INVERNESS DISTRICT COUNCIL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL (Hansard, 29 January 1980)

§ The EARL of MANSFIELD
My Lords. I beg to move that this Bill be now considered on Report.

§ Lord ROSS of MARNOCK
My Lords, I just want to express my appreciation of a letter I received from the Minister of State, the noble Earl. I do so in respect of the Inverness District Council Order Confirmation Bill, as well as those dealing with Kirkcaldy, Lochaber, Strathkelvin and West Lothian. If they are examined, 831 it will be appreciated that they are all, word for word, dealing with stray dogs. Your Lordships will recollect that I raised this matter a few weeks ago when we had three separate Bills; thanks to the information from the noble Earl, we have these five, and we have already had nine; I make it 20 of the district councils of Scotland—practically the whole lot of them—which have had piecemeal legislation on stray dogs.
I was glad to receive the letter from the noble Earl but quite frankly it did not make sense. We are now promised at some time in the future general legislation about stray dogs. We shall not need it if he goes on like this. He hands over this function to district authorities and to carry it out they must spend money. In the letter he says that of course they are worried about the present economic difficulties, implying that they are not going to get any opportunity to spend any money. So why do they allow this caper to go on?—a very expensive caper from the point of view of the ratepayers. Your Lordships may think that what we have been doing all day is important but to the ratepayers of Inverness, Kirkcaldy, Strathkelvin and West Lothian what they spend and are going to be asked to spend is equally important. When are we going to get the other two or three Bills of the same kind?
The Government say, "We do not want to promote wide-ranging legislation on the dog problem until we and our colleagues in England and Wales have reviewed the results of consultations which have taken place with many interests". This really is a lot of blarney because here we have already got it. They should either have introduced a small Bill covering not all the local authorities but the district authorities in Scotland or have forgotten about it altogether and waited for this so-called legislation.

§ The EARL of MANSFIELD
My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord at least for his preliminary observations, which were a form of thanks. In my letter to the noble Lord I tried to point out why it was that in the present circumstances it is not possible for the Government to deal with this as opposed to the local authorities themselves promoting Private Bills. Perhaps when we can get 832 some measure of agreement between the departments and even more so the countries making up the United Kingdom, we shall be able to have a comprehensive Bill, but until then I think we must be thankful that the West Lothian question is being decided by its own district council and not by an Assembly.

§ Lord ROSS of MARNOCK
My Lords, can the noble Earl tell me what on earth stray dogs in Scotland have to do with local authorities in England?