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Animal Welfare Bill

I thank the Minister for the manner in which he has handled this controversial matter, both by enabling a decision to be taken on the Floor of the House—as is right—and through his novel exercise in democracy in Committee when he cajoled from each member of it their view on the matter. On that occasion, not one Member wanted to maintain the status quo of allowing cosmetic docking to continue. The hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) has now apparently decided that he does want it to continue, so I imagine that we will have a vote on that later. I confirm that the Liberal Democrats will have a free vote on this issue; I think that all three parties are in that position. There needs to be a good reason to mutilate an animal. My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) spoke earlier about the neutering of animals, but neutering is carried out for a purpose, and that purpose is not achieved unless that procedure is carried out. That is not necessarily the case with tail docking, because there is doubt as to whether it is necessary. We need to concentrate on that key point. To be fair to the Minister and his colleagues, the new clause has been drafted quite tightly—that was his stated objective in Committee—and the number of loopholes has been reduced. The idea that it was possible to identify breeds that would never work has been dealt with, as has the idea that breeds could be docked allegedly for one purpose but then shown. The issue remains as to whether an assurance might be given that a dog would be used as a working dog when there was no intention to do so. Notwithstanding the purity of a vet’s intentions in those circumstances, they might later be held to have been complicit in a dishonest act because they had given information that turned out to be inaccurate.