§ Mr. BlackburnI beg to move amendment No. 19, in page 3, line 18, leave out 'members of' and insert 'persons on'.
§ Mr. Deputy SpeakerWith this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 87, in clause 10, page 7, line 40, leave out 'members of' and insert 'persons on'.
§ Mr. BlackburnThese are drafting amendments to leave out "member of" and insert "persons on" in the provision relating to the list drawn up by the Secretary of State of persons who will carry out the inspection.
Amendment agreed to.
§ Mr. BlackburnI beg to move amendment No. 24, in page 3, line 25, leave out from 'authority' to 'adequate' in line 28 and insert
'may refuse to grant a licence for a zoo if they are not satisfied that the standards of accommodation, staffing or management are'.
§ Mr. Deputy SpeakerWith this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 26, in page 3, line 27, leave out from 'to' to end of line 30 and insert
'standards specified by the Secretary of State in pursuance of section 9 of this Act and for the time being in force.'.
§ Mr. BlackburnThe amendment aims to restore the discretion in the original drafting to issue a licence to a zoo even though certain areas within it are subject to conditions. It leaves the discretion with the local authority to grant a conditional licence rather than close the zoo.
§ Mr. BlackburnThe collection of animals would be inspected by someone on the Secretary of State's list. As a result of inspection by qualified people with knowledge of exotic animals, a licence could be issued, which might be conditional. The condition would be supervised by the local authority instead of the zoo being closed. The provision would allow a zoo to have a licence on the condition that it achieved a high standard.
Amendment agreed to.
§ Mr. BlackburnI beg to move amendment No. 28, in page 3, line 36, leave out from 'zoo' to end of line 38.
The amendment deals with the employment of staff. It removes the provision whereby a local authority may refuse to grant a licence if the applicant proposes to employ a person as a keeper in a zoo that is not yet established. The machinery would operate only rarely. The clause allows a local authority to refuse a licence under certain circumstances. A zoo that may be opening may not advertise for keepers until it has a licence. At the stage when staff are employed, action could be taken over people disqualified from doing such work. The provision is supported by the zoo industry.
§ Sir Anthony KershawI understand that some of the offences under subsection (5) would be exceedingly technical and would not reflect on the knowledge or honesty of the person concerned. I have heard of a case where a bird was sold, through an oversight, without the ring on its leg, yet that offence, no doubt against the Protection of Birds Act, would disqualify the person from keeping a zoo or being employed in one.
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The criterion should not be whether a person has been convicted under the Acts listed in subsection (5), but whether he is trustworthy to supervise or otherwise to work in a zoo. Surely that is what we are aiming at. It is carrying things too far to say that a person would be disqualified if he had committed an offence under any of the Acts.
I recognise that the provision is that the local authority "may" refuse and not "must" refuse, but local authorities have no expertise in keeping zoos. It would not be correct for them to judge whether a person was suitable if he had committed a technical offence under one of the many Acts listed. Other criteria should be used to judge whether a person is suitable. It is illogical for someone who knows nothing about a subject to judge whether an expert is suitable, even though Members of Parliament constantly have to.
§ Mr. CrouchMy hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Sir A. Kershaw) has not had the advantage of being on the Committee. Under clause 8 we have the Secretary of State's list, which makes the Bill different from other Bills. We are talking not of district council chief executives, clerks or minor bureaucrats who have no knowledge of exotic animals, but about people who have signified to the Secretary of State that they are willing to carry out inspections—people with professional knowledge of the administration of zoos, particularly veterinary surgeons.
§ Sir Anthony KershawI am grateful for that guidance. That may be what was discussed in Committee, but clause 4 mentions only the local authority and does not refer to 675 a list. No doubt the local authority will take advice from those on the list, but, in the last resort, it can do what it pleases. Recently, in London, a local authority with all sorts of expertise at its disposal cast it away and made its own decisions.
A local authority may employ a veterinary surgeon who does not know much about wild animals, or it may disregard the advice that it properly and correctly receives, which it is at liberty to do. One can reasonably assume that most local authorities are not absolutely barmy and will take expert advice, but we must get the legislation right, so that a barmy local authority would not make too much difference.
I do not believe that a technical offence by a potential employee under one of the 10 Acts listed is a sound basis for refusing to grant a licence to a zoo.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Mr. MonroI beg to move amendment No. 29, in page 3, line 41, leave out from 'animals' to end of line 44.
The amendment is somewhat technical, I shall, therefore, explain it. It does not change the position of people who have convictions which have become spent for the purposes of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. There is no question of local authorities being able to refuse a licence for a zoo because the applicant, a keeper, or some other person listed in subsection (4), at some time in the past committed an offence under one of the Acts listed. The reason for the amendment is that the reference to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is superfluous. The 1974 Act spells out the legal consequences when a conviction becomes spent. There is no need to spell them out again in subsequent enactments. The reference to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act was originally put in for guidance, but legal advice is that confusion could arise if specific mention is made here of the earlier Act when it is not mentioned in other Acts. The amendment also removes an inconsistency within the Bill. Although clause 4 mentions the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, there is no reference to that Act in clause 17, under which a conviction may be a ground for revoking a licence. Given a choice between removing a superfluous provision from clause 4 and adding a superfluous provision to clause 17, it seems more sensible to amend clause 4 as here proposed.
§ Amendment agreed to.
§ Mr. ColvinI beg to move amendment No. 30, in page 3, line 41, after 'animals', insert
'and is prohibited by the court which convicted him from keeping animals'.My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Sir A. Kershaw) has already drawn the House's attention to the list of 10 Acts in the Bill which relate to convictions under clause 4. The purpose of my amendment is to make clear whether the opinion of those passing judgment is that persons tried for offences under those Acts should be allowed to keep a zoo again.As the Bill is drafted, or even if it is amended by the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, West (Mr. Blackburn), which deletes clause 4(2)(c), it is unsatisfactory. The Bill would allow a local authority to refuse a licence if any offence had been committed under any of the 10 Acts by anyone in the zoo, be he the owner, the manager or a director. I am glad to see that the question of employees has now been deleted, so that argument falls.
676 In Committee we debated whether that obligation should be mandatory or whether the discretion should be left to the local authority. I am glad to report that in Committee we substituted the discretionary element in the word "may" for the nasty word "shall". Offences under which people could be found guilty under the 10 Acts may be technical or administrative. They usually are and involve no cruelty.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud has drawn attention to the Protection of Birds Acts 1954 to 1967. As far as I know, only one conviction under those Acts has involved a zoo. The other Acts to which my hon. Friend referred were the Protection of Animals Acts 1911 to 1964. My research has shown that only one conviction under those Acts involved a zoo. It is important to draw attention to the statement made on Second Reading by my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mr. Mills). He gave the wrong impression in his speech—no doubt quite inadvertently—that there were many convictions under those Acts involving zoos. He said:
Under the Protection of Animals Acts and the Protection of Birds Acts, taken together, there have been nearly 1,000 prosecutions in any one year".—[Official Report, 6 March 1981; Vol. 1000, c. 558.]That may be true, but I can find only two out of those 1,000 prosecutions that involved zoos. My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden suggests that those 1,000 prosecutions were all zoos, as that was what the debate was about. I should place on record that that is not so and that zoos have a good record.
§ Mr. Andrew F. BennettIn this area this provision is as much to protect the zoo from someone whose record in handling animals is unsatisfactory as it is a licensing requirement. It is important, because if someone has been convicted under these Acts he is not the sort of person that a zoo should be encouraged to employ.
§ Mr. ColvinI take that point. It reinforces what I have said. The problem with employees has been deleted by the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, West. The time to decide whether someone is unsuitable to run a zoo is when he is convicted and sentenced on charges under the 10 Acts. If it is warranted that he should be prevented from running a zoo again—
§ Mr. BennettSurely that is hypothetical, because someone might have been convicted under one of these Acts but at that stage there may be no evidence that he might want to run a zoo in the future. Therefore the court cannot be expected to predict that in future there is a remote possibility that that person might want to run a zoo. That is asking the court to consider a hypothetical question. It would be difficult for the court. It is logical to assume that if a person is convicted of an offence, that is an indication that he is an unsuitable person.
§ Mr. ColvinI do not know why a court could not add a rider, because the sort of offence committed may relate, as the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett) says, to the future running of a zoo, but that is hypothetical. Under the various offences that can he committed under the 10 different Acts there must surely be examples when a court can decide whether a person should be permitted to run a zoo.
§ Mr. Kenneth Lewis (Rutland and Stamford)I am puzzled about this, because I do not think that a court could be expected, or would be permitted, to anticipate 677 what might happen. Any court dealing with an offence under other Acts would not be entitled to assume what might happen in the future. Therefore, I am rather puzzled that the word "and" is in this amendment. If it had been "or", I might have understood; but with "and" it is not likely that the courts will put that rider in, so it will not happen.
§ Mr. ColvinI take my hon. Friend's point. But it is up to the prosecution to make sure that the rider is added if there is any suggestion that at any future date the accused person may run a zoo. It also applies to persons already running and involved with zoos.
§ Mr. BennettClearly someone who has been convicted of an offence under the Endangered Species (Import and Export) Act would seem to be the least person who is suitable to run a zoo. There is no way in which the court could add such a rider, because it has no other powers to say that someone involved in an offence under that Act should not be a keeper of animals or a person who looks after animals.
§ Mr. ColvinI accept what the hon. Member has said. I should like very much to hear what the promoter of the Bill has to say on this matter. I think that there could be added the simple phrase:
and is prohibited by the court from keeping animals.It would not make sense if the word "and" were changed to "or".
§ Sir Anthony KershawI should like to reinforce what has just been said. It seems to me that the prohibition goes far too wide.
What I have particularly in mind is that any person who has been convicted of any offence under the 10 enactments mentioned in subsection (5), which may have absolutely nothing to do with the sort of employment that he has in a zoo, is nevertheless not allowed to be employed. Therefore, a person who has not perhaps observed the measurements of stables under the Riding Establishments Act, and so on, but is now employed in looking after lions and tigers in a zoo, could cause the prohibition of that zoo by virtue of his employment there. He could lose his job—an entirely different job from that which he had previously—and he would not be allowed to be employed in anything connected with zoos again, for reasons which seem wholly invalid.
I believe that the amendment cures this problem, because it gives a general indication that the sort of offences which the local authority may take into consideration in deciding whether so-and-so can be employed in a zoo are offences against animals, offences of cruelty and ill treatment of animals. That is the sort of offence at which we wish to strike. Those are the sorts of people who ought not to be employed in zoos.
Someone who has been unsuitably employed in the office and has forgotten to fill in the annual return under the Animal Boarding Establishments Act 1963 can be prevented from ever getting a job in a zoo, and if the zoo can thereupon be closed down because the local authority may wish to close it down for reasons other than this and can find the excuse for doing so in this way, that seems wholly wrong. Unless the amendment is accepted, I 678 believe that the clause goes much too far. The subsections shut out unreasonably the liberty of the individual to work. I believe that they put into the hands of local authorities a power that could be abused.
As I said in my last intervention, while no one is entitled to suppose that they will abuse their power in some unfair or unconstitutional way, they ought not to be given the opportunity to do so by the laws that we pass.
§ Mr. ColvinDoes my hon. Friend agree that under the Bill as drafted there is an opportunity for people to be virtually found guilty twice of the same crime? Surely that is inconsistent with British law.
§ Sir Anthony KershawI agree. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reinforcing my argument. It is repugnant to our system of operating, and also repugnant to our trade union traditions, that any convicted person should never be able to get a job, although no moral obloquy attaches to whatever crime he has committed. That situation would be cured by the amendment indicating that the person was unsuitable to deal with animals. That kind of person is not wanted in zoos. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, West (Mr. Blackburn) will be able to accept the amendment.
§ Mr. BlackburnThose who have listened to the debate will obviously be attracted by the powerful arguments that have been presented on the question of individual liberty in relation to a conviction for some of these minor offences and the prospect of being disqualified from following a chosen career. I am sympathetic. However, it would be a denial of the merits of and the motives behind the Bill if I did not also associate myself with the remarks of the hon. Member for Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett).
At the end of the day we are concerned not only about the zoo itself but that the right people should be engaged in the profession. I commend warmly and sincerely this amendment. It is of such merit that a Division on the matter would be foolish. The amendment will be examined seriously. It will be part of a clause that appears in another place. I give an assurance, not only as the promoter of the Bill, but on behalf of the Under-Secretary of State, for whom I believe I can speak, that the matter will be taken on board for further consideration in another place.
§ Mr. Kenneth LewisWill my hon. Friend give an assurance that the proposal will be redrafted in another place? I am sure that, as it stands, it is completely impracticable.
§ Mr. BlackburnI am able to give that assurance. That is one of my reasons for commending that the amendment should not go to a Division. So much merit is contained in both sides of the argument that a consensus is, I believe, possible. The provision will be redrafted and will appear in another place.
§ Mr. ColvinIn view of what my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, West (Mr. Blackburn) has said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.