clause, because in practice only a vet would be able to invoke the medical treatment defence without risking a charge under the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966. However, I do not agree that we should therefore introduce that limitation into the clause. If the review of the Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 concludes that lay people could perform certain procedures in the administration of medical treatment to animals, I shall be content to allow them to continue to perform those procedures.
The effect of the amendment would be that even where lay people are, or might be, authorised by the current or future veterinary surgery legislation to perform procedures for animals' medical treatment, they could still be held liable under clause 5 for performing a prohibited procedure. Surely it cannot be right to introduce such an incapability, or potential incapability, into our legislation.
Amendment No. 82 is based on a misunderstanding of how clause 5 and regulations under it will function. Let me explain that clause 5 prohibits the mutilation of any protected animal. A mutilation is defined as a procedure that interferes with the sensitive tissues or bone structure of an animal other than for its medical treatment. That definition was inserted at the recommendation of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and closely follows the definition used by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
Clause 5(4) then gives the Secretary of State and the National Assembly for Wales the power to exempt certain procedures from the ban. There is no power in the clause to prohibit a mutilation by regulation, as all mutilations are banned unless they are specifically exempted. The aim of the amendment to prevent the authority from prohibiting a procedure through regulations is therefore unnecessary, as there is no power for them to do so in the Bill.
The hon. Gentleman's aim behind the amendment may be to ensure that someone who has owned an animal that had been mutilated before the prohibition came into force should not be held to have committed an offence. Nothing in the Bill will apply retrospectively.
Clause 62(3) allows the Secretary of State or National Assembly for Wales to specify the date on which the ban on mutilations will come into force. The ban will not be brought into force unless the exemptions regulation is also ready to be commenced at the same time. Any act committed before that date will therefore not be an offence, and it will not be possible to specify by regulations that it was.
There is no need for the amendment if its intention is to ensure that the prohibition is not retrospective. The amendment is also inappropriate or unnecessary if the hon. Gentleman's intention is that it should not be possible to prohibit any procedure currently commonly performed by a vet for the purposes of medical treatment. Under clause 5(3), anything that is done for an animal's medical treatment is automatically exempt from that prohibition. There
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are no circumstances under which it would be possible for something reasonably done for the purpose of an animal's medical treatment to be a prohibited mutilation.
I understand the problems that Committee members have had in considering the clause in the absence of the draft exemptions regulations, and I am pleased that I have been able to share them. I hope that that will help discussion of this clause and show the hon. Gentleman why his amendments are unnecessary.
Bill Wiggin: The Minister was very clear and his explanation extremely helpful and constructive. I am very grateful to him, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Bill Wiggin: I beg to move amendment No. 162, in clause 5, page 3, line 21, after 'apply', insert—
'(a) to the docking of the tail of a dog;
(b) to the amputation of the dew claws of a dog; and
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 152, in clause 5, page 3, line 22, at end insert
'; but the docking of the tail of a dog may be so specified only in respect of circumstances where a veterinary surgeon certifies that the procedure is necessary in the therapeutic interests of that dog.'.
No. 7, in clause 5, page 3, line 25, at end add—
'(6) Regulations made under subsection (4) shall not include the amputation of any part of a dog's tail except for the purpose of treating existing injury or disease.'.
No. 163, in clause 5, page 3, line 25, at end add—
'(6) In subsection (4) ''docking of the tail of a dog'' means the deliberate removal of any part of the tail of a dog if the removal is carried out
(a) by a veterinary surgeon; and
(b) on a dog which is less than 10 days old.'.
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