Hansard

I welcome the bill and the stage 1 report by our colleagues in the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. I thought that the report was extremely helpful for someone who is not a member of the committee and that it set out a lot of the issues in the bill. I recommend that anyone outside the Parliament who is interested in the bill and the subject that it deals with look at the report. I also thank the minister for our dialogue last year, when we had a meeting regarding a particular local issue that I will come to in a few moments.

I will focus my comments on that local issue, but I will first touch on a couple of issues in the bill and the stage 1 report. I thank my committee colleagues for their report and their clear analysis of the bill. The graphic information on page 2 of the report sets out clearly what the bill will do. It is important that people recognise that the bill

“Increases penalties for animal and wildlife crime ... Introduces fixed penalty notices ... Extends the time allowed for prosecution ... Increases the protection for service animals ... Gives new powers to ‘authorised persons’”.

Those are extremely important provisions. I welcome the recommendations on page 5 of the report to increase “maximum penalties” to “five years in prison” and that “further discussion” take place with the Scottish Government on the issue of “sentencing guidelines”.

Page 7 highlights the issue of “empathy training”. I welcome such training, but I believe that some individuals have no empathy whatsoever and that any empathy training would be totally wasted on them. Sadly, that is just a fact of life in society.

I welcome the recommendations on page 8 regarding the sharing of information, and I note the reply from the Government on that matter. For me, the issue here is that it does not matter where some individuals live, because the issue of local authority boundaries will make absolutely no difference to them. It is therefore important that we get it right on the issue of information sharing.

I turn now to the local issue that I referred to, which I have spoken to the minister about previously and raised in the previous parliamentary session as well. There was an incident in Gourock in 2011 at the Pets Corner animal shelter in Darroch Park. It was reported in the local newspaper, the Greenock Telegraph, that someone had entered the park and killed a number of the animals in the shelter. It was thought that the animals were killed by a golf club and by a dog. The article in the newspaper stated:

“The animal attackers went on a sickening rampage at the popular family attraction which left six animals dead, 12 missing and another two needing urgent treatment at a vet surgery. It’s thought a golf club and a large dog were used as lethal weapons in the frenzy.”

Local vet, Neil McIntosh, of the Abbey Group, who was involved in the treatment of the animals, said:

“The four guinea pigs were gripped and killed by the dog, and the rabbit had a badly broken jaw, probably caused by the golf club that was left lying at the scene.”

That crime shocked the whole community, and the local newspaper undertook a justice for pets campaign. The campaign received over 5,400 signatures for its petition, which was handed to the then cabinet secretary, Richard Lochhead, at a meeting. The ex-MSP Duncan McNeil and I attended that meeting and we were fully supportive of the Greenock Telegraph’s campaign. The campaign’s two asks were increased sentencing and removal of the time bar for prosecutions. The latter ask is important, because the crime took place in 2011 and local police found DNA evidence in 2013—two years later—that directly linked an individual to the offence. The police therefore arrested him. Sadly, as the arrest happened after the six-month period that was allowed at that point for arrests after an offence, the individual went free.

The bill seeks to safeguard domestic, farm and wild animals, and the various penalties highlighted are very welcome. Each of the penalties will involve trials under either solemn or summary procedure, and time bars for bringing prosecutions will not apply after the bill has been enacted. I would be grateful if the minister could clarify whether the bill achieves the goal set out in the Greenock Telegraph’s campaign. If there are any issues in that area, I will continue to have dialogue with the minister.

The minister wrote to me in March 2019 about the campaign. She said that the Scottish Government

“intends that the most serious animal welfare offences could, in future, be prosecuted under solemn procedure, removing the statutory time limits for prosecution. Those proposed changes would appear to meet the concerns of those supporting the Greenock Telegraph’s petition.”

However, I am very much aware that section 10 of the bill says:

“But no such proceedings may be brought more than 3 years”

after in certain cases. I would be grateful for a wee bit of clarification on that aspect.

I am genuinely delighted that this long-overdue bill has been introduced to Parliament. I thank the minister for her hard work on, and her determination in progressing, the bill. I know that animals across Scotland will be a lot safer as a consequence of the bill, and I am quite sure that many of my constituents will be delighted with it.