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Animals Act 1971 (Amendment) Bill

The hon. Gentleman has focused on section 2 of the original Act, which is what we are debating today, but section 5 provides a series of statutory defences. As the hon. Gentleman will know, in riding school cases, those defences have been heavily relied upon by people who have undertaken to go riding and have had an accident simply because they decided to go riding. That defence has stood on a number of occasions both before and after the Mirvahedy case.