§ MR. SWIFT MACNEILL (Donegal, S.)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been directed to a correspondence between Mr. H. S. Salt, Honorary Secretary of the Humane League, and the Commissioner of Police, with respect to the ill-usage, overloading, and unnecessary flogging of horses in the streets of London; whether he will consider the propriety of suggesting to the Commissioner of Police the necessity of issuing more precise and stringent instructions, urging the police by their personal authority to put an end to the common practice of overloading and ill-using horses in London; whether he is aware that in Manchester, Leeds, Huddersfield, Liverpool, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Cardiff, Bradford, and other towns, the police have orders to intervene, and do intervene, in cases of cruelty; and whether a similar practice might be adopted in the Metropolis?
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Sir MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEY,) Lancashire, BlackpoolThe only powers which the Metropolitan Police have with regard to the ill-treatment of animals are those conferred by the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1849; and I have no ground for supposing that they are remiss in exercising them. In 1894 1,382 persons were apprehended, and 349 summoned, by the Metropolitan Police for cruelty to animals, while the total number of persons apprehended in the same year throughout England and Wales was 2,863. Further, the number of prosecutions under the Act in the Metropolitan Police district in 1894 was 2,817; in 592 the eight boroughs referred to by the hon. Member, 1,530; in the whole of England and Wales, 12,769. These figures do not appear to me to point to the necessity of additional or more stringent instructions being given to the Force.